Elowen was smaller than he expected — close and crooked, its streets too narrow for sunlight to stay long. Wooden signs creaked softly as he passed, painted with faded words: Apothecary, Tanner, Bakery. Each face that turned toward him held a similar look — not suspicion, but that fragile curiosity small towns have for strangers.
A woman selling candles by the fountain lifted her eyes as he passed. "Traveler?" she asked.
He nodded. His voice, when it came, was calm and low. "Only looking for a place to stay."
"There's an inn by the square. Or a cottage up on the hill, near the painter's old house — though no one's lived there since old Ochar died."
At the mention of the name, something flickered behind his stillness — a brief, inward tightening that person was bearing the same name as him this means he could fake ownership.
He inclined his head politely. "The house on the hill, you say?"
She nodded, a touch uneasy. "A strange place. People hear things there sometimes."
"well that's my father's house," he murmured.
The woman crossed herself without meaning to and puzzled at his answer.
---
That evening, as the mist began to fold itself through the streets, Ochar reached the hill.
The house stood silent, wrapped in ivy, its shutters drawn like tired eyelids.
He touched the old wooden gate — it groaned under his hand quickly he found himself inside.
~~~~~~~~
Inside, dust floated in long slants of dying light. A cracked mirror leaned against the wall, and in it, for a heartbeat, his reflection wavered — as if another face were trying to surface beneath his own.
He turned away quickly.
That night, Ochar did not sleep. He sat by the window, watching the fog curl around the chapel's bell tower far below.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled — then abruptly stopped.
And in the hush that followed, he thought he heard a whisper rise from the floorboards:
A name… or a memory.
He closed his eyes.
~~~~~~~~~
The painter's house sat at the edge of Elowen, overlooking a quiet field.
Vines had crawled up the windows, the door hung crooked, and dust lay thick across the floorboards. But to Ochar, it felt familiar — too familiar.
The next morning ochar was ready to examine the whole house from the to the bottom
He brushed a hand across the wooden frame of the door, and for a moment, his fingers tingled. A memory passed through him — faint whispers, paint on canvas, the echo of laughter.
He closed his eyes.
"I am no longer him," he murmured. "That man is dead."
Yet the walls did not believe him.
Inside, he found the painter's tools left untouched — brushes stiff with dried color, cracked palettes, unfinished sketches of faces long forgotten. The scent of oil and turpentine lingered, clinging to the air like an unburied ghost.
He lit a candle, its dim glow cutting through the shadow. His reflection in the dusty mirror seemed almost human now — pale, elegant, but still carrying something unnatural beneath the surface.
---
Night came quietly.
Ochar sat by the window, staring at the moon rising over Elowen's hills.
From a distance, he could hear laughter — the sound of families, of children running, of a world that had not made any bargain with darkness.
He envied them.
He thought of death again — not as fear, but as something he had exiled. It waited beyond the horizon, patient, offended by his defiance.
A moth struck the windowpane beside him.
Its wings trembled against the glass, desperate to reach the light.
He reached out, slowly, and cupped it in his palm. The fragile thing stilled — alive, then not.
When he opened his hand, it was gone, leaving behind only a faint dusting of ash.
Ochar stared at his palm.
"I can't even touch life," he whispered.
The moonlight caught his eyes then — a faint red gleam flickered and vanished.
He lowered his head and drew the curtain shut.
Seer
You can never move far