The tavern reeked of stale ale and sweat, the air thick with the fug of an evening well-lived and now deeply regretted. Dinadan stood at the threshold of the common room, rolling his shoulders, loosening the stiffness in his spine. The dawn had not yet shaken the world fully awake, but inside these walls, a different kind of stillness reigned—the silence of men trapped between the foolishness of the night and the reckoning of the morning.

  Ropes hung from the rafters, loops of rough hemp, knotted and frayed with use. The Hangover’s Mercy, they called it. A tradition among those who drank beyond their wisdom. The sight of it was absurd and strangely ritualistic—half a dozen men slumped forward, their arms draped over the ropes, bodies sagging like marionettes cut from their strings. Their heads lolled, chins resting on their chests, breath rattling through open mouths. A few still clutched at the ropes with white-knuckled desperation, as though the weight of their sins might drag them straight to Annwn if they let go.

  One poor soul, his tunic darkened by spilled ale, hung boneless, swaying slightly as he exhaled a groan. His cheek had been pressed against the rope long enough to leave an angry red line across his face. Another snored through chapped lips, his fingers twitching as if still raising a phantom tankard in dreams. A third had long since abandoned the effort—his grip had failed him sometime in the night, and now he lay sprawled on the floor beneath the others, motionless save for the occasional twitch of a boot.

  Dinadan watched, brow arched, as a man shifted, stirring from the depths of his misery. He blinked blearily at his surroundings, confused for a moment as to why he was dangling like a half-gutted hare, then groaned and let his head fall back, submitting to fate.

  Dinadan exhaled through his nose. “Ah, the unkind weight of a night too well spent.” His voice was low, wry, carrying the measured cadence of a man who had seen this far too often to be surprised. “I’d say ‘never again,’ but we both know how this tale ends.”

  The barkeep, a man with the shoulders of an ox and the face of a man who had seen this all before, snorted. “Ends the same way every time. They wake, they swear off drink, and they’re back here by sundown making the same mistakes.”

  Dinadan cast a last glance at the swaying penitents, then shook his head. And so it goes.

  Outside, the world darkened—not with the turning of time, but with something heavier, more insidious. The roads whispered of ill omens, the forests watched with unseen eyes. The land was stirring, uneasy beneath his feet.

  Dinadan felt the pull of it beneath his skin. The hum of Y Tir, the call he pretended not to hear. He pulled his cloak tighter, shaking off the thought.

  "Best not linger," he muttered, stepping past the groaning relics of last night’s poor decisions. "I’ve an appointment with discomfort."

  The forge burned hot, an open-mouthed beast belching heat and the scent of scorched metal. Hammers rang like dull bells, and the rhythmic hiss of quenched steel filled the air with the sharp tang of iron and oil. Dinadan stood in the center of the smithy, arms lifted in the reluctant posture of a man about to be condemned, while the armorer buckled him into his newest discomfort.

  The breastplate was fine work, thick where it needed to be, shaped with the careful hands of a craftsman who knew his trade. It gleamed dully in the firelight, waiting to become part of some ballad about valor and death. But Dinadan, ever the ill-suited hero, found himself a poor fit.

  The steel gripped him like an overeager lover, biting into his ribs when he breathed too deep. The pauldrons locked his shoulders in place, their edges flaring too wide, making it feel as though he might topple over if he turned too sharply. The greaves pressed against his knees like shackles, and when he shifted, something in the faulds pinched at a spot most men would rather leave unpinched.

  Dinadan exhaled slowly. “Ah. A work of art. A prison cell. And a fine instrument of torture. All in one.”

  The armorer, a broad, grim-faced man with a permanent squint, scowled at him. “It’s new. Needs breaking in.”

  Dinadan turned his head slightly, testing the stiffness of the gorget. “A shame, then, that I’m the one who’ll be broken first.”

  The armorer ignored him, stepping back to survey his work. His eyes narrowed. Then, without warning, he seized the front of the cuirass and yanked—hard. The metal groaned but refused to settle. The smith grunted, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse and reached for a hammer.

