Deep in the heart of the Eastern Ranges, notoriously inhospitable, was the small, little-known town of Silverrun. Few lived there, and those who did had been there for generations. It was the kind of place that few left and even fewer visited. The kind of place that went largely untouched by the ravages of time. A relic of the past.

While typically quiet and sleepy, tonight Silverrun’s only inn, The Timbers, was alive with a flurry of unusual activity. Seated at one of the few tables, surrounded by a throng of curious onlookers, was a young man who stood out like a sore thumb. Though he wore the same flowing red and white draped garb as the local priest next to him, the air about him was markedly different.

The stranger looked to be in his early twenties and was the youngest among the bar’s patrons by a decade—easily. In stark contrast to the locals who had spent their whole lives struggling to survive in the mountains, the stranger’s skin was unmarked by the sun. He didn’t share their callused hands, earned from a lifetime of hard labor, and was taller than most by at least half a head.

He was striking in a way that people seldom were, his appeal too close to beautiful to truly be called simply handsome. His facial features were delicate, in stark contrast to his sharp jawline and the broad, masculine line of his shoulders.

His eyes, the color of green sea glass washed ashore, were framed by thick lashes. His hair was just long enough to be worn pulled half-back, curling just above his shoulders. Its color was like nothing they had ever seen before, a strange shade of teal that would have looked unnatural on anyone else. But then again, nothing about this visitor felt natural.

Across from him sat an older man, his features contorted with a mixture of doubt and confusion. His face was lined with age and what remained of his hair was thoroughly streaked with white.

“They said you’re… an exorcist?” the man asked gruffly, regarding the stranger with open skepticism. “Come to help with the recent deaths? I don’t see what that mystic shit has to do with this.”

“Please address Mr. Astraeus with respect,” the priest seated beside the stranger urged, wringing his hands together above the table. “I can’t stress enough how far he’s traveled just to help us and what an honor it is that he’s here.”

“I’m not an exorcist, exactly, but rather a shaman,” the stranger said as he waved off the priest’s concern. “And it’s fine—let’s skip the formalities. You can just call me Noah.”

When Noah had received the priest’s letter begging him to come to Silverrun to deal with a laundry list of unexplained misfortune, deaths, and countless missing persons, this was exactly the kind of place he’d expected to find. A little-known place in the middle of nowhere that hadn’t had fresh blood in generations. A pocket of civilization that was removed from society, a little backwater, and thoroughly suspicious of outsiders.

Places like these had ghost stories and local legends in spades. Strange occurrences with no logical explanation—which was exactly what Noah specialized in. He’d been trained to look for things that weren’t quite what they seemed, places where the world intersected with something larger than what the human eye could perceive.

The priest’s initial summary was enough for Noah to suspect that Silverrun might be one of those rare places, but the only way to confirm it was to come here himself and get a better grasp of exactly what was going on.

“This all feels a little ridiculous,” the older man said. “I don’t know how much I buy into all this spirit stuff. What good is bringing in a shaman when people have already lost their lives? What’s he going to do, help us bury the dead?”

“A shaman?” Another patron chimed in, echoing his skepticism. “You would have us go around chasing ghost stories, instead of focusing on reality? You can’t just blame everything on superstition and curses in the modern era. We need to focus on finding the real reasons behind all of this.”

“You haven’t found it unreasonable just how many people have died in such a short span of time?” Noah asked, raising his eyebrows. “Three healthy teenagers died in the last month alone. That doesn’t feel unnatural to you?”

“Well—” the patron sputtered. “I don’t see how bringing a shaman in is supposed to fix that. There’s no bringing back the dead.”

“Rather than fix what’s already happened, I’m here to prevent it from happening again in the future,” Noah said patiently.

“And what do you think preventing future disappearances has to do with old, superstitious nonsense?” the older patron grumbled. “It’s just a load of crap and old wives’ tales. There’s nothing you can do by chanting some prayers and calling on some forgotten, archaic god.”

