Chronicles of Klept: Chapter IV
Dawnsheart came into view as the sun slowly retreated behind the hills. The stone walls caught the last of the fading light, and the rooftops cast long, gentle shadows across the road.
It had been a long day. The kind that bends time and memory until it feels like you’ve lived three lifetimes between meals.
The group I rode with had, by all accounts, saved a festival. Albeit in the most disorderly, confusing, bean-based way imaginable. And while our arrival was marked by the presence of an armed escort, the mood wasn’t hostile. The guards were not here to arrest them—they were here as a precaution, like putting a net under a very uncoordinated group of acrobats.
I rode not as one of them, but as one curious enough to sit among them with a quill and a well-practiced look of scholarly detachment.
The Prophet’s glyphs had been read, but we had been rudely interrupted before we could declare them to the public. In some ways, I was relieved because they spoke of a dire year ahead. And yet the people needed to know – if for no other reason than to continue the tradition. I knew that Tufulla and the other Readers would be waiting for me, looking to plan how we would inform the citizens of the Humbledoewn valley of this year’s read. Tufulla would also want my observations of this group of unknown individuals who had stepped up and put themselves in harms way
So, as we passed through Dawnsheart’s gates, I noted everything.
Their posture. Their glances. Their silences.
The cart rumbled through the streets, drawing looks from townsfolk who knew better than to be obvious about staring. I caught the way backs straightened, how conversations quieted. People instinctively gave us space. Perhaps they smelled the chaos. Or perhaps they simply sensed that these were not people you bumped into without first updating your will.
We reached the town square, where the great stone face of the Church of the Prophet loomed—resolute and familiar.
The cart came to a stop.
One by one, they dismounted. The guards fell into formation and began to escort them toward the Mayor’s office.
I stayed at the back, observing.
I watched the way Yak moved just slightly out of step with the others, like a man refusing to walk in sync with anything other than his own shadow.
The way Trunch carried himself—calm, too calm. The kind of calm that comes after surviving something loud.
They were walking into a town that didn’t know what to make of them yet.
I wasn’t sure I did, either.
Mayor Roddrick’s chosen domain was the small, stone building adjacent to the cathedral, once the residence of Dawnsheart’s high priest, now repurposed into his official seat of governance on the noble principle that “a mayor should be seen.” Tufulla hadn’t minded. He preferred to rent a small room in the poorer area of town, to be closer to those in need. I suspect it also allowed him to keep a closer watch on the mayor.
Roddrick had abandoned the actual town hall, which was located in the northern quarter and conveniently nestled among the city’s other administrative buildings, on the grounds that it was “too far from the general population.”
Which is to say: too far from the bakery, too close to accountability.
He preferred the old priest’s house. It was central. Symbolic. And, most importantly, small. With space for no more than ten people inside, it drastically reduced the odds of being cornered by an angry mob.
Of course, if the townsfolk ever organized themselves properly, they could still gather in the square outside. But this was Dawnsheart. Organized outrage was a once-a-decade event, and even then, it usually fizzled out around tea time.
At this point, our paths diverged.
The group was led toward the Town Hall, where no doubt Roddrick would greet them with all the charm of a man who has just learned a great fire has taken out the building two doors down from his own but has decided to host brunch anyway.
I returned to the cathedral.
Tufulla received everything I had: notes, sketches, fragmented thoughts, some useful, some wildly speculative, and most importantly, the first threads of a strange and troubling pattern that was only now beginning to take shape.
The reading from the Rock had been dire.
At the time, the other Readers and I had conferred beneath the fading light of the glyphs, trying to make sense of symbols that refused to sit still. Too many meanings. Too much uncertainty.
But in hindsight, one thing had become clear: the attack on the festival, as chaotic and violent as it was, fit the broader shape of the prophecy far too well to be coincidence.
It had spoken of unrest. Of shadows cast over places once thought safe. Of the arrival of outsiders.
That part had been vague. Their role was undefined. Protectors or harbingers. A guiding light, or the spark that sets the kindling alight. Perhaps it was speaking of this group, I wasn’t sure.
Tufulla listened intently as I described them—this odd group of strangers with no business being where they were, and yet somehow always exactly where they needed to be.
He didn’t speak right away.
