The signpost had warned me: it was a dead-end street, smothered in the choking dampness of autumn leaves. I dropped the brass pinwheel from my trembling fingers, watching it fall silently onto the frozen soil. It didn't matter anymore. The ruthless gaze that once turned my heart into stone had finally caught up with me in this forgotten woodland. Standing in the center of the path, blocking the path back to the living, was the harbinger from my reoccurring nightmare. It wore a tattered, mold-stained burlap robe, its face a seamless mask of rough canvas—completely devoid of mouth or eyes. Around its thick, frayed neck rested a heavy hangman’s noose, its rough hemp fibers stained with the dried blood of broken promises. Perched atop its outstretched, clawed left hand was a massive, glossy raven. Its midnight feathers rustled against the cold air, its obsidian eye reflecting my pale, shivering frame. "I gave you the wreath of Anemone," I gasped, my throat raspy with dry terror. "I wore the birthstone brooch! I gave you every promise through the good and the bad!" The burlap creature did not speak. It had no tongue to speak. But the raven on its arm opened its razor-sharp beak, and from its dark throat came a shrieking, metallic echo—like a heavy gavel striking cold marble, delivering a final, unyielding judgment. “You let go in a fit of rage,” the bird cawed, mimicking the bitter, haunting regret of my own voice. “You broke the vow to hold hands until the end.” A sickening snap echoed through the trees as the hangman's noose around the creature's neck contracted on its own. I turned to run, but my feet wouldn't move. Looking down in horror, I saw dry, yellowed stalks of wheat and thorny vines bursting through my leather boots, digging deep into my ankles, anchoring me to the earth. The sky dimmed into an unnatural, milky haze as the coldness seeped directly into my marrow, petrifying my limbs into hollow, wooden stakes. The straw figure took a slow, silent step forward. It raised its free hand, pointing a single, dry finger made of woven twine straight at my chest. “No divine nectar remains,” the raven screeched, flapping its wings as it took flight toward the celestial dark. “Only the eternal watch.” Pain exploded in my ribs as my chest caved in, filled to the brim with dry husks and bitter broom flowers. As my vision faded into a permanent autumn twilight, the heavy burlap hood was gently drawn over my face—locking me into an absolute, speechless stone forever.

A young man of great promise, a prince of the kingdom was forced to flee the capital with a troupe of his servants, as it was under siege and looked destined to fall. And while he firmly believed that the resources of the kingdom would in the long run prove more than enough to mount a counter-offensive to ultimately vanquish the foul enemy, he reasoned that for two or three months he would be safer hiding in the desert, in anonymity. It so happened that for the first month in the wilderness he consciously refused to treat anything about his situation as more than transitory, and so made it a point not to even erect a house. But when the second month also passed, without any news of formidable friendly armies coming to lift the siege, he grudgingly decided to construct a house. This was soon followed by auxiliary estates and farms for his men to inhabit and work. A few years later, a city had risen where continuous desert had once been, and it was slowly but steadily expanding. The prince personally oversaw important public works and spent his afternoons watching the sunset over his serene domain that stretched as far as he could see. But in the fever of engineering, new and higher towers were always under construction, and one afternoon it so happened that the prince, standing on the highest balcony of the highest and newest of the towers, happened to observe a most perplexing thing when he allowed his sight to stray to the horizon. There, at the very edge, instead of the familiar white walls and red roofs of the houses on the outskirts, he saw a very different color: the yellow of the desert. At first he couldn’t understand what it was. He sent for a scholar, who explained to him that it was called a desert, but when the prince asked him to elaborate it was painfully clear that the scholar did not know what the word actually meant. In the great city they had more than just words for all other phenomena; they had precise definitions for houses, towers, farms, roads, castles, for every minute element which, when connected with a multitude of its kind, produces definitive objects of observable mass, and also theories about things unobserved but potentially existing, or about the potentiality of known things being redefined by new theory. But this desert didn’t readily fit into any of the numerous categories. And the prince, being ingenious, took it upon himself to provide a first definition. “I shall call it Bad City,” he declared to his subordinate “because it clearly is part of our city, but not in a way that can be acceptable”. And he decreed that new buildings were to be assembled, high enough to cover the line of the horizon that is visible from the tallest structure of the day.

In 2037, post-apocalyptic York, Sir Reginald Flagstaff, better known as Sir Reggie or affectionately known as Hedgehog, tapped his foot on the snow covered cobblestone road. He waited for the Royal Witch Hunter to arrive. The day's post road coach had come and gone with the hunter being a no show on it. "Cedric, you're sure the hunter's arriving today?" "Sire, that's what the King's letter stated. On the thirtieth, but Sire, it didn't say how or when, just today's date." Drawled Phillip. Sighing, Sir Reginald stopped tapping his foot. In the distance, he spotted a lone figure poorly dressed in loose-fitting burlap. Sporting a hangman's loop around the neck, and wrapped about the waist. "No. No. Not Bloodsaw Hackemup. Who in their right mind would hire the Butcher of Glenfester as a witch hunter?" Phillip opened his mouth, but stopped and stared at the approaching tall figure unwinding the hangman's noose from around the neck and waist. Phillip, shaking as if he had seen his own death, sidestepped past Sir Reggie, and ran back towards the safety of the village. "I wonder why Bloodsaw is doing that? There's nobody out here but you and me." Surmised Sir Reginald, "Phillip, Phillip, where are you going? You get back here right now! He's here to help us!" A splattering of bloody holes spread across Phillips back from shoulder to shoulder. His toppling body met the cobblestones face first with a thud as the sound of the witch hunter's automatic caught up to the impacting slugs. Staring dumbfounded at the dead Phillip, Sir Reginald's mouth hung open. "Hi Hedgehog, can you give me a hand hoisting this warlock's body up on that old oak tree?" Hackemup requested, "You can close your mouth now that the warlock is dead." Hackemup spotted Reggie's eyes glossing over, "Crikey! Not you too!" Hackemup's automatic slugs nailed Sir Reggie, knocking his now corpse back against a granite stone wall. Hackemup hung both corpses from the same tree to remind everyone that when it comes to witches, don't trust anyone to convert to Satanism when you least expect them to. Bloodsaw, removed her mask, wiped the sweat from her brow and headed over to the village pub. "I need more than one brew of dark ale this day," Said Bloodsaw Hackemup as she checked two more names on her ex-lovers revenge list.