“You’re right. I don’t think it would get very far either.” Noah did his best to maintain his cordial, even tone. He was here to help these people, no matter how much they pushed him. They were grieving and scared, and Noah was a stranger. It was his job to gain their trust. “Bear with me,” he said. “I just need to fill in some background information so that I don’t go around taking shots in the dark. I won’t take up any more of your time and resources than that.”

Noah was met with obvious, open skepticism from the crowd. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, rethinking his approach. The free alcohol that the strange priest had offered was what had originally drawn in the crowd, before their natural curiosity about what he was doing showing up at their local bar kicked in.

“Look, how about you just have a few drinks?” Noah gestured to the pitchers of beer that sat in front of him on the table. “Think of this as just telling stories to pass the time.Pull up a chair, fill up a glass, and share whatever you feel like. It doesn’t have to be about the recent deaths. Tell me anything about Silverrun. Reasonable enough? Start anywhere,” Noah prompted. “No detail is too small.”

“Well…” the older man across from him began, grudgingly filling his cup. “No matter what we do, nothing ever seems to go right. I don’t believe in these kinds of things, but this mountain really does feel cursed with bad luck sometimes.”

“I think the crop fields started to fail around my great-grandfather’s generation. They say that after the forest burned, that’s when the blight started to really hit the local yield. We haven’t had a single consistent harvest since back then.”

The man’s wife chimed in.

“But you know, they say that before then there used to be a lot more natural disasters to deal with. Earthquakes, flash floods, blizzards, thunderstorms—something was always going wrong,” she said. “The land has been much quieter since then, so I guess in that way we can count ourselves blessed.”

“Yeah, but ever since they stopped… something just ain’t right with this place,” another local said, shaking his head. “The fish don’t bite, and the birds don’t sing.”

One after another, the patrons joined in and the stranger stories came pouring out.

“The old railway system was forced to shut down. Freight trains don’t come here anymore, so it’s difficult to bring food in from the cities. There were too many incidents,” one said. “The cars just kept veering off the tracks and getting into awful accidents—and then by the time we got to the wreck, there would be no sign of it wreckage at all. They were just gone. Good weather, broad daylight, didn’t matter. Freak accidents, every one of them...”

Another added, “It’s difficult for anyone to conceive. We’ve had eight miscarriages and two stillborns this year. I can’t remember the last time we had a full kindergarten class.”

Noah listened, leaning back in his chair as the townspeople and patrons continued to share their stories.

“It’s peaceful here, and it’s beautiful, but there’s always been something a little unsettling about the mountains,” the next said. “It was always a little quiet, but it’s gotten stranger by the year. It was even different when I was younger. The summers were loud with cicadas, but now… I can’t remember the last time I heard them sing.”

A round of quiet agreement went around the crowd.

“And people just get sick a lot more these days, it’s strange.”

Another round of murmurs and whispers.

“Are we all just going to pussyfoot around the issue?” The oldest patron among them snorted indignantly, pulling up a chair directly across from Noah and the local priest. “About a year ago, people started falling down left and right.”

“Hell, my next door neighbor died in his sleep. Perfectly healthy man. And my neighbors on the other side? One day their kids just up and went missing in broad daylight. The last anyone saw them they were on their way home from school. And…” the elder fell quiet for a moment, his face twisting with pain.

He took a swig from his mug and continued. “Last month, my granddaughter and two of her friends were found dead in the woods. Not a mark on them, but there’s no way it wasn’t foul play. They were as healthy as can be, every one of them.”

Noah was listening with rapt attention. This was what the priest had detailed in the letter that had brought him all this way. An exponential escalation of the number of mysterious, unexplained deaths and disappearances in an otherwise sleepy mountain town.

“Before that, on the other side of town, it took quite a few people,” someone else added, her tone quiet and mournful. “Five households. Everyone died overnight. It was just… so sudden.”

“Cause of death?” Noah asked.

“Undetermined,” the elder said, grimacing. “They said it was probably… natural causes.”

The more they spoke, and the more stories emerged, the grimmer and more resolute Noah's expression became. He was certain of it now. Silverrun’s misfortunes, as varied as they were numerous, defied logic and the laws of reality alike. This was no simple mountain town. It was a festering hotbed of spiritual discord.