Grey and colorless were the most apt definition of this desolate town tucked at the corner of the Greymarch region. The land mirrored the sky with its dark lifeless soil which barely allowed anything to grow on it.
But even then, the town bustled, albeit a bit mutely. There was no jubilation among the people. Only the squelch of weathered boots through mud as they trudged toward the town square.
The low murmur was there which grew as more people arrived at the square. The decaying smell permeating the air thickened with every new addition of the town residents.
All of them shared the same weathered face and crooked teeth; every breath laced with almost poisonous stench.
"This humble mayor welcomes all forty-three residents of Undertow town to this… auspicious event." A man a bit more presentable than the lot below stood atop a stage in front of the crowd. His cleaner face and clothes, along with teeth only slightly misaligned, made him stand out. Probably the reason he was elected as the mayor of this dying town.
His deep but aging voice captured the attention of all the murmuring townsfolk below who looked at him with faces that seemed deadpan at first but one could see the dim spark in their eyes. A mix of hope and resignation.
The mayor flashed a smile, glad that he had managed to capture the attention of the crowd. His hands were shivering a bit too much today which he clenched in the hopes of steadying them.
"It's normal to be nervous on this day." He pushed away the unease and continued his speech.
"Many of you were not yet born the last time the Kindling Rite was performed in this square. Many of you have only heard of it from your parents, or from Elder Maren, or not at all." He paused, letting the weight of that settle. "I count myself among the last group."
A few dry laughs from the crowd. The mayor allowed them.
He was a man named Aldric Hess, fifty-four years old, former company surveyor when the Ashfall Mine still had something worth surveying. When the company dissolved its contract he had stayed, as many had, out of the particular inertia that afflicts people who have built small lives in small places and cannot imagine the shape of themselves anywhere else. He was too deeply rooted here.
But he had not expected to become mayor. There had simply been no one else willing to hold the title when the last one left with the company.
"Elder Maren will explain the rite better than I can." He gestured to the side of the stage where a woman stood waiting with the patience of someone who had been waiting a long time for many things.
"What I will say is this. The mine is gone. The company is gone. The last Fringe Roads trader who passed through told me the eastern pass will be unnavigable within two winters. And our neighbors don't welcome strangers." He did not soften it. These people had been living inside the truth long enough that softening it would have felt like an insult. "We have tried everything that men and women can try. Today we try something older. To make our home a bit more livable."
He stepped back. Elder Maren Voss moved to the front of the stage.
She was seventy-one, small, her white hair pulled back haphazardly. She had stopped caring about appearances several decades ago and never looked back. An old book with weathered pages lay in her hands, clutched with a bit more force than necessary.
The crowd watched her with something that was not quite reverence and not quite fear but sat in the uncomfortable space between the two.
"The altar stone has stood at the center of this square for longer than this town has had a name," she said. Her voice was dry and direct.
"It was here before the mine. Before the company. Before the road." She looked out at the forty-three faces below her. "Something put it here. Something was meant to come to it. We are going to ask that something to come now."
Her speech felt like avoidance of responsibility but it didn't matter if the purpose was already known by all below.
She descended from the stage without further explanation and walked to the altar stone at the center of the square. It was unremarkable to look at, a flat slab of dark grey rock, waist high, its surface worn smooth by generations of hands and weather.
The crowd followed her and arranged itself in a rough circle without being told to.
Davan stood near the back with his arms crossed, a broad-shouldered man whose size made him visible no matter where he positioned himself. He had the expression of someone bored of doing that they thought was pointless.
Lira stood closer to the altar than most, near enough that the torchlight caught her face clearly. She was watching Maren with the focused attention like she was trying to memorize the ritual. She had been helping the elder prepare for three days, gathering the offerings, copying out the prayer sequences in a cleaner hand than Maren's aging fingers could manage. She believed in this.
Maren set her book on the altar and opened it to a page near the back. She placed the offerings one by one: dried food wrapped in cloth, a fistful of iron scraps from the mine, a small carved wooden figure worn smooth by old hands, and finally a thin blade which she drew across her own palm without hesitation, pressing her hand flat against the altar stone until the blood pooled in the worn center hollow.
She began to speak the words from the book.
The language was old. Not incomprehensible, it was the same tongue they all spoke, but older in its construction, the way a great-grandparent's letters sound like the writer inhabited a slightly different version of the same world. The crowd was silent. Even Davan had uncrossed his arms.
It went on for some time.
When it ended, the twelve torches ringing the square guttered out simultaneously in air that was not moving.
Maren closed the book.
"It is done," she said.
The crowd stood in the dark for a moment. Then, one by one, they turned and walked back toward the smattering of houses behind them, their boots squelching through the same mud they had arrived through. No one spoke. Only the squelch and rustle permeated the air.
Maren was the last to leave. She stood before the altar a moment longer, her cut hand wrapped in cloth, looking at the stone with a blank face.
She turned and walked back to the hatch.
Above the square the Shroud hung low and still, and somewhere beneath the altar stone, in the deep pooled Vein that had been accumulating in this spot for longer than the town had existed, something that had not been there before had just begun to stir.