The Post House

  The next stop for your party is the post house. A natural place to seek answers—letters, after all, are stories in transit, each one a fragment of someone’s fear or hope, whispered through ink and sealed in wax. The walk from the church feels longer than it should, as though the stones beneath your boots stretch with each step, dragging time out behind you like a lengthening shadow. The air hangs thick, laden with the memory of the priest’s whispered warnings, and the streets seem to draw in upon themselves, quieter than before. Shadows gather in their corners, dark and still, as if holding their breath. When your party arrives, the post house looms tiredly at the end of the lane, its fa?ade bowed with age. Shutters hang crooked beside windows dusted in grime, softening the glass to a fogged blur. The sign above the door sways gently in the breeze, its paint peeling and the lettering barely legible. A rusty bell hangs beside the door frame, its clapper long lost to time. You hesitate. All of you. An unspoken hesitation settles over the group like a chill breeze, your eyes meeting in quiet unease. For a moment, no one moves, the weight of the village’s strange stillness pressing against them. Finally, You moves first. A simple shrug, then a firm push, breaking the spell of hesitation. The door groans in protest, its hinges complaining as You leans into it. The sound echoes faintly in the stillness. Inside, the air is stale, thick with the faint smell of old wood, ink, burnt matches and sealing wax. The room itself is dim, lit only by a sputtering lantern hanging from a crooked hook overhead, its light throwing long shadows like reaching fingers. You moves toward a row of mail shelves, the faint creak of the floorboards underfoot echoing in the stillness. Shelves line the walls, but they are mostly barren. The cubbies gape like open mouths, the few letters tucked within curled and yellowed at the edges. Dust lies thick, undisturbed—except for here and there, where something has shifted recently.

  A voice catches your party off guard.

  “Not much comes through anymore.”

  Your party turns. A woman steps in from the back room, her movements deliberate yet hesitant. She’s slight of frame, her hair tucked into a fraying cap that looks as though it’s seen years of wear. Loose strands of gray escape from the cap, framing a face marked by soft features and worry lines etched deep by time and fatigue. Her apron is faded and stained with ink, and her hands bear the telltale marks of someone who works often with paper and wax—fingers smudged with dark ink and faint red stains from sealing wax. Her nails are uneven, as though bitten down or picked at in moments of stress. She fidgets with the cuff of her sleeve, her nails worrying at the fabric in a steady rhythm. “Not like it used to be,” she says, more to the shelves than to you. “Fewer messengers these days.” The smile she offers is polite but brittle, and her eyes don’t linger—they flit across the room like something hunted. The wizard drifts toward the shelves, their robes whispering against the old wood floor. Dust clings thick to the cubbies, soft as ash, disturbed only by the faint trail of their fingers brushing across a ledge. Most compartments yawn empty, hollow as if they’d been that way for years. A few still cradle letters, but none look recent. Their edges curl like dead leaves, the ink on their faces smudged by time or moisture, or both. One letter in particular catches their eye—a brittle envelope with its wax seal cracked. They pluck it free, careful not to tear the delicate parchment as it protests with a soft, papery crackle. The red seal, once vibrant, has dulled into something brownish and dry, like the hue of dried blood. They tilt the envelope beneath the flickering lantern light, squinting at the faded scrawl across its face. The date is old. Not ancient, but old enough that someone should’ve noticed it sitting here—if anyone still looked. Around it, the other letters are in no better shape. Some are misshapen, warped by damp, others so brittle the edges crumble when breathed on as though they’ve been sitting there for months, forgotten. The woman frowns, her fingers straying toward the edge of her sleeve—not to tug or adjust, but to scratch, slow and distracted, as though something itches beneath the fabric that isn’t quite skin-deep. The clerk’s gaze flicks there and lingers a heartbeat too long. When she speaks, her tone is clipped, practiced—but not quite steady. “Could’ve been missed,” she offers, though it sounds less like an explanation and more like a line rehearsed. Then, after a breath too long: “Or… maybe the messenger didn’t make it.” Her fingers tap against the countertop—sharp at first, then uneven, like a rhythm of a tune only half remembered. When she catches herself, she stills, the hand retreating beneath the counter as if to hide its disobedience. She starts to open a small drawer, as if hoping to find some comfort in its contents. You shift, and the barbarian moves with you, subtle but deliberate, a step closer—not to crowd her, but enough that the clerk can feel the weight of another presence. Her eyes start to wander then, flitting toward the corners of the room. Not just glancing. Watching. As though expecting something to stir in the shadows that seem to cling a little too long, too thickly, in the dimness. The sorcerer narrows their eyes, but says nothing. The silence stretches. The clerk does not break it. The wizard lays the brittle letter down on the counter with care, the crinkled parchment rasping like dry leaves and slides the logbook toward themselves, its cracked leather cover resisting slightly, tacky against the grain, as though the air itself has settled too thick upon it. When opened, the book exhales a faint must of ink and dust. The first few pages are tidy, the handwriting deliberate, confident. Names, dates, destinations. Routine. But as the pages turn, the neatness falters. Script grows cramped, unsure. Letters lean into each other, phrases trail off mid-word. Ink pools in unexpected places, thinned in others, as though the hand behind it had begun to waver. The page with the letter’s entry is worse. A courier’s name is scrawled beside it—barely legible, each letter slumping forward like it wanted to fall off the page altogether. The ink bleeds at the edges, uneven and wet-looking, even though it’s long since dried. The sorcerer leans in, eyes flicking over the names—then stopping. Just beneath the courier’s entry, the page bears a strange impression, deep in the fibers. A groove. Jagged, but purposeful. Almost like a pitchfork, or a trident. The marks are faint, nearly hidden beneath the ink, but visible if you look long enough.

