EPISODE 3: The Rune That Shouldn't Exist
TALES FROM THE VEILWALKER’S LODGE — Season One
Skivvit’s workshop looked like a rune had exploded inside it.
Which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.
Papers covered every available surface—tacked to walls, spread across workbenches, hanging from the ceiling on bits of string like a deranged mobile. Each one bore Skivvit’s frantic attempts to recreate the symbols he’d seen on the metal scrap before Ashwhisker had decided it made a good snack.
The goblin himself was perched on a stool that was far too tall for him, his tongue poking out in concentration as he scratched another variation onto parchment with a piece of charcoal that was more stub than stick.
“No, no, that’s not right either,” he muttered, crossing out the symbol with aggressive strokes. “The curve was sharper. Or was it rounder? No, definitely sharper. Unless—”
He grabbed a different piece of paper—one of seventeen “definitely accurate” sketches he’d made in the three seconds between seeing the rune and watching it disappear down a cat’s throat—and compared them.
They were all different.
Spectacularly different.
“Okay,” Skivvit said to the empty workshop, because talking to himself helped him think. “Okay. So. The first line was definitely... curved? Angular? Curvi-gular?”
He drew another attempt.
This one looked vaguely like a drunk chicken had walked across the page.
“Perfect,” Skivvit declared, and pinned it to the wall with the others.
His Emberfreckles were glowing—not brightly, but enough to cast a faint golden shimmer across his workbench. They always did that when he was excited or stressed or caffeinated, and right now he was thoroughly all three. He’d been up since before dawn, fueled by determination and the remains of yesterday’s honey cakes, trying to solve what was rapidly becoming the most fascinating puzzle of his entire life.
A Guardian-era rune.
On a ward marker.
That had spoken.
And then been eaten by a cat.
It was, objectively, the best thing that had ever happened to him.
The door to his workshop creaked open, and Marra’s voice drifted in. “Skivvit? You alive in here?”
“Extremely alive!” Skivvit didn’t look up from his current sketch. “I’m having a breakthrough! Multiple breakthroughs! So many breakthroughs I might actually be broken through!”
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