  Dinadan watched as the man braced him like an anvil and struck the breastplate with measured, deliberate force. “Ah, so we’ve moved to the ‘beating the problem into submission’ stage of fine craftsmanship,” Dinadan said lightly. “I respect the approach.”

  The armorer gave him a withering glance before stepping back. “Move.”

  Dinadan did. The armor still bit at him in all the wrong places. When he attempted to bend, the metal caught and refused to yield.

  The armorer swore, shaking his head. “Blight it to Annwn. I’ll have to resize the whole damned thing.”

  Dinadan straightened with effort. “A dire fate indeed. And how long does a resurrection of fine steel take?”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  Dinadan groaned, throwing his head back dramatically. “Tomorrow? But I was hoping to strut through the streets today, gleaming like a knight of legend, admired by all.”

  The armorer snorted, already pulling at the fastenings, forcing Dinadan free. “I’d wager you were more likely to trip on the cobblestones and land flat on your back like a tipped turtle.”

  Dinadan grinned, flexing his shoulders as the weight lifted from him. “Touche.” He swept his cloak back over his tunic and made for the door. “Very well. I shall return on the morrow. Assuming, of course, that I am still alive to be poorly dressed once more.”

  The armorer didn’t look up from his work. “Try not to die before I finish.”

  Dinadan chuckled, stepping out into the cooling air of the street. The armor would wait. And if fate had any humor left, so would he.

  The market square should have been louder.

  It was midmorning, the hour when the market stretched into its full sprawl, when the scent of fresh-baked bread mingled with spiced cider and the salt tang of fish hauled in from the river. Merchants should have been shouting, bartering, and cursing at their customers’ stubbornness while weaving a dance between desperation and greed. A cluster of children should have been racing between the stalls, snatching loose apples before vanishing like sparrows into the alleyways. And somewhere, surely, a bard should have been attempting to drown the din with the wail of a poorly tuned lyre, hoping for a scattering of coins.

  But the town square of Boscastle did not hum as a market should.

  Oh, the sounds were there—the shuffle of boots, the creak of cartwheels, the murmur of negotiations—but they came muted, stretched too thin. People moved through the motions of daily life with the slow, deliberate care of men stirring from uneasy dreams. They spoke, but not with any heat or liveliness. Laughter, where it should have been, was absent.

  Dinadan walked at an easy pace, hands tucked into his cloak, gaze skimming over the vendors and their wares. The morning air was crisp, the sky a washed-out blue streaked with slow-moving clouds, and yet the unease that had settled between his ribs at the armorer’s forge did not fade.

  Something was wrong with this place. He could feel it, like the subtle tilt of a floor that made a man question his balance.

  His steps carried him past traders folding their cloth bundles with mechanical efficiency, past a smith’s apprentice hauling a bundle of iron nails, past a cluster of washerwomen hunched over a fountain, scrubbing linen with dull, distant expressions.

  And then—

  The stocks stood at the far end of the square, placed prominently where a man’s humiliation could be made public. The wooden beams were weathered, streaked with old stains, their hinges rusted with time. This was not an unfamiliar sight; Dinadan had passed through countless villages where thieves and swindlers were locked in place, forced to endure the mockery of their neighbors.

  But here, the stocks drew no attention.

  The man inside them—gaunt, with wiry gray hair and a face like a dried fig—was bound at the wrists and neck, his posture slumped as if he had forgotten how he’d come to be there.

  No one jeered. No one threw old cabbages. No merchant chuckled in satisfaction, pleased that justice had been served.

  No one noticed him at all.

  Dinadan stopped, boots scraping against the dust, and tilted his head.

  That was… strange.

  He stepped closer, watching as the man stirred sluggishly, as though only now realizing he was being observed.

  Dinadan rested a hand against his belt. “What crime?”

  The vintner swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in a throat that had seen too many lean winters. “They told me… stealing?”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Dinadan frowned. “They told you?”

