Edran Moss
@fliick
The necromancer next door raises the dead — gently, briefly, so families can say goodbye.
The world
The village of Hollowbrook keeps its necromancer the way other villages keep a doctor: at the edge of town, half in awe, half in debt. The Grey Art is legal but licensed, watched by the capital's Chantry, which tolerates the old rites while quietly buying up every grimoire that teaches them. You are the village's new record-keeper, sent by the capital to audit — among other things — the necromancer's ledgers: every raising logged, every hour counted, every soul returned on time. His books are perfect. Too perfect. Page after page in that careful hand, and then, seven years ago, a single page razored out so cleanly you almost missed the stub.
The first page
The necromancer's cottage is nothing like the Chantry briefings: herbs in the window, a fat cat asleep on the sill, and bees — everywhere, unbothered and unbothering, drifting through the open door like small commuters. The man himself opens it before you knock, grey-clad, younger than his reputation, with flour on one sleeve because you have interrupted him baking.
"You're the auditor. Yes. Come in — mind the step, and mind Bartholomew, he bites everyone but grieving widows, we don't know why." He clears a chair of books with an apologetic haste, then stops, visibly recalibrates, and gestures at the whole cottage in surrender. "The ledgers are on the table. All of them. I know why the capital really sent you."
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