The First Encrypted Letter
Émile,
The major with the bird tattoos is gone.
You remember I told you about him a couple of years ago—claimed he was just a caravan scout, but knew the old roads too well. We used to joke that he’d been alive during the old wars.
His room’s been cleaned out. Not ransacked—sanitized. Even the dust was gone.
Before he vanished, he left me a message: “Tell the blacksmith in Dolven’s Hollow the hourglass is leaking.” I don’t know what it means, but I passed it on. Three nights later, someone left a black feather wedged in my doorframe.
There’s a group forming out here, Émile. Small. Careful. Angry. More organized than peasants ought to be. They call themselves The Ebon Blades. If the name sounds theatrical—it is. But they’re real. And they’re planning something.
I think I saw one of them near the ruins north of Barrow’s Edge. Just watching. Never came closer. I had the sense he wasn’t watching me.
And amidst it all—undead still rising, and the fields are still going dark.
Cipher holds: that old five legged table out on the frontier.
Yours,
A.
The Second Encrypted Letter
Emile,
I don’t know where to begin.
Yesterday, just before dusk, my patrol was ambushed on the northern logging road. We lost two good men. Another may yet die of his wounds.
But it wasn’t bandits. Not even insurgents.
It was a single figure. Hooded, unarmored, silent. No visible weapons. The horses screamed before we saw it—they saw it—and bolted. The thing moved like mist but hit like iron. Sergeant Bran swung full-force at it and missed. Not because it dodged. Because his blade passed through—like it wasn’t all the way here.
And it knew my name, Emile.
Not just “Captain Nelson.” It said Alistair. Said it like an old friend might, or like a judge reading a verdict. Its voice was… wrong. Like it came from a mouth that hadn’t been used in a long time. Dry. Pained.
It could have killed us all, easily. But it didn’t. It whispered a warning and then vanished into the trees:
“Turn back. The land remembers.”
That’s all. Turn back.
We’ve ridden that road twenty times in the past month. Never saw so much as a highwayman. Now this.
One of the scouts swears it looked like an orc. Another insists it had no face. A third says it bled mist when Bran’s arrow clipped its shoulder. I don’t know who to believe. I don’t even know what I believe.
I’m requesting additional torches, iron, and clerical presence on all patrols. It’ll be denied, of course. “Budgetary constraints.” “Local superstition.” “Captain Nelson remains prone to poetic exaggeration.”
Send me something—information, orders, help. Or just lie and say you’re coming soon.
I’ll take comfort where I can.
A.
The Third Encrypted Letter
Émile,
I know the last letter was… strange. This one is stranger. If you’re still reading, thank you.
Something ancient is shifting beneath Cambria, and I fear we’ve all been walking over a buried crime so enormous it warped the earth around it. Not metaphorically. I mean the land tilts in places it shouldn’t. Roads veer subtly away from ruins that don’t appear on any maps. Dead languages surface in graffiti scratched by children who couldn’t have learned them.
Two nights ago, I rode out to inspect a supposed smuggler’s camp near the Iron Pines. I found no smugglers. What I did find was a stone gate sunk halfway into a hillside, sealed with runes I’ve never seen and a sigil resembling a weeping flame. The scouts with me said it wasn’t there a week ago. They’re lying, or forgetting, or both.
Worse: there were orc bones scattered in the moss. Not shattered. Arranged. Reverently. Like a burial rite.
No one teaches that orcs had rites.
I asked the local priest. He gave me that same smile bureaucrats give when you’ve already lost the argument. “Those savages never buried their dead,” he said. “They ate them. Or burned them. Depending on which folk song you believe.”
But I don’t believe the songs anymore. Not after what I saw in the gate. There were carvings inside. Murals, partially collapsed. One showed orcs—not rampaging, but healing the wounded of other races. One showed a queen, or a priestess, standing beside a human with her hand on his shoulder.
I copied what I could and I’ll send them along in another letter. Maybe someone in Edicaria can still read them.
None of this is going in the official report. I’ve already been told—twice now—to stop asking “historical questions.” One of those warnings came from a Colonel I’ve never met, signed with the Central Command wax seal.
You remember what we used to say in the watchtower? “When you hear boots behind you in the dark, ask if they echo.” Well, nothing echoes out here anymore.
Send word back, if you can. If you can’t—send someone.
