“Wynscar doesn’t just hum with energy, it shouts with it. If there was any place to go, Wynscar is the perfect place. Every block is a patchwork of lived-in chaos and stubborn pride: steamcraft galleries beside horn-meat kitchens, neon stalls sharing scaffolds with temple balconies. It’s the only place I’ve ever seen a preacher, a pickpocket, and a prosthetic vendor arguing over engine brands in the same square, and all of them were right. You don’t visit Wynscar to escape the noise, you come here to find the one that sounds like home.” -Excerpt from “Wynscar Unwrapped: One Week, One Wanderer” — News column by Vette Lenvora, freelance travel writer, published in the Wickrow Freeport Review, 523 A.S.

  Demeris’ Reach came into view as the light began to thin across the ridge, a sprawl of broken shingles and sun-bleached roofs nestled between two crooked peaks of stone and the framework of old buildings.

  It didn’t look abandoned at first. It looked quiet. The kind of quiet some towns adopt when they’re waiting for poor weather. A hush that hangs over like a guillotine, threatening to fall at the smallest sight of life.

  I didn’t bring Portem. Not because I thought I could handle trouble better without him, but because something about the place already smelled wrong. Worse than even the capsule did. Besides, you never bring angels where ghosts still roved. It makes the dead restless.

  The Wakesong settled at the edge of the plateau with a low groan, as she adjusted to the uneven terrain. I made the walk in with my coat pulled tight against the wind, Beta in its full glory and slung at my back, boots crunching loose gravel and shattered glass that had long since stopped reflecting the living.

  There was a sign, half-buried in wildgrass, decayed through at the corners. The name still clung to the middle plank in peeling white paint. Demeris’ Reach. Pop. 837. I stepped over it.

  The town’s main street was stone-laid, lined with buildings that leaned too far inward, as if they were all huddled around a secret none of them had the courage to share. Most of the windows were boarded, a few hadn’t bothered, their shards hanging in the frames like fangs.

  There weren't any corpses, no scorch marks, no signs of panic. Just the barebones town, forgotten by the Crown. Like someone had shipped off its residents and forgot about the place. And somehow, somewhere in this place, Thessel thought we could find a trail. And maybe, ten years ago, there was one. But the Reach had dried up. Its inhabitants were gone, and in their place all that was left was silence.

  I pulled my collar higher, stepped into the first alleyway, and let the town close in around me. The further I walked, the more the quiet changed. It stopped feeling empty. Not loud—just… disturbed. A door slightly ajar where none had been open before. A set of footprints half-scuffed by wind but not erased. The discarded remnants of some food caught in the weeds that hadn’t been eaten by the wildlife or rotted away by mold.

  Someone had been here, and didn’t just pass through. Someone had lingered. I swept two buildings before I was sure. One was a drygoods shack, half-collapsed and stripped of shelves, but there were more boot scrapes on the floor. The other had once been a tavern, maybe. Stone-built with an archway carved into the doorframe, now sagging under its own weight, though the keystone held strong. There was dust, but not everywhere. Someone had been sitting there not more than a few days ago.

  Stepping out I continued to skulk through the town before I came across another path. It was marked by the loose cobbles interspersed with recently trampled weeds. Just a strip of ground where the grass had been walked down more often than the rest, veering off from the main street between more buildings and cutting through a thin patch of garden walls. Overgrown vines pressed up against it like they were trying to devour the memory of it.

  Going down the path it led to the carcass of a chapel. The roof was mostly intact, the bell tower still rising over the town awaiting to be chimed one final time. The stone walls had weathered to a pale bone color. Ivy clawed its way up the back corners, creeping in through broken windows, and the front doors were propped open with a broken bench leg, likely the person who had decided to stay a while.

  I stepped inside and stopped. Not because of danger. Because of surprise. Seated in the center of the chapel, under the colorful rays of a stained glass mural, there was a young man inside, perhaps only a few years older than me. He was tall enough that he would have to hunch under the old rib-vaulted beams if he stood, broad in the way Crown soldiers dreamed of being, with a mane of curly auburn hair tied back loosely and small glasses made of elegant silver perched delicately on the bridge of his nose, as if trying to trick the world into thinking he was smaller than he was. He wore a simple, cream colored shirt that was filled with muscle when he flexed his hand and olive colored pants.

  He had a notebook open in his lap in which he was sketching. His pencil moved in smooth, practiced arcs, tracing the shattered mural across the wall in near-perfect detail. The thing had to be as accurate as the smallest imperfection, every line crisp, every fracture in the stone translated into shade and break like it was meant to be there. I didn’t speak, but he noticed me anyway.

  “Oh! Hello!” he said, bright and booming, the kind of voice that echoed even when it didn’t need to. “Sorry—didn’t hear you come in! I had thought the whole town was dead. Don’t worry, I’m not stealing anything.” He stood up, notebook in hand as he dusted off his trousers.