Instead, he studied my notes, then looked off into the middle distance. There was a flicker of something in his eyes—recognition, perhaps. Understanding. A quiet breath passed, and he gave the faintest nod, like a man filing away a conclusion he wasn’t ready to share.
Tufulla has many more years of interpreting glyphs tucked beneath his immaculately woven silk belt. He’s seen things the rest of us haven’t. Maybe he saw something in them—something I missed.
As for me?
I’ve seen the way they fight. The way they improvise. The way they don’t think before doing something wildly reckless and occasionally effective.
I just hope they’re not going to make things worse.
It’s worth noting that Roddrick did not prepare for their arrival.
He knew they were coming, of course. The guards had warned him, the town was buzzing, and one does not ignore the arrival of a group who had (allegedly) helped fend off a festival attack while also contributing to one of the more bewildering public disturbances in recent history.
But preparing? No. That would imply foresight. Planning. A sense of duty to governance.
Instead, when the group was shown in, they found Dawnsheart’s self-titled Lord-Mayor hunched over a desk buried beneath a tide of correspondence, scrolls, and neglected ledgers—the kind of paperwork that collects when a man spends more time curating his wardrobe than managing a town.
Roddrick didn’t bother to stand as the group entered. He gestured vaguely toward the chairs in front of his desk, though he didn’t seem overly concerned if anyone actually sat in them.
“Yes, yes, right—thank you for coming, do sit, or don’t, doesn’t matter—let’s get this over with, shall we?” he said, rifling distractedly through a stack of papers, most of which appeared untouched or upside down.
He pulled a page from the middle of the pile, skimmed a sentence, frowned, and tossed it over his shoulder.
“The Whispering Crypts,” he began again, leaning back in his chair and eyeing the group as if hoping they might disappear of their own volition. “Out on the cliffs, northwest of town. Burial mounds. Bit of local heritage. Very sacred. Very…echoey. Important people buried there for centuries. Or were. Before the… situation.”
He waved a hand vaguely, as though that gesture alone could encompass ghosts, bandits, shrieking winds, and bureaucratic backlog all at once.
“No one’s quite sure what the situation is, exactly. Possibly squatters. Possibly goblins. Or smugglers. Or ghosts. Or Pirates … possibly pirate ghosts. Honestly, the specifics aren’t worth my time.”
He glanced down at a second paper, blinked, then crumpled it and stuffed it into a drawer without looking.
“The Church has a body. Very old. Very dead. Died months ago. One of the Readers, you see. Meant to be buried there. Ceremony, candles, all very serious. But they can’t, because the crypts are currently… inhospitable.”
Roddrick finally looked up, his expression flat and fatigued. “So. You go in. Clear it out. Whatever’s in there—reason with it, insult it, hit it, throw salt at it—I leave that to your professional discretion. Just make sure it leaves. Once it’s quiet and no longer actively horrifying, the Church can do their rites, and I can stop hearing about it.”
He drummed his fingers once on the table, then added casually, “And if you do that, I’ll give you five hundred gold each, and I will consider that proof enough that you are, if not entirely trustworthy, then at least the kind of dangerous that’s pointed in the right direction.”
A pause. He blinked.
“Oh. Earplugs. Right. Wind’s strange down there. Does things to the mind. You’ll want to wear them.”
And with that, he turned back to the mess of parchment in front of him.
“Good talk. Off you go.”
He did not try to justify the amount of gold. He did not explain why this task had not already been completed by the city guard.
He simply wanted them out.
Out of his office.
Out of his town.
Out of his way.
And preferably into a hole full of monsters so he wouldn’t have to think about them again.
Roddrick is not a man with plans. He is a man with reactions.
He knew these people were dangerous, or potentially tied to something larger and more troubling—and he didn’t want to poke that particular nest.
So he did what all cornered men with too much power and not enough sense do.
He paid them to go away.
If they died, the town was safe.
If they succeeded, the town was safer.
And if they disappeared entirely? Well, fewer mouths to pay and fewer witnesses to file reports.
“We looked at each other,” Trunch told me later, “and I think we all realized that this man had no idea who we were or what he was asking.”
They accepted. Not out of trust. Not out of duty.
But because five hundred gold each is five hundred gold each.
The Chronicles of Klept 