Whispers in the Gloam
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2025 9:20 pm
The Docks of Tilverton, Wyatt’s Return
The ship rocked as it nosed into Tilverton’s harbor, its hull scraping against barnacle-crusted pilings. The air was thick with salt, tar, and the fetid breath of the bog. Lanterns swung on ropes above the piers, their orange light glimmering off the black water like dying embers.
Wyatt stood at the railing, hood drawn low, eyes fixed on the skyline of his birth. Tilverton rose out of the murk like a thing that had clawed itself free from the swamp — crooked roofs, leaning spires, and rotting planks stitched together by stubbornness and vice. Home. A city that never asked to be made, and never forgave those who tried to forget it.
The crew gave Tilverton wary glances, whispering about its black markets and whispering shadows. But Wyatt’s mouth curled at the edges, a bitter smile beneath his hood. Tilly through and through, he thought. He could taste the rot in the air, and it tasted like belonging.
The gangplank groaned as he set foot upon the pier. Dockhands and hawkers swarmed — shouting, haggling, slipping purses from sailors too green to guard them. Wyatt’s boots thudded on soaked planks, the sound swallowed by Tilverton’s noise. Somewhere a gull screamed, drowned out by laughter from a tavern spilling lanternlight across the boards.
But beneath it all, beneath the stink of fish and smoke, he heard it.
A whisper, faint, curling through the fog that rolled between the piers.
“Wyatt… home at last… you never left us, and you never will.”
He froze, hand brushing the hilt of his curved kyrss, the blade he had sworn he’d abandoned years ago. His heart hammered, not in fear, but recognition. The shadows were speaking again, the same way they had when his boy vanished.
For a moment, the noise of the docks dulled, as if the whole city leaned closer to listen.
Wyatt clenched his jaw. His son Halden was out there, somewhere in this mire of crime and crooked crowns. Tilverton would give him answers. Or it would burn under his heel.
He pulled his hood tighter, shoulders squared, and stepped off the pier into the chaos of the Marketplanks.
The city stirred. The shadows smiled.
The ship rocked as it nosed into Tilverton’s harbor, its hull scraping against barnacle-crusted pilings. The air was thick with salt, tar, and the fetid breath of the bog. Lanterns swung on ropes above the piers, their orange light glimmering off the black water like dying embers.
Wyatt stood at the railing, hood drawn low, eyes fixed on the skyline of his birth. Tilverton rose out of the murk like a thing that had clawed itself free from the swamp — crooked roofs, leaning spires, and rotting planks stitched together by stubbornness and vice. Home. A city that never asked to be made, and never forgave those who tried to forget it.
The crew gave Tilverton wary glances, whispering about its black markets and whispering shadows. But Wyatt’s mouth curled at the edges, a bitter smile beneath his hood. Tilly through and through, he thought. He could taste the rot in the air, and it tasted like belonging.
The gangplank groaned as he set foot upon the pier. Dockhands and hawkers swarmed — shouting, haggling, slipping purses from sailors too green to guard them. Wyatt’s boots thudded on soaked planks, the sound swallowed by Tilverton’s noise. Somewhere a gull screamed, drowned out by laughter from a tavern spilling lanternlight across the boards.
But beneath it all, beneath the stink of fish and smoke, he heard it.
A whisper, faint, curling through the fog that rolled between the piers.
“Wyatt… home at last… you never left us, and you never will.”
He froze, hand brushing the hilt of his curved kyrss, the blade he had sworn he’d abandoned years ago. His heart hammered, not in fear, but recognition. The shadows were speaking again, the same way they had when his boy vanished.
For a moment, the noise of the docks dulled, as if the whole city leaned closer to listen.
Wyatt clenched his jaw. His son Halden was out there, somewhere in this mire of crime and crooked crowns. Tilverton would give him answers. Or it would burn under his heel.
He pulled his hood tighter, shoulders squared, and stepped off the pier into the chaos of the Marketplanks.
The city stirred. The shadows smiled.