  Their eyes narrow and they lean forwards to get a closer look. Was that — a sudden noise splits the stillness, sharp and sudden.

  The drawer slams shut with a force that fractures the quiet like glass. A sharp, metallic clang reverberates through the stillness of the post house, echoing off the low-beamed ceiling. The clerk’s hands are pressed flat against the counter now, her knuckles whitening. The warmth she wore like a threadbare shawl moments ago has vanished, drawn in tight and hidden beneath something harder. Her frame stiffens—not with fear, exactly, but with a kind of practiced resistance.“Is there something else you need?” she asks, too quickly. Her voice sharpens to a brittle edge, a sudden shift from tentative hospitality to brisk dismissal. As she speaks, her hand sweeps across the time-worn counter, cutting through a thin veil of dust. Her fingers move with clipped precision, curling around the spine of the logbook and snapping it shut with a thud that feels louder than it should. The abrupt thud of the closing book sends a ripple through the oppressive quiet of the room. The book now rests beneath her splayed hand, as if her touch alone might keep its contents from seeping out. You catch the faintest tremor in her fingers. Small. Controlled. But there. Her gaze flickers, not quite steady. From your party to the shelves behind you, then back again—to the far wall where a long, jagged crack creeps through the wood paneling like a vein gone black. “Old records,” she repeats, the phrase more of a defense than an answer. “Nothing you’d find useful.” The dismissal is clean, cold, and practiced. Her eyes, though, linger. Not on the group, but on the wizard’s hands—watching, as if expecting them to reach back across the counter. There’s a pause there, held breath thickening the air between you. The barbarian’s attention sharpens at the mention of the records. They shift. Barely a step, but enough. Their eyes catch on the counter’s edge—on a stack of papers that slouch in disarray just out of view. A scrap of parchment peeks from the bottom, frayed and stained. The mark near its edge is dark, crusted—too deep in color for wax, too irregular for ink. Before they can lean in, the clerk moves. A subtle pivot, smooth and defensive. Her shoulder comes forward just enough to obscure the view. Her smile is sudden and thin. “Messengers,” she offers, too brightly, as if sensing the scrutiny. “Used to come through all the time. You’d hear the bell near every other day.” Her eyes shift toward the door. The bell she mentions still hangs there, rusting and limp, its clapper missing—a mouth open mid-scream, robbed of its voice. “Not anymore,” she murmurs. Her smile doesn’t waver, but the light has left it. “Fewer people send things now. It’s as if the outside world just stopped caring about us.” The room stills around her words. Not in reverence, but in hesitation. Your party stands in it, feeling the pause stretch. Not quite silence. Not quite truth. The barbarian’s gaze strays back to the shelves. Dust lies thick in most places, soft and undisturbed. But in others—there are marks. Faint outlines where packages once rested. Smudged corners. Recently moved. The clerk’s eyes catch the movement and still. For the briefest flicker of a second, something in her face falters. Not fear. Not guilt. But the look of someone standing before a door they know they cannot keep shut much longer. Then it’s gone. Her hand lifts from the logbook, and she turns away. The silence presses in again, deeper than before.

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  The wizard steps back from the counter, the movement slight, almost instinctive. Their gaze drops, caught by something etched into the wood’s battered surface. At a glance, it looks like the usual scars of time—scrapes from boots, careless drops of heavy parcels—but as they lean closer, a strange order emerges from the chaos. The lines do not wander aimlessly. They twist, spiral, and fork in deliberate, unnatural patterns. Branching like veins. Like roots. The longer the wizard studies it, the more the marks seem to tighten inward, drawing the eye down through unseen depths. A slow, magnetic pull, patient and hungry. Their fingers hover above the carving, almost reaching to trace the lines —

  The clerk’s voice cuts in, brittle and too loud in the close air.