  My hand hadn’t left the side of my coat, where Beta hung holstered. His hadn’t twitched near the sword strapped to the left side of his hip or the simple pistol on the right. He gave me a wide grin.

  “Fantastic place, though, isn’t it? Creepy, but in a good way. I found this mural—can’t believe it’s still here. The light’s not bad either. Honestly, best sketch I’ve gotten all month.” He kept talking.

  “I mean, it’s falling apart, sure, but the details!” He began to wag his pencil at me before pointing at the mural and to his notebook several times. “Look at this saint’s helm, full sigil structure still intact, even if the face is gone. Probably a Crown-era devotional, maybe second-wave? Though I think the proportions are off. Either that or the artist had some serious ideas about thigh armor.” He looked at me again with a small hint of embarrassment before he stuck a hand out cheerfully. “Kelav,” he said. “Just Kelav.”

  I stared at the hand. Then at him. He was well armed in a dying chapel, holding nothing but a sketchbook and pen, without an ounce of tension in his body. “Riven,” I said slowly. “Just passing through.”

  “Lucky,” he said, shaking my hand. “I’ve been here three days. Thought I’d have to start talking to the murals for friends.”

  We stood in the half-light of the chapel for a while, the two of us framed by broken pews and crumbling saints, and let the silence settle. Kelav didn’t seem to mind it. His pencil moved with a kind of casual intensity, like he’d trained himself not to rush even when everything around him begged for haste. I looked at the mural taking shape in his notebook—arched lines of metal and bone, flared wings cracked by time, and a half-faded halo that had long since lost its color. “You said you’ve been here three days?” I asked. He nodded, not looking up.

  “Give or take. Arrived at night, didn’t realize how steep the ridge was until I almost tripped over my own campfire trying to set it up! Been sleeping under a collapsed bell tower a few streets down. Not ideal, but I’ve had worse. The storms haven’t been too cruel.”

  I frowned. “There are better towns to wander into.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said cheerfully. “But none of them have a chapel like this.”

  He gestured at the wall with his pencil, like that explained everything. “Some of the iconography here’s pre-standard. Not old old, but strange. There's a specific way the robes fold, very post-reclamation, almost remorseful. I love it.” He glanced over his shoulder, then back to me. “You here for the murals?”

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  “Not… exactly.”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding like he understood something I didn’t say. “A seeker, then.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “A what?”

  “You’ve got that look,” he said, tapping his temple. “A storm brewing in the eyes, an edge in the voice, like you’re chasing something but pretending you’re just walking.”

  “I’m not pretending.”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning again. I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed.

  “You always carry that much optimism around?” I asked.

  He shrugged, broad shoulders shifting with a quiet creak of leather and metal. “Not optimism. Faith.”

  “In what?”

  “In a lot of things,” he said simply. “People. Stories. That the Machine God never stopped guiding us, just changed its tune.” Kelav continued, unabashed. “I think places like this matter. Even when no one remembers them. They meant something once, and still do. You just have to look hard enough.” He tapped the mural again. “I mean—look at this. Someone bled to construct this wall. Someone wept here. Someone thought this mattered so much they chiseled it in stone, even knowing the weather would eat it alive. That’s meaning. You can’t just walk past that.”

  He shifted, setting the notebook aside and finally giving me his full attention. “Are you a pilgrim?” he asked. “You’ve got that look too.”

  I smiled thinly. “Something like that.”

  He grinned. “You see? I knew it.” I couldn’t help it, I laughed, just once. Dry, but real.

  “You always this sure of things?”

  He gave a mock-thoughtful hum. “No. But I try not to let that stop me.” He reached a hand out to me. “Come on. I’ll show you the bell tower. Good view of the Reach from up there. Makes it feel less lonely.”

  I looked at the hand. Then took it. “Sure,” I said. “Why not.”

  The stairs groaned under Kelav’s weight like they hadn’t been expected to hold anyone in years, let alone someone built like a walking castle, but he climbed them anyway, humming some tune I didn’t recognize. The melody bounced off the stone like it was glad to hear someone making noise again.

  I followed a few steps behind, keeping one hand on the worn banister, the other near my coat. The air grew cooler as we ascended, thinner too, like the wind had learned how to climb and was waiting for us at the top.

  “You’re lucky you caught me on a rest day,” Kelav said, glancing down over his shoulder. “I almost headed out yesterday, but then I found the other side of the mural, and well, you can’t just leave a half-finished drawing.”

  “Tragic,” I said.

  “Exactly!” He replied with high spirits.

  The top of the tower opened into a partial platform—one side had long since collapsed, but the remaining structure was enough to give a clear view of the Reach below. The town sprawled beneath us, quiet as ever, rooftops tipped in pale light and shadow. Beyond it, the trees thinned, and the land sloped downward into a small gorge. Nestled there, obscured by distance but unmistakable in silhouette, was a low, rust-streaked building of shaped stone and broken gantries. The foundry.