Cipher holds: Our friend Vigenere.
Yours in haste,
A.
The Fourth Encrypted Letter
Emile,
You remember Colonel Varnes?
Of course you do. Tall, loud, fond of apricot brandy and utterly convinced the orcs practiced blood magic during the war. I used to think his stories were nonsense. I wanted them to be nonsense.
Now I’m not so sure.
Varnes arrived in Manchester two weeks ago, supposedly on a routine inspection. He’s been keeping to himself—no surprise there—but I’ve heard whispers. His aides don’t match his retinue’s muster rolls. His orders override mine, sealed in wax I’ve never seen before. He visited the dig site outside Hollowmere and returned changed.
He walks slower now. His eyes don’t blink often enough. He avoids sunlight—not like a man with migraines, but like a thing that’s forgotten how to pass for human.
And people listen to him. Too quickly. Officers who used to grumble at every new order now nod and salute like he’s the High General himself. I found a sergeant crying quietly in the stables yesterday. Said Varnes gave him an assignment and when he asked for clarification, Varnes only smiled and said, “It will be clearer once it’s done.”
Emile, I don’t think Varnes is working for the crown anymore.
Or if he is, it’s not this crown.
I found a map in his quarters, half-burned. Markings near the ruins—yes, the ones no one is supposed to touch. And a symbol I’ve never seen before: a circle split by a jagged line, inked in something too dark and too red to be ink.
I’ve sent one of my runners to the chapel archives near Nareen’s Hill. He’s good, discreet. If he makes it back, I’ll know more.
But if he doesn’t—well, then perhaps it’s time to stop asking politely.
Keep this letter close. Memorize it. Burn it.
And for the love of all our shared ghosts, don’t trust anyone who mentions “the remembering land.”
Cipher holds: the good Warlord-Colonel.
Yours in uneasy faith,
A.
The Fifth Encrypted Letter
Emile,
He came back.
Barely.
Farris—the runner I sent to the chapel archives—staggered in last night just before moonrise. His uniform was soaked through, torn at the sleeves, and he wouldn’t speak for nearly an hour. Just kept shaking his head and muttering, “It remembers. It remembers.” Over and over. I gave him brandy and let him sleep under guard.
This morning, he could finally talk—somewhat. Said the archives had been moved, allegedly for renovation. The entire chapel was empty, doors bolted, no priests, no guards. But the bells still rang at dusk, even though no one pulled the ropes.
He broke in.
Inside: dust, soot, scorch marks on the walls—burn patterns in shapes he said “made his thoughts itch.” No books, but deep in the crypts, hidden behind what had once been a confessional booth, he found part of a scroll. Torn, wet, half-rotted. But legible. Some of it.
It was a battlefield report, Emile. Old. Not war-old. Older. Possibly pre-Righteous War. Refers to something called “Option Black” and “release of the Bound Cohort.” Mentions the Hollowmere ruins. Mentions them by name.
Mentions that whatever they buried there was never to be disturbed.
The other thing Farris found—on a separate scrap of parchment—was a name.
“…suppression to be executed immediately. By order of G. Varnes.”
I don’t know what that means but the ink and parchment don’t look old. Someone wrote this recently.
Farris is sleeping again. When he wakes, I may send him south. Away from this. He did well, but something in him is cracked now. I don’t want to use him again unless I have to.
I’ve also started dreaming, Emile. And the worst part? I wake up feeling like I’m forgetting something important. Something I agreed to.
Be careful what you read. Be more careful what reads you back.
Yours,
A.
The Sixth Encrypted Letter
Emile,
Something’s off. Worse than usual.
You know I’ve always been inclined to attribute missteps to sloppiness, not scheming. But I’m seeing patterns I can’t ignore.
Let me tell you what happened last week.
A runner from Westhill arrived with an urgent report: new cases of the wasting illness (what the locals are calling The Withers) cropping up among a merchant convoy recently arrived from Dredge Ferry. I sent dispatches to both Dredge Ferry and Westhill within the hour. Both riders reported delivering the messages to local authorities and… nothing happened at all. The orders were ignored and the disease kept spreading. My inquiries as to why go unanswered.
It reeks, Emile. And that’s not all.
