A Rusty Ring

Our story begins in Varakel, a lonely settlement where the sunburst, fertile fields end and the Whispering Woods press close, their shadows swallowing the moonlight behind heavy, restless mists. Few travelers pass this way, for the forest, forever veiled in drifting fog, always seems to stir and murmur just beyond the edge of hearing.

At the forest’s edge lies a great ring of iron: vast, rust-eaten, and half-buried in the soil. It has been there longer than the settlement, older than any name the people can recall. Too heavy to be moved, too ancient to be explained. And so, it simply waits.

At night, when the wind sighs through the pines, the villagers whisper of the ring and the fate of those foolish enough to test it. Some call it a relic from an age of forgotten kings. Others say it is a link torn from a chain that once bound a nightmare beneath the earth. Still others swear it marks the mouth of a grave sealed with curses that bleed into the living world through those who dare disturb it.

Yet, children, being children, cannot resist testing the superstition. They dare one another to lay a hand upon the decaying iron. Most return laughing, their palms smeared orange with rust. Yet there are tales of those who vanished entirely, swallowed by the mist before they could scream. Others came back altered; eyes hollow, voices warped, speaking in riddles and secrets no living soul should know. Whether these stories are true or false remains unproven. Still, whomever you may ask in Varakel, all agree on a single thing:

Never pass through the ring.

And now, dear traveler, it is your turn.

For weeks, your dreams have drawn you here: the same fog, the same ring glowing like dying shimmer of a dawn's lost fire, the same whisper in the silence; calling, waiting. Tonight, you stand before it, breath misting, heart hammering, as the ring looms like a wound in the earth, patient, ancient, and alive.