Across the cobblestone heart of ilMortal, beneath the arching embrace of ancient arboreal sentinels, echoes the unwavering prelude of footfalls. Muffled, as if shrouded by the veil of time, tracing a path long forgotten. The twilight sky, a canvas splattered with violet canvas hues, forms a halo around the village as gnarled oak trees eavesdrop, entwined in whispered conspiracies.
The village is gripped by an eerie symphony only they can hear, the villagers left to dance in tandem with invisible partners. A lute's melancholic note hangs in the still air, a single candle flickering in the open window of the ancient tavern as walls crack with laughter from beyond life’s precipice. Here, shadows hidden give chase to secrets untold.
Legend weaves the words of an ancient custodian, a Keeper of Undreamt Stories. Beneath cobwebbed rafters, in dim cathedral-like passages, books of bone turn under no mortal hand. They pulse with whispers of turmoil. Follow the echoes if you wish to grasp the intangible.
The footsteps, ever loyal to their own path, hum a dirge as they lead through a mist-devoured passage found only by those who sought earnestly – Earnest must be the seeker, lest they become a memory to the woods too.
And so, beneath the gaze of that watchful moon rising as a disk of molten pearl over the horizon, these spectres of the midway revive tales aching with a melancholic yearning, longing for the touch of the storyteller’s tongue.