A healer from Duskmarket — one of the few who’s had success easing symptoms — was scheduled to arrive two days ago. She never reached the us. When we sent a scout, we found her cart burned by the roadside, still smoldering. No blood, no bodies. Just ash and her half-charred ledger in the ditch.
She’d made detailed notes on the illness. What little we salvaged suggested she was beginning to suspect the local Druids were behind it – they’ve always had issues with our logging and mining operations but never did more than protest peacefully. Now, she thought, they’d decided to push further and clear us out of Cambria altogether.
Someone didn’t want that theory reaching my desk.
Now I ask you: is this all just a farce of incompetence? Or is someone—inside the system—deliberately fogging the lens?
I hesitate to name names. I have no proof, only failures too consistent to be accidents. But if the rot reaches as far as I fear, your end of the wire may be safer than mine.
Tell no one you hear from me. Don’t write back through official channels. Not until we’re sure where the leak begins.
And Emile—if they say I took ill and died quietly, you know better.
Burn this.
Cipher holds: A composite of all that’s good.
—A.
The Seventh Encrypted Letter
Emile,
Do you remember that officer in academy who threw a garden party in the middle of midwinter drills? The one who managed to charm the instructor into forgiving a two-day absence by quoting poetry and offering elderberry wine?
That man has, improbably, been promoted.
His name is Lord Kanwal , though he prefers—and insists—on being addressed as The Man of Leisure. Yes, officially. It’s stitched on his dressing gown. Which he wears. To meetings.
This is the Governor of Cambria.
I visited his estate yesterday to brief him on the escalating unrest, the magical plague, the undead reports, and the minor matter of rising peasant insurrection. He was in the garden. In his pajamas. Attempting to train a peacock to fetch playing cards.
The briefing lasted exactly nine minutes. He nodded gravely through the entire thing, sipping a cordial and murmuring “Terrible, terrible” at irregular intervals. When I finished, he declared he would “assemble a committee to look into the question of localized enthusiasm deficits among the working classes.” I believe he meant the rebellion.
He then asked whether I thought zombies could be taught to serve wine.
I wish I were exaggerating.
The worst part? He’s likable, Emile. You want to like him. He tells amusing stories, remembers birthdays, once offered to write a letter of recommendation for a conscript’s dog. But he’s incapable of governing. He signs edicts with a quill dipped in brandy and recently abolished a salt tax by accident while trying to ban his neighbor’s rooster.
There are forces at work in Cambria that would give a hardened tactician pause. Instead we have Lord Kanwal, humming operettas while the province rots underneath his slippers.
If there’s anyone at the Ministry who thinks this man was appointed to manage Cambria, they are mad. If they appointed him to lose it, well—he’s doing splendidly.
Please find out who installed him. And why. And whether we might convince them to uninstall him. Politely, if possible. Less politely, if not.
Yours in mounting disbelief,
A.
The Eighth Encrypted Letter
Emile,
Another village gone silent.
We received word from Varnock—traders spoke of sickness. Nothing formal, just rumor. I dispatched a survey detail. They returned two days ago, light one man and heavy with dread.
What they found: half the villagers bedbound, gaunt and shaking. The other half had fled. No signs of spoilage in the food. Wells were clean. No rot, no pus, no usual markers of disease. Just… exhaustion. Hunger without cause. Skin like paper. And a quiet that settled in the bones.
We sent a healer. A proper one, third-circle. She said her cleansing spells slowed the symptoms but didn’t halt them. Sometimes her spells worked well enough to buy time for the victim to recover. Most of time, however, they didn’t.
Worse: there are whispers of similar symptoms in at least five other settlements, all strung along common trade routes. Merchants, travelers, travelling mendicants. It moves like contagion but spreads like an idea—silent until it isn’t.
The symptoms don’t strike elves, dwarves, or goblins. Only humans, mostly. Halflings get a touch of it, but nothing fatal. The rest of us—well, the afflicted fade. And not slowly.
The governor’s office has issued a polite bulletin about “seasonal weakness.” I’ve written a stronger report, but I suspect it will vanish like the last two. My clerk swears she copied and sent them, but no one in Edicaria claims receipt.
If you can, find a healer or a cleric who still owes us a favor. Get me a name. I’ll take her field notes if they’ve got any. Hell, I’ll take her second-year apprentices.
Something is leeching the life out of this province.
And someone—or something—is making sure no one notices.
Yours,
A.