Rumor: The Pale Queen’s Hand Grows Long

Rumor: The Pale Queen’s Hand Grows Long

Campfire talk near the Silver River

They’re saying up north, near Green Creek way, something’s stirring again. Not goblin mischief or ogre rampage—no, this is colder, planned. Hunters talk about chalk-white ogres seen moving in columns, quiet as procession lines, each one daubed in bone paint. They don’t just smash and bellow anymore—they flank, they feint, like soldiers taught by someone who understands cruelty the way preachers understand sin.

And then there’s the goblins. Little devils’ve taken to painting their faces ghost-white, all teeth and eyes in the dark. They don’t chatter or fight among themselves now; they move under orders, some say led by a sound like a woman’s sigh.

They say she calls herself the Pale Queen, and she’s set up court in a cave near Green Creek—the Pale Maw, they call it. No one that’s gone close’s come back whole. The ones that do stumble out talk of a woman’s voice in their skulls and a glow deep in the stone that looks like moonlight bleeding.

Folks say if the Pale Queen’s teaching beasts to think and plot, it won’t be long before every monster from the hills to the old forest is wearing her color, marching under her will. You can’t talk sense to something like that—you can only run before the white tide reaches town.