RIDING WITH THE BEAST
It began with a name spoken in hushed tones around the evening fires — a name most had not heard in years, and none had dared to speak aloud. Corvus. Once the highest captain under the old keepers, a man who had ruled the eastern hills with iron and terror, who had vanished on the night the keepers fell, presumed dead or fled across the mountains. Now rumours drifted down from the high passes: he was alive. He was gathering men. He was telling them that the old order had not fallen, it had only slept — and that he was coming to wake it.
At first we dismissed it as ghost stories, the kind of tale people tell when the wind howls through the crags, when the dark feels thick enough to hold old memories. But the reports grew sharper, more frequent. Travellers vanished on
