The inn appeared suddenly, just around the bend in the road, as if it had slipped in from another world, another dimension. It stood there like something pulled straight out of a nightmare. The signboard creaked in the wind, its name long worn away, leaving only a grinning skull etched on one edge.
He stepped through the door as it swung open. A hood pulled low over his head, a wide cloak draped across his shoulders. Enough to keep the watchers from seeing too much, and to silence the talkers who loved to gossip. And his cloak could do something else as well.
Inside, a handful of shadowed figures sat frozen, their faces pale and blank, as if they were sheets of white cloth. Terror had stripped them bare.
"Sixth," the innkeeper croaked, his voice tight. He slammed the door shut and threw two heavy bolts across it. "You made it just in time. Any later and we wouldn't have let another soul inside. It's the time of the Dark Moon, you see. When horrors crawl out of the night and kill anyone they meet."
The innkeeper gestured, and together with two other lodgers, they dragged heavy crates against the door.
"In this forest, when night falls, the Grim Baron walks. He takes his bloody tribute from whoever he finds. He collects lives. He collects heads. He keeps them, like trophies. Pity the travelers caught in the Twilight Forest after sundown. They won't live to see the dawn." His eyes flicked to the newcomer's armor. "And you—no sword? How did you expect to cross this forest? What use will you be to us tonight? Anyone without a weapon doesn't stand a chance of making it to sunrise."
"Even sorcerers carry blades," one of the pale-faced men muttered grimly.
The innkeeper's hand drifted to the broad knife at his belt. Two more pale-faced figures stepped out of the shadows. Black doublets, fine sword-hilts gleaming at their sides. Their faces were noble, arrogant—like all who pay for blood to be spilled in their name. Their hands gripped their hilts.
"Maybe we should hand him over to the Grim Baron, save our own skins?" one said.
"He's no use to us," the other added flatly.
"And that medallion of his—we'll be taking it."
"It's clearly enchanted."
"Yes, safer with us, God's truth."
The hooded stranger stood perfectly still, as though none of this concerned him at all.
The innkeeper drew his broad-bladed knife with a nervous jerk.
One of the men in black lunged forward, sword flashing, the tip pressed against the spot beneath the stranger's hood where his face should have been.
The medallion on the stranger's chest flared. A burst of blinding light exploded outward. The man in the black doublet was thrown back several steps, and the hood fell away from the stranger's head.
Every thug in the room cried out in terror. On the man's scarred face, beneath black hair and beard, strange glowing script burned bright—letters in an unknown tongue. Dark magic. A terrible mark. The stranger bared his teeth in a predator's grin.
"The Cursed…" the innkeeper hissed through clenched teeth, white-knuckling his knife. "Now we're all finished."