He pushed into the tavern, rain still clawing at his worn leather coat, and stood there blinking as thunder hollowed the sky. The warmth from a large, soot-stained hearth hit him like a physical blow, and the smell of stale ale, woodsmoke, and unwashed bodies was almost comforting in its normality. His stare, sharp and searching, found me with an ineffable glare. Two crimson-coloured eyes, with a hint of azure like that of a solemn sky, were fastened to a chiselled, white-as-snow face that was both terrifying and calm.
"Welcome to the Ashen Tavern," I said, a little out of sorts. In this little town called Lostgrove, at the edge of nowhere, we never got many visitors... well, except the Greyones. And they were not visitors; they were landlords. "You look new in town. Where are you from?" I asked, putting a glass of foaming ale on the creaking oak wood table in front of him. It was a reflex, a gesture of hospitality from a world that no longer existed.
"Lost my way in the storm," he said with a raspy, deep voice as he gulped down the ale. "My boat sank in the Blood Sea."
The Blood Sea an ominous name that makes you picture water the colour of blood was not the sea itself but the things that hunted above it: winged monsters that shredded anything they fixed their gaze on. For someone to wash ashore after that and still breathe was at once terrifying and oddly fascinating. It spoke of a resilience, or perhaps a curse, that marked him as different.
"How unfortunate that you landed in Lostgrove," I said, the words tasting like ash. "But since you survived those abominations in the sky, you might as well survive this hell hole."
"Rachel, another five pints for our table!" The shout came from Old Man Hemlock, a permanent fixture in the corner. His eyes were perpetually bloodshot, not from drink alone, but from a life of staring into the gloom, waiting for an end that never seemed to come. He banged his fist on the table, and a fresh chip of wood splintered off from the pockmarked surface.
"What did I say about banging my table, you fool?" I hissed, the familiar anger a dull spark. The tables were relics, like everything else here. You couldn't replace them. You could only watch them decay. "Nada, take this to their table."
"Yes, ma'am," a scrawny girl with raven-black hair answered softly. She moved like a ghost, her feet making no sound on the rough-hewn floorboards as she carried the sloshing glasses to the group of five men. They were hunched over, their conversation a low, hopeless murmur. With most hope eroded, the ones who kept living tended to swallow their mornings in rum and ale, trying to blur the truth of the place. They were the lucky ones, in a way. The ones who still felt the sting had it worse.
The stranger watched this exchange, his crimson eyes taking in every detail: the defeated slump of the men, Nada's silent efficiency, the perpetual grimace I wore like a mask. He seemed to be piecing together the nature of this prison from its fragments.
"Lostgrove! Am I really in Lostgrove?" he said suddenly, a mild enthusiasm sparking in those strange, captivating eyes.
I nearly dropped the glass I was wiping. I looked at him, truly shocked. It was the first time in twenty years that I had heard such a thing not a cry of despair, but a query filled with a sense of arrival, as though this town was some sort of lost city that people were actively looking for.
"Yes, this is Lostgrove," I said slowly, cautiously. "What have you heard about it?"
His intense gaze fixed on me. "It was what I was looking for."
A cold dread trickled down my spine. "How is that possible? Nobody knows this place exists in the upper world."
"Yes, but I met someone who claimed he came from here. A man in a tavern in Port Veridian. He was... not well. He rambled about an eye in the sky and grey creatures. That was how I figured it out, although I didn't believe him back then." He looked at me with an expression that hinted at a terrible realization, as if the madman's ravings were now being confirmed in the most unsettling way. He continued, his voice low, "I came here looking for my sister. I think she got stuck here."
'Stuck.' The word echoed in the silent hollow of my memory. Funny. We all thought we were, at the beginning.