Greyhaven barely appeared on any map — and that seemed to suit its inhabitants just fine.
Tucked deep within a mist-shrouded valley, the village, with its weathered stone houses and faded rooftops, felt like a forgotten memory. A place where time itself hesitated to move forward. Only the villagers — and perhaps a few stubborn ghosts — remembered that quiet life still lingered here.
Kaelen sat on an old wooden bench beneath the ancient oak tree that towered over the village square. From there, he watched the morning unfold like a familiar play he'd seen countless times before.
Children shrieked with laughter as they chased a small barking dog. Two elderly women leaned close, whispering about the rising price of bread and the poor harvest, their voices crackling like dry leaves. Nearby, Elara — the baker's daughter — blushed as Torvin, the blacksmith's awkward apprentice, shyly offered her a slightly wilted wildflower, his soot-stained fingers trembling.
Emotions were everywhere — joy, desire, jealousy, affection.
Kaelen saw them all. He understood them with sharp, clinical precision. He catalogued them in his mind like a scholar studying rare specimens. But inside?
There was nothing.
No sadness. No emptiness. Just… absence.
Since childhood, Kaelen had watched the world like someone reading a story that would never truly belong to him. He didn't cry at funerals. He didn't laugh at jokes around the fire. He simply observed, remembered, learned — collecting data about human behavior as if it were an academic exercise.
But today, something changed.
The ground shuddered.Not like an earthquake, nor the fall of a tree. It was subtler, deeper — as if the valley itself had drawn a long breath and exhaled a trembling sigh.
The village froze. The dog gave a single bark, then fell silent. Laughter died. Conversations stopped. A heavy hush fell over Greyhaven.
Kaelen noticed something else.
A dissonant note in the usual melody of the village. A vibration out of place in the weave of reality — something he, inexplicably, had always been attuned to.
It came from the hill.From the abandoned house no one spoke of — the one wrapped in whispered tales of misfortune and bad omens.
Kaelen rose from the bench. Not out of fear — an emotion he had never truly known. Not out of bravery either. But from a cold, persistent curiosity. The same curiosity that once led him to dismantle intricate clockwork or watch ants for hours.
As he climbed the winding paths toward the hill, he spotted someone new.
A girl, perhaps a year or two older, stood on a ridge near the edge of the forest, gazing down at the village. Her clothes were simple, but her posture was sharp and deliberate. Dark hair was tied tightly back, save for a loose strand that danced in the wind. Her bright blue eyes were fixed on the same abandoned house Kaelen approached.
She wasn't from here.That much was obvious.
Kaelen noted silently: "Unfamiliar person, specimen number two of the day."
But unlike fleeting novelties, her image lingered in his mind longer than expected — like a light that refused to dim.
The abandoned house waited.
Its rotted wooden door creaked in the wind like a tired groan. The air grew heavier, charged like the moment before a violent storm.
Inside, dust and shadows claimed every corner. Broken furniture lay scattered, shrouded in cobwebs that looked like thin, tattered veils.
At the center of the room, a faint flicker of light.
Kaelen stepped inside, his careful steps making the floorboards groan in protest. The glow came from something small, wedged between two loose planks — a dark crystal, almost black, pulsing with a dim inner fire.
It wasn't just glowing.
It was feeling.
Fear.
Raw. Ancient. Overwhelming. A terror so old it seemed woven into the stones of the valley. Enough to make anyone else turn and run.
Kaelen tilted his head, grey eyes locked on the crystal. Fascinating. Dangerous, certainly. But distant — like a storm observed through thick glass.
He reached out — not to touch, but to study. As if fear itself had a structure, a frequency, a code he could decipher.
That's when he heard hurried footsteps outside.
And a familiar voice — sharp and commanding.
"Who's in there? Come out, in the name of the Vigil Order!"
Master Borin. Captain of the village guard. A man known for his strictness and perhaps excessive zeal.
Kaelen didn't move. His senses locked onto the crystal.
It pulsed more intensely. The vibration deepened, almost audible now.
And something inside it… stirred. Awakened.
And something inside Kaelen… responded.
For the first time in his quiet, detached life, he was no longer a distant observer.
He was at the center of the story.
And the story, at long last, had begun