  “Just scratches,” she says, her tone a little too sharp, a little too rushed. Her hand moves with sudden urgency, sliding across the counter to cover the marks. The movement is panicked, nervous; her fingers splay awkwardly across the wood as if she herself isn’t entirely sure why she’s doing it — only that she must. “Woodworms,” she adds, forcing a brittle laugh. “They get into everything around here. Annoying pests.” The paladin catches the way her nails dig into the countertop when she thinks no one is watching, carving tiny crescents into the aging wood. A betrayal of her carefully measured calm. It’s then that your party catches a sharp scent threading itself through the heavy, musty air—the sulfurous tang of a match just struck, curling together with the acrid ghost of melted sealing wax. Easy enough, perhaps, to dismiss. A trick of the old building. A lingering scent of fires long since snuffed. And yet — The sorcerer’s eyes catch on the half-open door behind the counter, a narrow slit revealing only the deeper shadows beyond. From somewhere past that threshold, a sound rises: a faint hum, so low it nearly folds into the groaning bones of the building. Yet not quite. Like the low sound of wind whistling through the old building. Almost like the sound at the old lady’s house, the “Whisper Beast”. The clerk stiffens. A fraction. But enough. Her eyes dart toward the door before snapping back to the party with brittle urgency. “Not much back there,” she says quickly, voice tightening into a hoarse whisper before she catches herself and forces it brighter. “Just... old things. Storage. Forgotten junk.” She clears her throat, her fingers still drumming unevenly against the counter. “Nothing anyone needs,” she adds. The words drop into the room like stones into water, sending ripples through the uneasy quiet. The lantern overhead sputters faintly, its light thinning as shadows seem to lengthen along the walls. The barbarian’s gaze moves to the far shelves, cluttered with dust-choked papers and cracked seals. Yet among the relics of forgotten correspondence, one letter stands apart: its parchment unstained, its wax seal a vivid, living red. New. Uncomfortably so. The clerk sees it too. Her body tenses visibly, her breath hitching as her eyes snap toward the pristine envelope. For a moment, her mask slips—grief, panic, something wordless flashing across her face like a fish darting beneath the surface—before she smothers it under a practiced neutrality that no longer quite holds. She says nothing. But her body shifts, a subtle recalibration—ready, if need be, to block your view once more.

  “That one’s not for you.” The words are flat, without heat, but they fall with a weight that lingers long after the sound fades. Her hands tighten around the lip of the counter, the faded wood creaking faintly beneath the strain of her grip. Her knuckles whiten, pale against the worn surface, and she does not seem to notice. The wizard exchanges a glance with the sorcerer, an unspoken unease threading between them. Nothing in the room moves except the slow sway of the lantern overhead, its light dimming and strengthening with every sluggish draft. The tension in the air feels electric now, humming like the faint vibration beneath the floorboards. Before any of you can speak, the clerk lunges forward, reaching for the shelf. Her hand darts out, snatching the envelope from its place on the shelf. She clutches it awkwardly against her chest, as though she might forget what she’s holding if she lets it out of her sight. Her steps are uneven as she backs toward the counter’s far end, where the ring of keys at her belt shivers with every small movement. It takes her longer than it should to separate the right one, the metal slipping once, twice, before the key finds the lock. The drawer drags open with a low, splintering groan. The smell of sulfur creeps out, sharper now, mixing with the dry, musty scent of the paper that fills the cramped room. Your party catches a glimpse inside: a stack of rumpled papers, some edges browned with age, and half-buried beneath them, a shard of metal catching the lanternlight—a twisted, forked sliver, its surface blackened and pitted. The wizard leans slightly forward, but the clerk’s body shifts without thought, moving between the drawer’s contents and your sight. Her hand hovers over the metal piece, hesitating for a breath too long. Then, with a slow, almost mechanical motion, she presses the letter down on top of it, her fingers lingering there as though pinning it in place. “It’s late,” she murmurs, almost to herself. The words are thin and wandering, as though she’s forgotten you stand within arm’s reach. Her hand hesitates there, fingers brushing the sealed letter once, twice, before she slams the drawer shut with a sharp, hollow bang.

  The lantern flickers lazily. Shadows lengthen, but they remain thin, shallow things—not ominous, simply tired. “Nothing here for you,” the clerk says again. The brittle edge has returned to her voice, but it sounds thinner now, stretched almost to breaking. “Not anymore.” She remains behind the counter as your party gathers itself, not looking at you, not moving, her gaze fixed somewhere past the closed logbook. The door yawns open under the slow push of the barbarian’s hand. The bell overhead quivers slightly, a thin, reluctant shiver of sound escaping it—less a chime than a rattle, like something broken trying to remember its purpose. No wind. No cause. Still, the bell moves. Your party steps out into the heavy grey light, the door swinging closed behind you on rusted hinges that scream once, then fall silent. For a moment, before the latch clicks, you catch a last glimpse of the clerk standing rigid, hands flat against the counter, face pale and waxen, her mouth moving soundlessly. "Old ghosts," she breathes. The words slip free without force or ceremony, barely more than a breath — less a statement, and more a warning. Whether to you, or to herself, it’s impossible to say. The post house swallows the moment whole, as though it had never happened at all.