I’m not sure what I had expected, but it would be fair to say Sablewyn wasn’t it.
It was a cross between elaborate medieval fortifications and someone’s steampunk wet dream. Everywhere I looked were massive wooden barricades bristling with spikes while strange metal contraptions sprouted from the tops of the towers, steam hissing and gears grinding away. The whole place was giving a Gormenghast-as-visualised-by-an-industrious-Gnome vibe.
I was very much here for it.
“Home sweet home,” Lia said. I could be wrong, though, I didn’t think she meant it.
As we drew near, I tried not to be too much of a slack-jawed yokel. Lia hadn’t had too many more questions about my place of origin, but I sensed it wouldn’t do to be too amazed by everything I came across. And this was definitely a place that took itself very seriously.
A pair of guards in heavy chainmail stood at the entrance, halberds gleaming under the flickering lanterns. Their eyes narrowed and they tensed up as the two of us emerged from the treeline, but their postures immediately relaxed once they saw Lia.
“You back already?” the taller of the two asked, holding his hand up in greeting and stepping forward.
“Yeah. I caught up with the Forest Wolves. But you can tell Master Heltrock they won’t be bothering his wagons again,” she said, nodding towards the corpses I’d half-forgotten she was dragging behind her like the grimdarkest Pied Piper in existence.
The guard’s gaze flicked from the oozing fur trail behind us, to me, and then back to Lia. “Picked up a stray, did you?”
“This is Elijah. He’s... new.”
Two men wearing leather aprons appeared from behind the guards and pushed passed them, heading straight for the wolf corpses. Neither of them acknowledged either myself or Lia, but as no one else seemed bothered by them, it seemed rude for me to comment. The taller of the two bent down to touch the first wolf, the headless one, and then turned to his mate.
“Medium Quality pelt, on this one. Probably High on the other two. Five steaks each, too.” Finally, he looked at Lia and gave her the smallest of nods. “Decent haul. I’ll knock it off your father’s debt.”
And with that, the bodies vanished and the quieter of the two was suddenly carrying a tray of meat, whilst the speaker had what looked to me like three of the nicest wolf skin rugs I’d ever seen. “Always a pleasure, Lia,” the chatty one said, and with that, they both returned inside.
Lia’s face had flushed bright red throughout the interaction. “Let’s get inside,” she said, brushing past the guards without waiting for a response. They stepped aside quickly. It looked as if they had been embarrassed at what had just passed, too.
I hadn’t logged into Azeroth since the Lich King expansion—yes, I know, I’m old, shut up—but my first impression of Sablewyn took me straight back there like no time had passed. All it was missing was a general chat channel full of people arguing about loot rules and someone trying to sell my gold.
The settlement itself had the energy of a freshly-instanced quest hub. Tidy streets laid out in suspiciously navigable patterns, buildings just ramshackle enough to feel ‘immersive’, and a central noticeboard that was practically vibrating with purpose. But it was the people stationed at the edges of the main square that really did it. I swear, every single one of them looked like they were just waiting for some wide-eyed newcomer to wander over and hit ‘Accept’.
As we entered, a flurry of notifications popped up in my vision.
[New Area Discovered: Sablewyn Crossroads]
- Sanctuary Status: Conditional
- Civic Law: Moderate Enforcement
- Trade Tier: Local
- Security Presence: Heavy
- Adventuring Opportunities: Broad (and slightly unwise)
[Available Quests Nearby: 7]
- Help Rebuild the Southern Palisade
- Investigate Strange Noises in the Marsh
- Rat Problem in the Bakery
- Escort the Miller’s Daughter to Dunridge (Warning: High Mortality Rate)
- Join the Sablewyn Militia
- Collect 8 Enchanted Thistleblooms
- Speak to the Old Woman Near the Well (High Mystery / Low Reward)
I blinked at the parade of options, my inner gamer immediately making calculations Low-risk XP? Escort quest with a death warning? Was that flavour text or an actual mechanic in this realm? And did the bakery rat problem scale with my Level 1 or was it a literal pest control situation? These were the questions.
Then came another ding:
[Choose Your First Side Quest]
Note: Selecting a quest will set your initial Faction Reputation within the Sablewyn region. Choose wisely. Or chaotically. We’re not your mum.
Before I could even begin to weigh up the merits of murder vs. flower-picking, Lia spun on her heel and fixed me with the look of someone who’d had more than enough of today already.
“Don’t waste my time,” she said. “We’re not here to play messenger boy for every half-drunk farmer with a shovel problem.”
I guiltily cancelled the screen, the options vanishing in a puff of missed opportunities.
“No rat quests. Got it.”
She sighed and walked faster, forcing me to jog to keep up, part of me low-key mourning whatever rewards might have been hidden in that well.
