The Calling of Wraiths End
An original story by Jethal Silverwing
In the style of HP Lovecraft
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From the Journal of Faewen Elwenspire
The mists of Wraith’s End clung to the earth like a living thing, writhing and coiling about the cobbled streets as if drawn from some dreaming abyss beneath the world. I came there in pursuit of a legend: the Book of Yh’rahn; the Mother Below
The book, it is said, contains knowledge lost before the first dawn, sealed away by those who feared what they had discovered. The villagers warned me not to seek the ruins on the hill. They spoke in hushed tones, averting their eyes
They muttered prayers to nameless gods of the deep night. I, a person of reason and adventure, dismissed their fears as peasant superstition. Oh, how I wish I had listened.
The ruins of the old monastery loomed above the town like the bones of some colossal beast, its broken spires reaching into the starless sky. Within, I found the book: bound in cracked leather that seemed to pulse faintly, as if alive.
The script inside was not written in any familiar tongue. The letters curved and twisted as though they sought to escape the page itself, forming shapes that pried at the edges of my understanding. Against every instinct, I read aloud.
The air grew heavy, the light dimmed, and a sound not meant for mortal ears filled the chamber; a groaning chorus, neither wind nor voice, yet both. The ground heaved. Something vast stirred beneath the hill
Something that had waited eons for a fool to speak its name once more. When I awoke, the book was gone, and the night outside was no longer night at all, but a roiling expanse of shifting darkness streaked with pale, writhing lights.
I fled back to Wraith’s End, praying that I had only dreamed. Yet the town was changed. The people moved stiffly, their eyes glassy and unseeing, their mouths whispering the same phrase again and again:
“She calls to us.”
I tried to speak to them, to warn them, but they did not answer. One by one, they turned their faces toward me, their expressions empty as the grave, and I saw the black veins pulsing beneath their skin, spreading like cracks in ice.
By the second night, the ground itself began to change. The cobblestones glistened as though wet, though no rain had fallen, and beneath the surface something shifted; like flesh beneath translucent skin. Shapes began to emerge in the mist:
Elongated figures that flickered between the real and the unreal, their limbs bending in ways that mocked all natural form. I heard their voices; a thousand whispers layered into one, speaking through the mouths of the damned.
Desperate, I returned to the monastery, believing that if I could find the book again, I might undo what had been unleashed. But where the hall had once stood was now a gaping chasm, pulsing with a light that defied all earthly color.
The air above it shimmered as if seen through deep water. Within the glow, I saw things moving; things that had waited in silence for uncounted centuries, now rousing to feast upon the waking world.
When I ran back to the village, Wraith’s End was no more. The houses had collapsed into grotesque shapes, the church bell tolled though no one stood within, and the people; gods, the people; were becoming something else.
Their skin sloughed away like wax, revealing forms that belonged to another cosmos entirely. Some crawled along the walls, others drifted above the ground, their eyes empty voids that wept black ichor. And still, they whispered:
“She calls to us.”
I have taken refuge at the inn at the edge of town, the last building still standing in any shape I recognize. I have barricaded the door with furniture and anything I can find, though the wood seems soft, and it pulses like living flesh.
Outside, I hear them; what remains of the villagers, their footsteps wet and slow, dragging across the street. They do not moan or shout; they only whisper and drone on, and somehow the sound is far worse as they repeat..
“She calls to us..”
THUD
THUD
THUD
The floorboards tremble. The door shakes upon its hinges. I can see the handle twisting. The air grows colder, heavy with that same awful hum from beneath the monastery.. I know what comes for me now. I know whose voice I spoke when I read from the book.
THUD
THUD
THUD
The door cannot hold.. I hear them now, downstairs.. the sloshing of moldering boots.. the scent of water logged rot and seaweed fills the air.. They are coming for me.. Oh My Goddess.. I pray whoever finds my journal please.. Tell My Children!
She calls for them, too…