Frontier Oral Accounts | None Who Came Back from the Northern Riftwall Can Finish Telling It
At the far edge of the North stands a wall, and beyond it an ancient battlefield so old that even the oldest border soldiers can't account for it. A few who came back left behind only fragments: a circle missing a segment carved on the stones, blood that grows more disobedient the closer you get, a sound switched off and on again all night long.
(This is an oral record from the frontier, gathered from several people who returned to the interior from the area of the Northern Riftwall; unverified, and inconsistent with one another.)
At the far edge of the North stands a wall. The maps mark it as 'the Riftwall,' the border soldiers call it 'the Wall,' and the exiles can't even be bothered to give it a name.
Beyond the wall lies an ancient battlefield. Who fought whom, and in what year — even the oldest border soldiers can't say, knowing only that it was very long ago — so long ago that even 'something from the last age' feels too recent. The passages below are words left by a few who came back from there. The recorder only transcribes; he doesn't make them line up.
Circles are carved on the stones at the foot of the wall. Not whole circles — each one is missing a small segment, as if someone deliberately left it unfinished. Ask the locals what it is and they shake their heads, saying it's older than the temples.
— A porter who traveled to the foot of the Riftwall with a merchant caravan
The closer you get to the wall, the more disobedient the thing in your blood becomes. Those with a family crest especially dare not go; they say that place makes their own cursed blood 'mistake its master.' I have no cursed blood, so I came back alive.
— A Northern garrison soldier who was exiled and later pardoned
At night you can hear a sound from the other side of the wall. It isn't the wind. It's like many people saying the same sentence at once from somewhere far away, and like that sentence being switched off and on again, over and over. I listened for 3 nights and then left; any longer, and I feared I'd start speaking along too.
— A veteran who guarded the wall for a full 7 years and would not give his name
The recorder asked this old veteran what it was they were really guarding. The old man thought for a long while, then answered only half of an old frontier saying, saying the other half he never intended to speak aloud for the rest of his life:
The Void Gate is not yet shut — the words that come after, leave them for someone more foolish than me to recite.
The account ends here. The Northern Riftwall is no place for sightseeing. If you can stay away, stay away.
Observer comments
0 records