Fable - Ask Darkness for dark affairs

The inn was little more than a rotting box in the rain.

Water drummed through holes in the roof. Smoke, cheap ale, and unwashed bodies clung to the air. Zora sat alone near the back, hood drawn low, hands wrapped around a chipped cup that held only water. She had chosen the place precisely because no one important would ever come here.

Unfortunately, someone unimportant had.

He leaned too close. Breath sour with drink, laughter loud and wet, fingers brushing where they were not welcome. He spoke without listening, confidence inflated by ale and the assumption that no one like her could possibly reject him.

Zora lifted her eyes. She simply looked at him.

Something in her gaze made his grin falter—but he was already drunk. He laughed again, louder this time, and turned away only long enough to refill his cup. Thunder rolled outside, close enough to rattle the shutters.

Then the raven appeared.

It perched on the narrow windowsill as if it had always been there, black feathers slick with rain, eyes bright and knowing. Ravens did not come this far south. Not this season. Not at night, in a storm like this.

Zora did not look at it. She did not need to.

When the man staggered back toward her, hand reaching out once more, the raven launched itself forward in a blur of black wings. It struck his face with sudden, vicious precision, beak snapping down hard. He screamed, clutching at his cheek as blood welled between his fingers, crashing backward into a table.

There was no more conversation or sound, besides the meek cries of the man .

The raven wheeled once through the room, scattering ash and droplets of rain, then vanished back into the night as swiftly as it had come.

Zora lifted two fingers and caught the waitress’s eye before the murmurs could fully return to the room.

“Bread. Cheese. And more water,” she said quietly.

The girl nodded, eyes flicking to the bleeding man on the floor and then away, as if the safest thing in the world was to obey.

She had been in Elbion for some time now, drifting from inn to inn, street to street, letting the city reveal itself at its own pace. A merchant city, bloated with coin and ambition, its docks choked with ships from every coast worth naming. Above it all, like a crown pretending to be a halo, rose the College: a monument to sanctioned knowledge and carefully curated ignorance.

If the books taken from Brockern had not been burned outright, they would have come here.

Elbion was where things were fenced, appraised, translated, and quietly moved along under the right tables. Where smugglers rubbed shoulders with scholars, and apprentices whispered about things their masters swore did not exist. A manuscript too dangerous for one city became a curiosity in another. A heresy in the mountains became a rumor in the markets.

She only needed a thread: A careless clerk… An amateur collector… Someone trying to sell what they did not fully understand.

The waitress returned with a cracked plate and a hunk of bread hard enough to bruise the unwary, a wedge of cheese sweating oil, and a cup of water that smelled faintly of iron. Zora murmured a brief prayer under her breath and ate slowly.

Carmelea Nosfir

Zora finished the mouthful of bread slowly, as if nothing of consequence had just occurred at her table. She wiped her fingers on a scrap of cloth, then lifted her gaze at last.

The pale complexion implied something, but it was not that alone. It was the woman’s presence, the way the room seemed to bend subtly around her. Alluring, certainly, but not in any way Zora would mistake for something human.

In Brockern, desire had been excised early; removed. Any impulse that distracted from study was labeled mundane filth and burned out through prayer, discipline, and punishment. Hunger, lust, fear, ambition—pared down to tools at best, weaknesses at worst. If the Order had known how to strip away the need for sleep or food entirely, they would have done so without hesitation.

No. This was not her own failing.

For her to feel even the faintest pull, the creature before her had to be exerting something inhuman. A pressure on the mind rather than the flesh.

Zora’s eyes flicked briefly to the blood in the woman’s claws. Interesting. Efficient. Vulgar, but effective.

She swallowed, then leaned back slightly in her chair, posture loose but ready, hands resting where they could move quickly if needed.

“You are very brave,” Zora said at last- “To sit so close. To speak so openly.” Her gaze sharpened, assessing.

“You surely do not fear crows” she added

She studied the woman properly now: raven hair, death-pale skin, eyes too knowing for the age she wore. A predator.

“Give me your name, pale woman,” she said. “And I shall give you mine.”

Zora stopped eating, as if her appetite had simply… withdrawn. The name had done that. Nosfir. It stirred something old and dusty in her mind, a footnote recalled from memory.

Brockern’s archives had been vast, and sometimes incomplete. Certain subjects were never expanded upon—only named, categorized, then abandoned. Night royalty, the margins had called them. No diagrams. No invocations. Just the implication that such beings existed, or had existed once, and that further inquiry was unnecessary.

Which, in Brockern’s language, meant we don’t really care enough.

“So,” she said at last, giving only the barest nod, “you are one of those who prefer to walk at night.”

It was not an accusation. Nor admiration. Merely classification.

“My name is Zora” she continued, offering nothing more. No titles. No family name she could present

Her lips curved into a small, almost amused smile.

“Usually recognition of the Black Order comes with pitchforks, torches, and a very loud sense of moral superiority.”

The smile widened, almost amused.

“So either you are very well read,” she said, “or very old. I would bet the latter” the last trace of her earlier amusement fading into something else: interest.

“This,” she said, tilting her head slightly, “is unexpected. What would someone like you do in a place like this? What providence allowed you to see this simple defense trick? I do it when I don’t want any attention, but it called yours…”