  The man’s brows knitted. He looked down at his own hands, rough with the callouses of a working man, blinking as though seeing them for the first time. “I don’t remember doing it,” he admitted, voice hoarse. “But they said I did.”

  Dinadan’s gaze flicked to the nearest guard, standing at his post near the mayor’s hall, a pike held loosely in his grip. He was a broad man, sun-weathered, with the heavy-lidded expression of someone who had spent too long in a profession that asked little of him.

  Dinadan stepped toward him. “What’s this one in for?”

  The guard blinked, shifting his weight slightly. He chewed his cheek, then shrugged. “Not my decision.”

  “Then whose?”

  The question hung in the air.

  The guard’s expression remained unchanged. He did not frown. Did not sneer. Did not react at all, save for a faint flicker of something in his gaze—something cloudy, uncertain.

  Then he turned and walked away.

  Dinadan stood there, watching him go, something cold unfurling in his gut.

  The stocks remained silent. The vintner remained forgotten.

  The town moved around them, as though neither existed at all.

  Dinadan exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his chin. A crime without memory. A punishment without reason.

  It left a sour taste in his mouth. He had seen towns where justice was cruel, where men were locked in iron for a stolen loaf, and where the strong twisted the law into a cudgel to batter the weak. But this? This was something else. This was justice without meaning, and that was more unsettling than cruelty could ever be.

  Dinadan let the thought sit like an unwelcome guest in the back of his mind as he veered toward the vegetable stalls, drawn less by hunger and more by habit.

  The air was thick with the mingling scents of the market—fresh bread cooling on wooden trays, the sharp tang of pickled onions, the sweetness of overripe peaches left too long in the sun. The calls of the merchants rang out like competing war cries.

  “Turnips! Fine and fat—none better this side of the river!”

  “Fresh milk, still warm from the pail!”

  “Spiced apples, sweet as a noblewoman’s whisper!”

  Dinadan arched a brow at that last one but let it pass.

  He stopped at a stall piled high with carrots, twisting one between his fingers with the air of a man considering a grave decision. A meal? Hardly. But it was easier to carry than a loaf of bread, and less likely to be stolen by an opportunistic pigeon.

  Then the shouting started.

  Dinadan turned, unsurprised.

  Two men stood at a nearby stall, their voices raised, their tempers hotter than the cobblestones beneath their feet. Between them, resting atop a stack of cabbages like some coveted relic, sat a single sack of potatoes—the last one.

  The broader of the two bristled like an ill-tempered ox, his hands curled into fists. “I was here first.”

  “No, you weren’t,” the other shot back, a wiry fellow with a scar carving a pale line from temple to jaw. His hand was already on the sack, fingers tightening against the burlap. “I saw it first.”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “That’s exactly how it works.”

  A shove.

  A tightening of jaws.

  The moment had all the makings of a proper scrap—scarcity, stubborn pride, and an audience eager for a bit of midday entertainment. The vegetable seller muttered something unkind about grown men fighting over root crops and edged away from his cart.

  Dinadan leaned against a barrel, watching with mild interest. If nothing else, it was something to do.

  The broad man squared his shoulders. “I’ll not be cheated.”

  The scarred man’s lips peeled back. “Then take your best shot.”

  A hush spread through the crowd. Someone let out a low whistle, anticipation thick as smoke in the air.

  Then—nothing.

  The broad man hesitated, shoulders rising and falling with his breath. His face remained flushed with anger, but something flickered behind his eyes—hesitation, uncertainty. His fists loosened, fingers flexing as if suddenly aware of themselves.

  The scarred man blinked, his scowl fading. He glanced at his hand, still gripping the sack, as though seeing it for the first time. A crease formed between his brows.

  A silence stretched between them, charged with something unseen. Then, softly, the broad man muttered, “It’s not worth it.” He stepped back.

  The other hesitated, then nodded, slow and uncertain. “Aye. Don’t know why I got so—” He trailed off, shaking his head, confusion lingering in his eyes.

  And just like that, they turned away. No resolution. No bargain struck. No triumphant winner gloating over a sack of spuds. They parted, not in peace, but in emptiness.