  I didn’t need a second guess. Worn roof plating. Collapsed scaffold to the south. A once-functional crane half-fallen into the earth. It didn’t look like much, but it was the only thing here built to outlast time besides the chapel.

  Kelav followed my gaze, squinting behind his tiny glasses. “You headed to the old smithworks?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Be careful,” he said. “Spirits like to settle in places where fire used to live.”

  I gave him a look. “You believe in spirits?” He shrugged, big shoulders rising like someone lifting furniture.

  “I believe in old things that still remember how to hurt people. Same thing, really.” When he saw I didn’t argue he leaned against the broken parapet and took a long breath, staring out at the town like it was a poem he couldn’t quite finish reading. “Three years I’ve been walking,” he said suddenly.

  I turned. “Sorry—what?”

  He grinned, wide and unapologetic. “Pilgrimage. For enlightenment. You know, understanding the world, connecting with the soul of the sky, recording murals from ancient buildings. That sort of thing.”

  “You’ve been at it for three years?”

  “Well,” he said, laughing, “technically it started as a seasonal journey. My liege thought I could benefit from some solo contemplation.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And by ‘thought,’ you mean—”

  “Kindly shoved me out the door and locked it behind me, yes.” He beamed like this was a perfectly normal thing. Kelav then put on a deeper accent. “He said something like, ‘Go see the world, reflect, seek wisdom, and try not to insult any baronial archives.’ Which, honestly, is harder than it sounds. Archivists are touchy.”

  “And you just kept going?”

  “I like walking,” Kelav said with a shrug. “And sketching. And seeing new places. Besides, I figure if I wander long enough, I’ll either find enlightenment or get really good calf muscles or he’ll call me back. Any of those outcome’s fine.”

  I stared at him. He stared back, perfectly earnest. “…You’re serious.”

  “I’m rarely serious,” he said, “but I am consistent.” I let out a breath. Shook my head. There was something ridiculous about him. Loud. Bright. Practically a walking mural himself. But the sincerity was too real to fake. And for all his noise, there was something sharp underneath, like the edge of a sword hidden under a banner.

  “You’re weird,” I said.

  “Thank you.” He gave a wide grin, stretching far with genuine joy.

  Kelav offered to walk me to the foundry. Actually, scratch that, he didn’t offer. He insisted. Said it was dishonorable to let someone wander alone into a place clearly built to be ominous, even if it was only half-standing now. I didn’t argue. It was easier that way, though he talked the whole way down, bouncing from topic to topic.

  “I once saw a foundry in the southern drift that still had the molds intact,” he said, ducking under a twisted metal arch as we followed the overgrown path down the hill. “You could see where the soot had stained the ceiling, like the walls remembered what heat was. Gave me chills. Drew the whole thing from the back of a ladder I found stuck in the rafters. Nearly fell off when a wind gust knocked the paint tin over. Took me a week to get the stain out of my shirt.”

  I made a noncommittal noise, starting to understand why his liege had sent him out. He kept going without a care in the world however.

  “See, I think places like this hold memory. Not just structurally—spiritually. You can feel when something used to matter. That ache in your chest when you see a cracked nameplate or the bones of an old forge? That’s not nostalgia. That’s a place begging to be remembered.” He stepped over a fallen wall support log like it was a branch. “I mean, I’m not crazy. Not all places talk. Some just rot. But this? This place wants to be seen.”

  We came to a stop near the old yard perimeter—half a ring of fence posts and collapsed piping. The foundry stood ahead, sunken into the slope, its upper frame mostly intact but dark. A cracked smokestack leaned like it had tried to leave once but changed its mind. The main gate hung crooked on rusted hinges, and something about it whispered that the door had opened recently. I turned to Kelav. “You sure you don’t want a lift to the nearest town?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “I’d love to, believe me. But I’ve already got enough sketches to sort through, and my companion was supposed to meet me back at the chapel two days ago. They’re late. Not missing, mind you, just tragically irresponsible. I figured I’d give them another day before assuming they’ve fallen into a tree or gotten distracted trying to ‘charm some fair dame.’”

  “Right.” Kelav clapped me on the shoulder. I didn’t move, but he might as well have hit me with a small sledgehammer.

  “Good luck in there, Seeker Riven. May the Lord and his angels watch over your back.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Is that a blessing?”

  “Of course! What better gift could I give to a new friend?” With that, he turned and began the walk back up the hill, humming to himself. I waited until he was out of sight before drawing Beta and making my way into the foundry.

  The interior smelled like surprisingly little, the surrounding air circulating somewhat often. Dust clung to every surface, and broken chains dangled from the ceiling like vines. Machinery stood half-disassembled along the walls—kilns, presses, work tables, all long past functional. But none of that mattered because I found it almost immediately. A sigil etched into the floor—small, deliberate, and still half-clean. Right where the trail said it would be. Once I was done figuring out how to open this I was heading back to the ship.