Vel Gendis -

The fog swirled. A single pebble shifted on the grave's mound.

He took a step toward me. The grass where he stepped didn't flatten; it withered , turning black and crisp. "You want my story, folklorist? I will give it to you. I was not born. I was forged . In a year that has no number, in a place that has no name on any map. A sorcerer—lonely, clever, and utterly mad—wanted a companion who could never die, never leave, never disagree. So he took the silence of a sealed tomb, the hunger of a starved wolf, and the memory of every broken promise ever made, and he sewed them into a skin." vel gendis

"Vel Gendis," I said into the recorder. A test. A data point. The fog swirled

And for three hundred years, no one did. The grass where he stepped didn't flatten; it