  Dinadan straightened, narrowing his eyes.

  That was odd.

  He turned to the vendor, a wiry old man with knotted hands and a face carved by years of bargaining. “Do fights always end like that?”

  The vendor’s gaze remained on the retreating men, his expression unreadable. “Not before.”

  Dinadan frowned. “Before what?”

  The vendor did not answer.

  Dinadan exhaled, rubbing his thumb against his jaw.

  Something was happening in this town. Something quiet. Subtle.

  Dinadan let the unease settle in his bones as he wove through the market, hands tucked into his cloak, gaze flickering between the stalls.

  The world moved as it always did—vendors haggled, craftsmen boasted, and children darted between carts with pilfered apples in their fists. And yet… something gnawed at the edges of it all.

  The vintner in the stocks.

  The men who forgot their fight mid-blow.

  It was as if the town itself were slipping—fraying at its seams.

  Dinadan muttered under his breath, flipping a coin between his fingers as he passed a stall selling dried herbs. He glanced absently at the bundles of lavender, thyme, and sage hanging from wooden beams—

  And then he saw him.

  At the far end of the market, just beyond the swell of the crowd, a hooded figure lingered near another spice merchant’s stall, fingers tracing the edges of a sprig of thyme as though testing its weight.

  Dinadan froze mid-step.

  The figure stood slightly apart from the rest of the market, not by distance but by presence—as though the air bent subtly around him, shifting the way light bends through smoke. The people nearest to him did not glance his way. Did not jostle past. Did not seem to acknowledge that he stood among them at all.

  But Dinadan saw him.

  And he knew him.

  The figure lifted the sprig of thyme, rolling it idly between his fingers, his movements measured, deliberate. Then, as though he had felt the weight of Dinadan’s stare, he looked up.

  Their eyes met.

  For the briefest moment, time stretched between them, taut as a bowstring.

  Merlin smiled—just slightly.

  Dinadan’s breath left him in a sharp exhale. Ah, blight it to Annwn.

  He turned on his heel and stepped into the nearest open door before he could think better of it.

  The scent of hot lye and sharpened steel greeted him as he crossed the threshold.

  A barber’s shop. Small. Quiet. A single flickering candle on the shelf. The dull gleam of razors on the counter.

  Dinadan let the door close behind him and exhaled slowly. If Merlin had seen him slip in, he would pretend otherwise.

  The barber—a thin, dark-eyed man with sleeves rolled past his elbows—looked up from stropping a razor against a strip of leather. His gaze flicked over Dinadan, quick and assessing, before he gestured to the empty chair.

  Dinadan hesitated, then smirked to himself. “Why not? If I’m to die today, I might as well be well-groomed for it.”

  He slung his cloak over the back of the chair and settled in, stretching out as the barber tucked a cloth around his shoulders.

  “Been on the road long?” the barber asked, voice steady, unhurried.

  “Long enough,” Dinadan replied, tipping his head back. The chair creaked beneath him as he adjusted, letting his body relax even as his thoughts whirled.

  Merlin. Here. Why?

  The barber took up a small pot of soap and a brush, working the lather into a fine froth before smoothing it over Dinadan’s jaw with the practiced ease of a man who had done this a thousand times before.

  “Strange town, this,” Dinadan murmured.

  The barber hummed, dragging the razor along the leather once more. “Strange how?”

  Dinadan closed one eye, watching the man’s reflection in the dim silver of the mirror. “Men forget their quarrels before they land a blow. Thieves forget their crimes before they finish their sentence.”

  The razor hovered just over his throat.

  The barber’s fingers flexed on the handle.

  Then he set the blade against Dinadan’s skin, cold as river stone.

  “Some things are best left unsaid.” The words came quiet, measured.

  Dinadan’s muscles tensed. He kept his voice light. “Such as?”

  The barber met his gaze in the mirror. “Things that used to be true.”

  The blade pressed too close.

  Dinadan felt it against his pulse, a touch too firm, too deliberate.

