“Let me out…”
The murmur lingered, a ghostly plea that coiled through Rudolf’s thoughts like a serpent through shadows. Who sought egress? From what confine? To which forgotten realm? These questions gnawed at him through the long, moon-drenched night, weaving a tapestry of unease that refused to unravel.
By morning, Rudolf stood in Sheriff Claude’s office, his eyes etched with the toll of sleeplessness, shoulders bowed under the weight of unspoken secrets. The sheriff’s gaze flicked to the execution confirmation form, his voice a blend of fatigue and routine professionalism.
“Your dedication is commendable, Rudolf. The night passed without complications, I trust?”
Rudolf’s pen hesitated over the page, omitting the starstone’s strange glow and the cryptic star map he’d found beneath the wizard’s pyre. Smooth burial of the wizard’s remains. No incidents. A lie, but seamless—a skill honed through days of immersing himself in police records, desperate to decode this world’s rules. The academy files had warned of starstones: celestial fragments, their essence intertwined with sorcerers in ways both ancient and perilous.
He offered a half-smile, tension bleeding into levity. “Smooth as could be, Sheriff—though a touch of overtime pay might’ve gilded the night.”
Claude’s hand rose to stroke his neatly trimmed beard, a flicker of awkwardness in his posture. “As I’ve mentioned, probationary patrolmen don’t qualify for such luxuries.”
As he turned to leave, Rudolf’s gaze fell on the duty roster pinned to the wall, his tone laced with a wry, resigned smile. “A week of graveyard shifts? Again?”
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Claude nodded, jaw tightening. “The witch hunt left us shorthanded—two deputies, three patrolmen, five probies lost. A catastrophe… But here—” He opened a drawer, producing a small, meticulously crafted box, its edges etched with runic sigils. “Alchemical buckshot. Newly forged. Should keep the shadows at bay.”
Rudolf accepted it, aware of its black-market value—three months’ wages, should he dare trade it on the black market. Yet gratitude lingered; Claude, a Level 2 alchemist, rarely spared such craftsmanship for a lowly probie.
Back in his dormitory, the weight of the box felt both a blessing and a curse. An orphan who’d clawed through the academy’s brutal trials, he’d found refuge in these sparse quarters—now a prison of solitude as much as a haven. The cot creaked under his weight as he settled, the silence broken only by the distant howl of a night wind.
Even privacy offered no reprieve. The murmur returned with each visit to the toilet, turning moments of supposed respite into ordeals. Colleagues misread his grimaces, offering jokes about hemorrhoid doctors—ignorant of the true torment: a voice, disembodied, insistent, Let me out… It burrowed into his mind, a needle beneath the skin of his consciousness.
Starstone, whispers, the nightly star map—Rudolf’s gaze drifted to the cemetery beyond the town’s edge, a conjecture taking root. Could it originate there? The thought had simmered for days, a puzzle piece clicking into place.
His chance came during a perimeter patrol. Mounted on a borrowed horse, he let the beast’s steady trot carry him closer to the graveyard, the murmur rising in pitch, sharpening into a piercing insistence as they neared the iron gates. The horse snorted, sensing his rider’s tension, its hooves clattering against the cobblestone path.
“Old Gray?” Rudolf rapped on the graveyard caretaker’s window with his truncheon, the sound muffled by the chill.
The door creaked open, revealing a bald, weathered face
