Role

Chapter 2

On that unseasonably warm autumn's eve, when he marched diligently into his
small village on the outskirts of Akan, Drahmim broke out in an icy sweat.
A sudden and intense hopelessness overcame him and he almost turned right
around, as he saw the village gates in the distance, but he resisted the urge
that overcame him.

The red and amber foliage should have enlivened the town, but instead, it
was grim and forbidding. Hovering over the highest ridges of the western
mountains, the sun seemed strangely shrunken, shedding light that didn't
fully illuminate anything it touched.

The village was as bleak as any old mining town, where the mines had shut
down, and most good jobs had been lost decades ago and been moved to Akan.
Nevertheless, it wasn't such a horrible place that the very sight of it
should chill his heart and bring him instantly to the edge of despair.
He was puzzled by his peculiar reaction to this long-delayed homecoming.

Sustained in it's heyday by few thousand miners and their families, and now
by fewer than a few dozen residents, the only changes he could tell from
his youth is the utter lack of activity in the main district, even on this
beautiful day. The few people who were on the streets, he didn't recognize.

He'd been away a long time.

When he turned up the walk of his old house on the western edge of town,
his feer deepened. The small building was in disrepair.

"Somethin' ain't right", Drahmim muttered to himself.

His steps quickened, and he sprinted the last few yards to the house's
front door, and he barrelled through it with alarming speed and strength.

It was empty.