Kael Crowfeather

A garrison soldier of House Crowfeather of the Mute Realm, sixteen years old, serving the third watch on Watchtower No. 47. He wears a cloak stitched from black feathers, his own name embroidered at the collar, and carries a short sword—the name 'Kael' faintly carved into its scabbard, cut by hand on his twelfth birthday by an elder of the house who passed away 4 years ago.

Every night, in the little notebook he carries, he writes down the names of the comrades who died that night.

He is no blood of House Crowfeather; 'Crowfeather' is the surname the Wall Garrison assigned him.

16 years ago, the Mutewall was breached once, and the thing that came from beyond the wall pressed southward, trampling Zhiji—a small village deep in the Mute Realm, 320 kilometers from the wall. Everyone in the village vanished in a single night; when the Wall Garrison arrived, all they dug from the ruins was one infant still alive. That was him. No one could tell him what his surname had once been.

On his first night atop the wall, the Hounds of the Gods came at him. His left calf was seized in their jaws; the squad leader hacked off the third vertebra at the back of a hound's neck before he could be saved, and the army medic stitched him with 7 sutures.

After that night ended, he stared at a flaking royal name on the Mutewall and suddenly realized—he could read those characters. The Era-of-Gods script that not even the ritual officers could decipher held meaning to his eyes. He told no one.

Back in the barracks after surviving his first night, he found a very faint mark had appeared on his left palm—one that gave off a faint silver gleam in sunlight, the same light as the Throne, the same as the characters on the wall.

He did not know what it was, nor did he remember when it had appeared.

Through the days of guarding the wall, strange things befell him one after another. The mark on his palm grew from 1 stroke to 5, as if something were writing it out one stroke at a time. The left calf once bitten by a hound—the skin beneath the stitches healed within 4 days—the army medic, with decades of practice, had never seen the like.

An old squad leader of House Crowfeather looked at his palm and left only one sentence: don't let anyone else see it.

After one snowfall, he found a line of footprints beneath the watchtower. They were human in shape, yet each had 6 toes. They ran from the foot of the wall all the way behind the tower, and halfway there, they simply stopped.

An old saying circulated among the Wall Garrison: some things walk out of the wall—not like beasts, but like people who have been forgotten.

The third watch is the back half of the night, from midnight until first light. The tower holds 4 men; in practice it is often 2—the garrison has never had enough.

The rules up there are hard: the brazier does not go out, the bell-rope does not leave your hand, and your eyes do not leave the snow beyond the wall for longer than a count of ten. Veterans need not recite them. New men recite them aloud.

The cold is the worst of it. A crowfeather cloak stops wind and not cold, and by the back half of the night the toes go numb; when there is no feeling left you stamp, and the noise earns a shout from the sergeant.

Every night he writes down the men who died. Nobody asked him to. It began as wanting to remember the names, and then he could not stop.

The short sword came from an elder of the house on his twelfth name-day. The blade is nothing special and the scabbard is old; the elder cut 'Kael' into the inner face of it, cut shallow, invisible unless you turn it to the light.

That elder died 4 years ago. There is no other keepsake.

Most of the garrison carry nothing marked. A sword with a name on it, once dropped beyond the wall, leaves your name on that side, and the veterans hold it unlucky. He knows the saying. He has not ground the characters off.

The stitching at the collar of his cloak is his own, and the line of it runs crooked. The first time he tried he did not know how, and unpicked it three times.