System Report:

  Incidents in the Rain

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  What parts of Ashenmoor the drizzle hadn’t swallowed were simply waiting their turn.

  The main street—if such a grand name could be applied to what was, in architectural terms, a sulking alley with ambition—ran like a wound through the middle of town. Clustered shopfronts clung to it like barnacles, the carved signage softened and sagging from years of salt and silence. Most were either boarded up and abandoned, or draped in mournful blinds, flaking paint, and closed signs.

  Gas lamps struggled against the morning fog, their pale glow dotting the path ahead like will-o’-wisps. As of that moment, however, even the despondent lights blurred past in their periphery—the sound of hard heels against stone echoing down the street.

  Whatever scream had just chased across Ashenmoor hadn’t asked permission. It had just happened. No words, just raw grief flung into the fog like a stone into deep water.

  Now, Gami led the sprint, spear in hand, feet pounding over the slippery cobblestones. Yenna followed, breath hitching with every turn.

  She was prepared for the worst.

  The scene that greeted them at the town square, however, was eerily still compared to the haste that’d led them there, huddled in around the moment like breath drawn and never released.

  A small crowd had gathered at the square’s centre, solemn figures half-formed in the mist. They stood with the poise of tombstones, silent save for the woman at their core—kneeling, gasping, sobbing into her hands.

  Beneath her lay something.

  It wasn’t a person. It was too small, and the wrong shape. There were no limbs, no blood, no shattered body. And yet… something had broken. That much was clear.

  The grief radiated from the woman like heat from a forge.

  Yenna slowed, shoes skidding just slightly as she tried to make sense of the scene. The crowd did not take note of their arrival. They just stood there, watching, as if to bear witness was the entire purpose of their existence.

  Only one figure besides the sobbing woman moved.

  A teenage boy, all angles and nerves, shifting foot to foot as though the fog itself were judging him. He turned once toward the woman, once to the thing on the ground, then back again as if hoping one would vanish and solve the problem for him.

  And then he saw them.

  Relief blossomed on his face like a weed through cracked stone. The boy broke from the silent crowd and hurried to meet them, footsteps uneven but determined.

  “Desmon,” Gami met him halfway, her tone low and sharp, like a knife drawn just a little too loudly. “What did you do?”

  “I—” Desmon started, then stopped, reconsidering whatever version of the truth he’d just tried to prepare. He looked them both over, some of his enthusiasm draining as his gaze dropped, leaving him to address his shoe, “I-I was just practicing my Wind Palm.”

  “You–”

  “Alek wanted me to!” he added quickly, as if flinging their party leader under the carriage might lighten the blow. It did. “He figured that me punching away the fog to dramatically reveal whatever monsters live here would be, you know, totally epic. Said it would set up for the perfect scene where he could swoop in and save the day.”

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  Whatever judgement Gami had been about to throw the boy’s way seemingly caught in her throat, and Yenna closed her eyes for a single, weary second and exhaled through her nose. Yes. That did sound like Alek.

  There was a moment of silence, the steady drizzle continuing to fall around them.

  “Morons,” Gami muttered flatly. The word hit the cobblestones like a dropped hammer. She didn’t even bother to disguise it. “Both of you. We don’t even know why we’re here yet. If it’s monsters we’ll be fighting, or something less pleasant…”

  Yenna’s eyes shifted back to the crowd. The people hadn’t moved. Not an inch. Not even a token clearing of the throat, nor a distracted scratch of the nose. It was as if they'd been pressed into the scene like figurines in a diorama titled Local Despair, Circa Eternity.

  “And how, exactly,” she began, the activation sequence for Spark Bolt once more floating to the surface in the back of her mind, “did you practicing Wind Palm lead to this?”

  The stillness didn’t unsettle her as much as whatever would follow once it ended.

  “I, uh… I—”

  “Never mind,” Yenna sighed. The boy’s fretting alone told her all she needed to know.

  Teenage boy, newly magical, playing around in the fog. Woman, older, clearly heartbroken over something irretrievably shattered on the stones. You didn’t need to be a seer to fit the pieces together. You just needed eyes and a working sense of regret.

  “Just tell me where the others are.”

  “Erhm…” Desmon hesitated again. Apparently, the truth was taking the scenic route through his mind, and it took two impatient glares to finally set it back on track.

  “W-well, Cassius is still in his room. He, um, said something about a cold?”

  Which was a polite way of saying: drank half the village dry last night, then decided to fight off a hangover with a combination of moping and theatrical coughing.

  All in line with what they’d learned to expect of their oldest party member.

  “And the others?”

  “Well… y-you know how Alek wanted to speak with the priest?”

  “Unfortunately,” Yenna confirmed. She remembered the conversation in pained detail.

  In a town like this, no one building said ‘begin your inquiry here’ like the brooding church that loomed ahead of them–its silhouette rising out of the fog like a gothic accusation.

  So, having been one of the only two party members not deep in their cups last night, she’d suggested to their entirely responsible and not at all pea-brained leader that she and Gami would check it out with first light.

  Naturally, the response had involved a lot of slurred philosophical insight and the phrase ‘spiritual resonance,’ said in a way that made you want to hit something with a stick.

  It had more or less boiled down to, “No, no, I have to be there when we enter the church…” which Alek had said repeatedly, clutching his forehead like he’d been cursed with both destiny and an annoying hairstyle.

  This, from a man who considered sunrise an affront and who’d single handedly delayed their voyage here because “his curls weren’t cooperating.”

  “Apparently,” Desmon continued, once more addressing the general concept of his boots, “there are some old catacombs that run beneath the city and, well…”

  He let the sentence trail off, like a rope thrown over a cliff with nothing on the other end but bad ideas.

  “Let me guess,” Yenna said, rubbing the bridge of her nose with tired resolve, “those absolute morons thought it would be a splendid idea to head down there by themselves. Leaving you and Cassius—who is barely conscious and full of brandy—in a place where the locals look like they’d strangle you for breathing too loudly. And they didn’t even think to come get us? No heads-up for me or Gami? While we were off examining a sea that we all agreed was probably trying to kill us in alphabetical order?”

  “Y-yeah,” Desmon said. Quietly. The sort of quiet that tries to be invisible. “More or less.”

  Yenna felt the sudden, urgent desire to introduce her Spark Bolts to something. Preferably Alek, had he just been present to receive his due reward. Desmon was almost good enough, even though she didn’t blame the boy, precisely. He was just the designated bearer of bad decisions made by other people.

  Gami gave her a look.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked, nodding toward the town square ahead.

  There was no need to ask, “about what?” The quiet sobs that carried on the wind were answer enough. And even though they’d been set on repeat for now–the same ‘u-huu’ and ‘no, no…’ repeated ad nauseam–a scenario wouldn’t wait forever.

  The glowing words hovered at the edge of her vision:

  Incidents in the Rain

  And now they pulsed, gently but insistently, like a heartbeat that had decided time was running out.

  Yenna exhaled.

  “I guess we take care of things here,” she said, taking a first step forward.

  This wasn’t how she’d pictured her first dungeon. Not in the slightest.

  There were supposed to be ancient treasure vaults, whispered prophecies, and perhaps a puzzle involving coloured stones. Not… this. Not rain-slicked streets and grief bleeding into the cobbles.

  But she supposed, if you were going to walk into stories, you had to be ready for the ones that didn’t end with a triumph. Some of them just… continued.

  And some, you had to carry.