The Echoes of Aethelburg

The fog did not creep into Aethelburg; it was birthed there. It coiled from the damp cobblestones of the old quarter and poured from the chimneys of the silent, leaning houses that watched the sea. For three hundred years, the town had lived in the shadow of the great, brooding cliff known as the Wyrm's Jaw, and in the shadow of its own strange history. It was a place of secrets, of old money and older magic. The townsfolk spoke of the Grey Ladies who walked the cliffs at dusk and of the sea that sometimes gave up treasures, and sometimes took them. But the oldest secret, the one woven into the very foundations of the town, was the one nobody spoke of aloud: the Echo. They said that on certain nights,or when the moon was a sliver and the tide was at its lowest, you could hear them. Not ghosts, not exactly. Echoes. Fragments of lives lived long ago, trapped in the stone and the sea spray. A laugh from a forgotten wedding, a cry from a sunken ship, a whispered promise from a lost love. Most ignored them, a trick of the wind. But for some, the Echoes were a call. And this year, the call would be answered.