EPISODE 2: The Stranger at the Threshold
TALES FROM THE VEILWALKER’S LODGE — Season One
Dawn came cold and grey, the kind of morning that made the mountains look like they’d been carved from slate and shadow.
Marra had been awake for hours.
She stood in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a mug of tea she hadn’t actually drunk, staring at nothing in particular. The Lodge was quiet in that heavy, waiting way that came after a night when no one had slept well. The fire in the main room had been coaxed back to its normal amber glow—Harl had seen to that personally, muttering dwarven curses under his breath the whole time—but the memory of that blue flame lingered like a bruise.
She could still feel the cold. Could still hear that strange not-wind whispering outside the walls. Could still see Belvik’s tattoos blazing gold while he sang a note that shouldn’t have been possible.
And the stranger.
Gods, the stranger.
Marra’s fingers tightened around her mug.
The man who’d walked through the door—Astrae, he’d said his name was, after Thalia had finally lowered her bow and demanded answers—had spent the night in the Lodge. Thalia had allowed it, though “allowed” might have been the wrong word. More like she’d decided that keeping him close was better than letting him wander off into the night where they couldn’t watch him.
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