The Fear-Makers

The air in the inn trembled with the weight of unshed nightmares. Lira barely slept—a patchwork doze, senses threaded taut through every eerie whisper and groan of the rotting wood. At intervals, footsteps hurried beyond her door, desperate and muffled; sometimes, a cry found its way through the walls, wounded and cut short by fear or by something more decisive. Once, Lira swore she caught a whisper by her window, scraped by a nail or the claw of something longing to be let in.

The city itself did not sleep. Even in the dead hours, Lira heard Duskmire's voice: the wind moaning around eaves, a distant bell shuddering in its steeple, a chorus of crows convening just before the dawn. But the worst was the hush after. In that deep, shivering silence, she imagined the city's own terror, a living thing pressed down over the rooftops, waiting.

When the pale light finally crawled across her quilt, she rose, wrung out and jangling with unspent dread. Downstairs, Jalen was already hunched at a wobbly table, hands wrapped around a chipped mug. He gave her a nod that was equal parts greeting and warning. Behind the bar, Nora the innkeeper worked with harried precision, putting out cracked bowls of oatmeal, her eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

Lira sat, hardly tasting breakfast. Every spoken word was muted, muffled by thick anxiety.

“Did you sleep?”

“Not really,” Jalen admitted. “Nobody did. Three doors down—something came for Old Masca. The whole street heard.” He lowered his voice. “Three others missing their shadows this morning. Gone. Folks say their fears took them, dragged them somewhere. Rumors now—some specters wandering even in daylight.”

Lira's chest tightened. Specters by day, curfew by night; the city offered no safe hour. She considered her own dreams—fragmented flashes of an attic and a locked wooden trunk, a memory she had pretended so long to forget it now stalked her at the edges of sleep.

Jalen glanced up as Nora swept past. “Any news?”

She shook her head. “Nothing but panic and city runners shouting for everyone to stay in doors at dusk. Half the town is in the square, demanding the Council do something. The Night Watch are spread too thin—they won’t even come here after dark.”

“Who leads the Watch?” Lira asked, pushing back her bowl.

Nora hesitated, eyes darting to the heavy curtains drawn tight across the windows. “It’s the Council, mostly. But…” She dropped her voice. “People say there’s another. The Warden. Keeps to the old tunnels. Not seen in daylight. Folk say he’s a shadow himself.”

Jalen shot a skeptical look. “Every city’s got legends.”

But Nora would not meet his eyes.

A sudden knock shook the door—three sharp raps. Nora flinched, her ladle clattering to the floor. Lira tensed, but it was only a pair of uniformed city runners, rain-slicked coats hanging from gaunt frames, faces hollowed by sleeplessness and something close to terror.

Their badges glimmered dully in the dim. “Curfew by sundown,” one intoned, reading from a wrinkled sheet. “All residents are to remain inside after the lamps are lit. The Council will address—” A brief but audible quiver—“all concerns at noon. Please stay calm. The situation is being managed.”

Whispers broke out. Jalen stepped forward, voice sharper than intended. “Managed? My neighbor vanished last night! The whole quarter’s shaken!”

One runner’s facade cracked. “We don’t know what’s causing it, sir. There’s talk it’s the water, the fog…maybe someone bringing bad luck.” His glance flickered toward Lira. “Just follow the rules and—try not to think about it.”

He turned away, anxious to finish his unwelcome rounds. As they left, Nora and those present huddled close, sharing scraps of local gossip. The phrase "Fear-makers" skittered through the room—first as a whisper, then as a hiss, traded with trembling fingers and furtive glances.

Jalen motioned Lira to join him outside but kept to the sunlit side of the street, as if any shadow longer than a boot might leap up and swallow them both. The city felt changed; not just more anxious, but brittle. People clustered in doorways, watched the overcast sky as if light alone could protect them. Lanterns were already being strung between windows, an early defense against what dusk might bring.

Near the city square, the commotion had grown. Dozens gathered beneath a battered dais where a trio of Council members stood flanked by Night Watch. Their faces were mottled from lack of sleep, their words polished and hollow:

“There is no cause for panic. All is under control. The Night Watch will patrol all quarters, and the Warden is—” a cough, a pause “—making preparations. Please, return to your homes.”

A ragged voice from the crowd shouted, “You said that yesterday!” Another: “My daughter’s gone—swallowed by her own nightmare!”

A third Councilor murmured to a Watchman, hope draining from his posture. The Watchman's knuckles turned white on his halberd. Not for the first time, Lira saw how fear chewed through even the powerful in Duskmire.

As the Council attempted to placate the crowd—promises thudding lifeless to the pavement—Jalen pressed closer. “See? They’re as lost as we are.”

Lira was distracted by a hush that fell over the far side of the square. She followed the ripple of unease, her gaze drawn to a shadow that did not belong—a figure, impossibly tall and thin, its outline shimmering where light should have revealed detail. It lingered at the city’s edge, beyond the old iron gates to the tunnels. For a frozen heartbeat, she thought she saw a mask glinting—an elongated face, all sharp angles and empty eyeholes—before the figure dissolved into the nearest wall of fog.

An old woman beside her made a hurried sign, muttering, "Keeper of the city's nightmare. The Warden walks again."

“Did you see that?” Lira whispered, heart pounding.

“See what?” Jalen frowned, but when he followed her gaze, something uneasy flickered in his eyes. “Whatever it was, don’t dwell on it. They say the Warden can smell a troubled mind.”

Lira tried to shake the image, but it braided itself into her thoughts, binding tight around the memory that now pressed at her consciousness: the attic, the splintered trunk, the sense of something breathing with her in the dark—all the fear she had banished now clawing at the edge of recall.

The curfew bell tolled at midday, an ominous announcement that time was running thin. Shopkeepers packed up early. Street urchins scampered indoors. Above it all, the city sky swirled with gray, bruised clouds, as if preparing for a storm that might never come.

Jalen drew Lira aside into a narrow alley blushed by thin daylight. “You felt it too, didn’t you? The city getting worse. More…hungry.”

She nodded. “I keep thinking this is all some trick—maybe just the way fear spreads. But last night… I felt something in my dreams, Jalen. Something from before. When I was a child. Like it’s…waiting for me.”

He hesitated before speaking, jaw set. “Then be careful what you remember, Lira. Here, even memories turn on you. If we can’t trust the Council, maybe we need to find truth elsewhere. Together.”

In the narrowing light, Lira felt the city’s shadow contracting, clutching around her doubts. As the first lanterns ignited overhead, she wondered what manner of darkness stalked her steps—and whether she was truly prepared to meet it at last.