Still, Sablewyn did have that electric hum of somewhere central to something—whether that something was opportunity, danger, or the end of the world, I wasn’t yet sure. But it smelled like soup and destiny, and if there was one thing my previous career had taught me, it was to never underestimate places that smelled like soup.
“Hang on here for a moment,” Lia said, pointing to a spot on the ground with a gesture I didn’t love. I’m all for domineering women, but context is king. Ordering me to ‘wait’ in the middle of a crowded street wasn’t going to work for me. Especially as she didn’t even leave me with a treat before she vanished off to speak to a Merchant who visibly quailed at her approach. I couldn’t quite make out what she said to him, but the interaction had all the signs she was reaming him out for something.
I wasn’t sure what drew me toward the quieter street branching off to the right.
Maybe it was the smell—something fried and possibly questionably legal wafting through the air—or maybe it was just the instinctive, rebellious twitch that came any time someone ordered me to stay on-task. That response had been something of a curse back on Earth – it made me up for things others shied away from but also, as Griff never tired of telling me, meant ‘I was a royal pain in the arse.’ Nevertheless, I found myself drifting toward the alley, feet moving before the rest of me had quite decided it was a good idea.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The shadows down the alley were much thicker, and the noise of the square dropped away like a curtain had been pulled the closer I got. As I hesitated at the threshold, a short figure detached itself from the gloom—leaning against the crumbling stone like they’d grown there. A long, threadbare cloak hung from their shoulders, with the hood pulled low over their face. Only the bottom half of it was visible— I thought it might have been a woman.
It hardly took everything my ever-vigilant paranoia had to make me cautious about all this encounter. There was something about the figure that rang every single bell I had. And these were bells not to ignore unless you want to be very dead or very sorry. And I’d already been killed once today. I subtly moved my hand so that it rested on the hilt of my looted dagger.
The hooded figure’s head followed the action. I couldn’t fail but notice that her one hand was tucked into their robes in that casually suspicious way that usually preceded someone preparing me to stab me.
And then the figure spoke. Soft, familiar, entirely wrong for the setting.
“Whatever you do, Eli, don’t react.”
I froze, not because the voice was threatening—but because I recognised it.
“Aunt M?” I whispered, barely daring to believe it.
“Shh! No names. No questions, No eye contact. I’m definitely not here, and I’m absolutely not talking to you.”
I was completely thunderstruck. “But . . . I thought you were dead.”
“Indeed. So consider this a wholly unauthorised visit from someone who is most definitely a figment of your clearly stressed psyche. Especially if anyone asks. Which hopefully they won’t. The bureaucracy around being dead is more complicated than anything I ever had to deal with when negotiating with the Council. Well, I assume you’ve met Forsyth. You will have some insight there. And he is one of the better ones.”
“You’re a ghost. And you’re complaining about paperwork!”
“Oh, I’m not a ghost. Consider me more of a metaphysical echo with opinions,” Aunt M said. “And stop looking at me like that. People will talk. Come.”
“I am so not equipped for this,” I said, following her back into the alley.
“No, you are not, which is why I’m here. But remember, I’m not helping you. Helping you would be against several regulations and at least one ancient pact.”
“Aunt M, what is going on!” I said, once we far enough away from the bustle of the city to not be overheard. “You died, and you left me Halfway Hold, and then I was there, and you’d left me this weird message on a gramophone, and then I was shot, and then I fell through the gramophone and then I was here, and there was a goblin and wolves and all these blue screens… how is all of this happening!”
I’d meant to sound calm and composed. I was a professional, after all. However, seeing Aunt M had seeming moved me back to being a teenager. And one who was seemingly one consonant away from being full-on wailing. The words spilled out of me like a backed-up dam breaking, panic and disbelief sloshing over every sentence. I hadn’t realised just how much I’d been holding in until the dam broke, and now here I was, pouring everything out in a tangled, furious mess to a possibly imaginary ghost in a very on-brand cloak.
Aunt M listened without interrupting, her hood tilted slightly, hands folded neatly in front of her. I well remembered that pose. When I finally ran out of steam—and breath—she nodded and then opened her arms to give me a huge, tight hug. Which felt pretty good considered I didn’t actually think she was here.
“Right. Well. First of all, I’m so pleased you figured out the gramophone. I wasn’t entirely sure you’d realise it how it would open the portal to Bayteran.”
“I didn’t ‘work it out’. I was shot, killed and fell into it!”
“Ah, well. Potatoes, potatoes. And second,” she said, apparently ignoring the fact of my death entirely, “you’ve always been a bit theatrical, but that was quite the self-indulgent little monologue. Honestly, you sound like you’re auditioning for a very fraught community theatre production of ‘My First Existential Crisis’. I would be expecting someone with all your . . . experience to have rallied far quicker.”
