Vigil at the mouth of the world

Vigil at the Mouth of the World – Dark Fantasy Short Story

A lone paladin is sent into an old hill-crypt to do a simple, terrible job: fight his way down through restless dead and destroy whatever is waking them. The villagers seal the door behind him with iron and prayer, expecting a hero’s death and a fixed problem.

But the deeper Ser Alen goes, the stranger the crypt becomes—villagers risen from their graves, dead knights who took the same vows he did, and a level where the ghosts themselves stand reading the names no one living remembers. At the very bottom, he finds not a monster he can kill, but a wound in the world and a chained guardian who is too tired to keep holding it shut.

Someone has to sit at the edge of that pit and keep the dead from walking. To save everyone above, Alen has to accept a vigil with no end, trading his life, his name, and any hope of being remembered for an eternity of quiet, necessary work in the dark.

If you like heavy, character-focused fantasy about sacrifice, duty, and what it means to be the one who stays, this one’s for you.

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