The writes first
The sky above Harrowmere tears open with a sound like wet canvas, and you drop through it onto cobblestones still warm from noon. Around you the market stalls go quiet. A bread seller lowers her tray. Somewhere a bell begins to ring, one slow stroke at a time, and nobody seems sure who is supposed to answer it.
The Narrator has rolled this world in the moment you arrived: a river city under a sealed mountain, a council that has not met in forty years, and a nobleman who has been buying every bell in town.
“You’re the one from the sky,” says the bread seller, already reaching for a knife to cut you a heel of loaf. “Don’t look at me like that. Everyone who falls out of that rip asks where they are, and nobody here knows either.”
She presses the bread into your hands, then glances up at the mountain, where a thin line of smoke has begun to rise over the ridge.
The bell stops. In the silence a heavy cart rolls into the square, its driver wearing a grey council seal and a grim expression.
So, traveler. Do you follow the bell, the cart, or the smoke?