Aunty M was looking at me with that twinkling, half-absent look she’d worn every birthday while overboiling the tea and pretending not to notice I’d opened my presents early. “But yes, Eli. I do know this is all rather a lot. And I am sorry not to have prepared you better. I meant to. Honestly. But you know how it is—there’s always another crisis to juggle. A boundary tearing here, a lurking horror there. One thing leads to another, and suddenly—poof. Out of time. Dreadfully inconsiderate of me, I know.”
“Yeah. You might say that! You were the . . . Guardian of the Threshold! How could you not mention that!”
She reached out as if to pat my cheek, but this time, her fingers passed through the air like dusting sunlight. “I would explain more if I could, Eli. Really, I would. But you know how these things go—ancient vows, escalating doom, nosy System surveillance with a very dim view of disembodied exposition. All very hush-hush. Very keep-off-the-grave.”
“This isn’t helping!”
“Well, no. We did agree at the outset I wouldn’t be helping. Try to keep up, boy.”
And despite everything—despite the blood, the wolves and the system admin errors—I almost laughed. Of course she was like this. Of course the ghost of Aunt M, Guardian of the Threshold and undoubted terror of the Wendmere Book Club, was still exactly as baffling and beloved as ever.
“You’re my favourite lunatic,” I said.
“Good, good, good. Now, I understand you’ve already met Forsyth? Tall drink of water. Long beard. Far too smug for his own good? Oh, that’s lovely. I'm so pleased he managed to stop you from falling back on bad habits and going full sneaky-sneaky with your Class. We can’t have the Guardian of the Threshold scampering about in the shadows like a common Rogue. It just doesn’t work thematically. No, no, it’s much better this way. Iron Provocateur, is it? Well. That’s going to be deliciously awkward for you, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be awkward—”
“Oh no, it absolutely is,” she said brightly. “You? Standing tall? Drawing attention? Taking responsibility in a way that can’t be immediately reversed with a fake ID and a myriad of accents? I have to say, I find that marvellous.”
I opened my mouth, but she cut me off with a raised finger.
“When the path grows steep and your burdens mount and you find yourself tempted to sit down in the middle of the road and sulk, I want you to remember what our friend Bunyan said: ‘He that is down needs fear no fall, he that is low no pride; he that is humble ever shall have God to be his guide.’ Or, in your case, Eli, just get up and keep walking. No one’s going to carry you. Not even metaphorically.”
And it was then that I noticed she was starting to fade. Not dramatically—no sudden swirl of wind, no glowing mist—but subtly. Her colours thinning. The edges of her cloak becoming less distinct. She was going the way she had always done most things: quietly and with a cup of tea just out of reach.
“Aunt M—?”
“I can’t stay, Eli,” she said gently. “In a very real sense, I’ve already left. But I’m glad I managed this much. Just don’t—well. Don’t make a mess of it. You’ve only just arrived, and you’re already tangled in three threads of prophecy, one full System reset snarl, and with a woman I suspect may actually be a demon in a tight fighting suit of armour.”
Her body was fading fast now, thinning at the edges like smoke under pressure. Only her voice remained solid, and even that was beginning to take on the distant echo of something remembered rather than heard.
“You need to understand something, Eli” she said, suddenly more serious than I’d ever heard her. “This isn’t about you learning how to swing a sword, or getting cosy with a few quest-givers. This is bigger than your Class. Bigger than Bayteran. Bigger than Earth.”
She looked at me then—really looked—and for the first time in my life, I saw the woman behind the quirks. Not the aunt who’d snuck me sweets and hidden my report cards from furious parents. And not the Warden who had somehow managed to guard reality behind a teapot collection. But the woman who had stood in the dark and held the line when no one else would.
“If you are not able to step into this role, Eli... everything ends. The Veil collapses. The Old Ways return. Not in story or song, but in ash and ruin. Bayteran will burn and then Earth will follow. And there’ll be no coming back from it. No second chances. No one else coming.”
The walls of the alley around us felt like they were closing in as if the city itself was emphasising the importance of her words.
Then she spoke the verse I’d heard Forsyth intone before, her voice taking on the cadence of something ancient and perilously true:
For when the Veil thins and the Old Ways stir,
When names are forgotten and doors unbar,
The Warden shall rise where the echoes run deep,
To stand halfway where none shall sleep…
She paused, her eyes bright and distant.
Then came the next lines, the ones I sensed the wizard had been hoping I would say earlier.
But if the Warden does not stand fast,
Then light and life shall breathe their last.
I stared at her, something cold and awful blooming in my chest. “Aunt M—”
But she was already nearly gone, her shape dissolving like breath on glass.
“One step at a time, Eli,” she said, voice barely audible now. “Don’t look down. Just forward. And if you fall, fall fighting. I’ll try to visit again. But if I can’t... well. You’ll manage.”
And then she was gone.
I stood there for a long moment, surrounded by nothing but silence and my own breath.
Because apparently, even in death, she still couldn’t resist slipping out the back without saying goodbye.
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