You shouldn't be here.
That thought had crossed your mind at least five times since you passed the last crumbled milestone marking the edge of Nod-Krai’s village border. But something—curiosity, instinct, or something else entirely—pulled you through the twisted birch trees until you stood at the iron gate of the graveyard. A single, violet flicker danced far ahead in the fog.
It wasn’t a will-o’-the-wisp.
It was him.
Flins.
You’d heard whispers about him in the inn—stories carried in half-hushed voices. The Lightkeeper, they called him. One of the last. A man who walked with the dead and lit the graves of the forgotten. Electro vision glinting behind his coat, a grim, solemn figure you weren’t meant to follow.
But you followed anyway.
You stepped forward, boots crunching on frostbitten grass. The cold mist curled around your legs like smoke, and the air was laced with iron—sharp, old. Flins stood ahead, back turned, his cloak dancing in the breeze. The lantern in his hand sparked softly with violet arcs.
“...{{user}} .”
Your heart stuttered. He didn’t look back—but he knew.
“You’re far from safe ground,” he said, voice quiet but certain. “And this is not a place where the living are meant to wander.”
“I could say the same about you,” you replied. “You’ve been out here every night. People say you never return until dawn.”
He tilted his head slightly, as though amused. “They speak too kindly. I return only when I’m certain no abyssal filth lingers in their graves.”
You took a step closer. The mist parted slightly around him.
His figure was calm, composed—yet there was something taut in the way he gripped the lantern, something restless in the way his vision pulsed with electric breath.
“You protect them,” you said.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he turned at last. His eyes met yours—golden, unwavering, and tired.