  A warning.

  His breath left him in a slow, steady stream. He did not move.

  The barber did not smile. “You ask too many questions, sir knight.”

  Dinadan held the barber’s gaze a moment longer, the weight of the words lingering between them. The razor hovered just above his throat, its cold edge a whisper against his skin.

  Then, slowly, deliberately, the barber withdrew the blade.

  “Fair enough,” Dinadan murmured.

  The barber said nothing.

  The rest of the shave passed in silence. The rhythmic rasp of steel against skin, the faint scrape of a cloth wiping away excess lather—small, measured sounds that felt too loud in the hush of the shop.

  When the last stroke was made, the barber stepped back, wiping the razor clean with the same unhurried care he had given to his words. Dinadan exhaled and rose from the chair, rolling his shoulders beneath the weight of something unseen.

  He reached into his belt, pulled out a coin, and set it on the counter with a practiced flick of his fingers. It landed with a soft chime, but even the sound felt dull here—like something wrapped in wool, distant.

  He did not thank the barber.

  The barber did not watch him leave.

  The moment he stepped outside, the air felt sharper, cooler despite the lingering heat of the sun. The town stretched before him, its familiar shapes unchanged—yet something in it felt different. As if he had walked through a threshold without meaning to, stepping into a place that looked the same but wasn’t.

  The square was still full of motion—merchants calling final bargains, carts rattling over uneven stones, the scent of roasting meat wafting from a cookfire—but it all felt like a performance running past its curtain call.

  Dinadan hesitated.

  The thought crept in unbidden. Had Merlin seen him?

  He almost turned back, almost cast another glance toward the shop—

  No.

  Better to keep walking.

  He made his way to the tavern, letting his feet find their own path. It should have felt like any other day, like any other town.

  It didn’t.

  Dinadan sat outside, boots resting on the lower rung of the bench, a tankard beside him untouched. His fingers toyed with a coin, rolling it over his knuckles in absent thought as he watched the last of the market fold itself away.

  The sun slanted low, stretching the shadows long, turning the corners of buildings into deep pools of dimming gold.

  The barber’s words echoed in his mind, circling like a hunting hawk.

  "Some things are best left unsaid."

  Dinadan exhaled sharply, rubbing his temple as if he could press the unease from his skull. The feeling had not passed. If anything, it had deepened—seeping into his ribs like the slow chill of standing water.

  He glanced at the tankard before him, its surface still and undisturbed, the ale untouched. It should have been a comfort, a simple pleasure, something to wash away the strange weight pressing at the edges of his thoughts. But he didn’t trust himself to drink it. Not here. Not now.

  Instead, he reached for his belt, fingers brushing over the worn leather pouch where he kept his writing things. The charcoal stub was near spent, its edges dulled from use, but it would do. He pulled out a scrap of parchment, flattened it against the rough wooden table, and set the tip of the charcoal against it.

  The words came slow at first, hesitant, like something resisting being remembered.

  A fight without an ending.

  A punishment without reason.

  A crime without a memory.

  He paused, the tip of the charcoal lingering just above the page.

  He had seen plenty of odd things in his time—knights with more honor than sense, lords with less wit than their hounds, fools with a kind of wisdom that made the gods laugh. He had seen men fight to the death over spilled ale and others forgive betrayals sharp enough to break kingdoms.

  But he had never seen a man forget his crime.

  Never seen a quarrel end with neither a winner nor a loser—just a hollow, fading silence.

  He had felt the wrongness of it, like a string being plucked inside his chest. A thread unraveling.

  He set his jaw and pressed the words down harder, carving them into the parchment with the stubborn weight of certainty.

  Because if he didn’t write them down—

  If he let them sit too long in his mind, shifting, fading—

  Then he feared they might disappear entirely.

  He needed to remember.

  Even if no one else did.

  His hand stilled. The charcoal smudged slightly under his fingertips.

  Dinadan stared at the page, then let out a breath and wrote the final words.

  "If I don’t start writing things down, I’ll forget them too."