Morwen

Then the grey fever came to Hollowmere. The Pale Choir sealed our village and marked our doors... and the graveyard filled.

My father dug graves for a month without rest. Then I dug his. The Choir forbade us to mourn... so I mourned alone.

That night a voice called from the old barrow. Vesperine, Queen of the Barrow, dead four hundred years. Grief, she said, is a door too.

She taught me the old words. I spoke them over my father's grave... and the whole graveyard of Hollowmere answered.

The dead ploughed the fields the living could not. They rang the bells, carried the water, rebuilt the walls. I kept them busy.

They called me the Gravecaller. In the Moonlit Ossuary beneath the hills, even Rattlecrown, King of Bones, bowed to me.

Then Amaya came back. Sister Amaya now, of the Pale Choir, with a hundred candles behind her. She said she came in peace.

She embraced me on the chapel steps, like on the graveyard wall. Behind her back, her priests were already drawing the silver chains.

They sealed me inside and sang while the chapel burned. Amaya sang the loudest.

They buried what was left of me in Hollowmere. They forgot what I had taught them. Every grave is a door... even mine.

Death was only my first act. I stopped calling the dead. Now they simply come... and they kneel.

Tonight Amaya marches again, with every candle the Choir owns. Let her sing. The dead remember every hymn.

I am Morwen, the Gravecaller of Hollowmere. Every grave is a door... and I hold every key.