“The Stranger at the Pass”

Elric is a young guard stationed alone on a misty mountain trail. He’s supposed to stop anything that moves. Something moves.

⸻

Elric hated the fog.

It clung to everything—skin, armor, breath. Like the mountain wanted to chew you up and spit you back out as mist.

He leaned on his spear, blinking sleep from his eyes. No sun yet. Just the gray glow of false dawn.

Behind him, a goat bleated. Or maybe a bird. Or a demon. Hard to tell in this place.

Then came the step.

One. Solid. Behind him.

He turned fast, spear up.

No one. Just fog.

And then—no, wait. A shape. Too still. Too quiet.

Someone stood on the trail.

Hooded. Cloaked. Their figure blurred at the edges like they were born from the mist.

“Hey!” Elric called. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

The figure didn’t answer.

Elric took one step forward, boots scraping wet stone.

“You hear me?”

Still nothing.

He adjusted his grip on the spear. Sweaty palms. Why now?

Please be a lost traveler. Please be some idiot noble’s kid with bad directions.

Then the figure moved.

Not toward him. Not away. Just shifted weight, like they were considering something. Wind tugged at their cloak. It didn’t move.

That’s when Elric’s gut twisted.

It wasn’t fear exactly. More like… the memory of fear. Like something from when he was small, hiding under his mother’s cloak as she whispered old stories in his ear.

He blinked, and for a split second the figure was gone.

No—closer.

He flinched back. The spear trembled in his grip.

His voice dropped.

“I said you’re not supposed to be here.”

Still nothing. But now, the air felt… heavier. Like before a storm.

He should run. Or blow the horn. But his legs refused to listen.

The fog coiled around them both. And the wind—gone. The birds—gone.

Everything, still.

The figure raised a hand.

It wasn’t a threat. No blade. No spell.

But Elric flinched anyway. His breath caught.

His father had told him stories like this once. About strangers on roads that didn’t lead anywhere. About people who vanished from history because they spoke to the wrong thing on the wrong path at the wrong time.

Back then, Elric had laughed.

Now?

Not so much.

The figure took a step closer.

Elric backed away, boot scraping rock.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The voice, when it came, wasn’t loud. It didn’t echo. It just existed inside the space around him.

“Elric.”

His name.

His actual name. Not the one on his uniform. Not the one the other guards used.

The name only his sister used. The one from home.

He couldn’t breathe for a second.

“How do you know that?”

Silence.

Then the figure lifted their head.

No face beneath the hood. Just shadow. And yet… he felt seen. Down to the bone.

His spear wavered.

Run.

He didn’t.

Because part of him—the stupid, quiet part—wanted to know.

“Why are you here?” he asked. Not shouted. Not ordered. Just… asked.

The figure pointed behind him, toward the pass.

Toward the city beyond.

“No one comes from that way,” Elric said. “Not now. Not with the bridge down.”

The figure nodded once. Slowly.

And then, finally, they spoke.

“You’ve been guarding nothing.”

He didn’t understand.

The fog thinned, and the sky started to lighten.

Elric turned instinctively toward the horizon.

Where the city should’ve been.

Where—

Where there was nothing.

No bridge.

No towers.

No smoke.

No city.

Just cliffs. Endless cliffs.

His spear slipped from his hand.

He staggered forward, past the stranger, down the path that should’ve led home.

All he found was rock.

And silence.

And sky.

He looked back.

The stranger was gone.

So was the trail.

Just wind now.

Just Elric.

Standing alone in a place that had never existed.