*Day 11 - The Crossroads of Wrong*
The tavern shouldn't exist.
In the middle of the Desolation, where reality itself was sick, where the ground was salt and ash and nothing had grown for a century, stood "The Last Drop"—a perfectly normal tavern with smoke rising from its chimney and laughter spilling from its windows.
"This is a trap," Kaelen said.
"Obviously," Ora agreed.
"We're going in anyway," S'pun-duh said, already heading for the door. "Because I smell fermented fungi, and I haven't had a proper drink in three weeks."
The inside was worse than the outside. Not because it was horrifying—because it was mundane. Travelers sat at worn wooden tables. A fire crackled in the hearth. A bard played something that might have been music if music had been invented by someone who'd only had it described to them.
Everyone was real. Ora's corrupted senses confirmed it—beating hearts, flowing blood, souls flickering like candle flames. But real things shouldn't be here. Real things couldn't survive in the wrongness.
Her presence made the tavern colder—five degrees below normal, frost forming on her mug before she could drink. The other patrons shivered but didn't comment, as if cold was just another wrongness to endure. She tried to warm the space, to push heat from her core, but nothing came. The world believed she was winter, and belief here was law. She couldn't warm because no one believed the Ashkore could bring anything but cold.
She could taste their souls on the air—the innkeeper: Medium weight, flavored with resignation and artificial cheer. The travelers: Light weights mostly, young souls untested by real loss. But underneath, something wrong. Their belief in this place's reality was too perfect, too unified. Belief this strong should have competing flavors, contradictions, but this was monotone—manufactured faith that tasted like copper pennies and static electricity.
"Welcome!" The innkeeper was a large man with a smile that reached his eyes but not his soul. "Travelers! It's been so long since we've had travelers. Sit, sit! First drink's free for newcomers."
They sat because standing would mark them as suspicious. The other patrons glanced at them, then away, then back, in a pattern that was almost synchronized but not quite.
"What is this place?" Ora asked.
"The Last Drop," the innkeeper said, pouring something that looked like ale but smelled like regret. "Last tavern before the Bone Amphitheater. Last chance for warmth and company before..." He trailed off, smile never wavering.
"Before what?" Kaelen pressed.
"Before whatever comes next."
A woman at the corner table stood. She was beautiful in the way a knife is beautiful—sharp, dangerous, purposeful. Her dress was red silk that seemed to absorb light.
"New players," she said, voice like honey over broken glass. "How delightful. Would you care for a game?"
"What kind of game?" Ora asked.
The woman produced a leather cup and a set of bones—not dice, actual bones, carved with runes that hurt to read.
"Il Gioco delle Ossa," she said. "The Bone Game. Very simple. We each roll. We each bet. Winner takes what was wagered." She smiled, showing teeth that were just slightly too sharp. "I bet secrets. What do you bet?"
"We're not—" Kaelen started.
"I'll play," Ora interrupted. Something about the woman felt important. Connected to the wrongness but not part of it.
"Excellent." The woman sat across from her. "I am Claudia. I keep the laments."
"Claudia?" Ora's eyes widened. The Keeper of Laments. The one who sealed the poetry riddles on ancient artifacts. Lyra had mentioned her once—a legend, a myth, a woman who turned grief into power.
Ora's corrupted senses tasted Claudia's soul—ancient, impossibly heavy, at least 12 Gravitas. It tasted of salt and iron, endless tears crystallized into purpose. But underneath, a sweetness that shouldn't exist—the preserved innocence of a child's laughter, kept fresh across centuries.
"You know me. How interesting." Claudia picked up the bones. "These are special. They don't show numbers—they show truths. The deepest truth wins. Shall we begin?"
"What are you betting?" Ora asked.
"The location of Vorgoth's workshop. Where the God-Eater is being built."
"And what do you want from me?"
"A memory. But not just any memory." Claudia's eyes gleamed. "Your last memory of your mother. Before she died."
The tavern went quiet. Even the fake-real patrons stopped pretending to drink.
"That's cruel," S'pun-duh said.
"That's the game," Claudia replied. "Cruel truths for cruel times."
Ora's mother had died when she was seven. Wasting sickness. Slow, painful, inevitable. The last memory was her mother's hand in hers, cold and thin, whispering something Ora had never told anyone.
It was the most precious thing she had left. The only memory the corruption hadn't touched.
"I'll play," Ora said.
Claudia smiled and rolled the bones.
They clattered across the table and stopped, runes facing up. But instead of symbols, images appeared in the air above them—Claudia's truth.
It showed a younger Claudia, centuries ago, standing before the first Heart Tree. She was crying, holding a dead child—her child. The Heart Tree was offering her a bargain: become the Keeper of Laments, turn all grief into riddles and locks, and her child's soul would be preserved in every puzzle, every sealed door, every riddle that required pain to solve.
"My truth," Claudia said simply. "I became immortal to keep my daughter's memory alive in the world's grief."
Ora picked up the bones. They were warm, almost alive. She rolled.
The images that appeared made everyone gasp.
It showed Ora at seven, holding her dying mother's hand. But it showed more—it showed what her mother saw. Not her daughter but a prophecy. In her dying moments, Ora's mother had Seen what her daughter would become. The Ashkore. The bridge between life and death. The weapon that would either save the world or end it.
And her mother's last words, whispered so only Ora could hear: "My beautiful monster. My necessary evil. I'm sorry for what you'll have to become."
Her mother had known. Had always known.
The revelation hit like glass shattering in her mind—another truth breaking. The ash taste in her mouth intensified, mixing with copper and salt. Her temperature dropped a fraction more, frost spreading across the table from where her hands rested. The memory wasn't being taken, but its nature had changed—from comfort to burden, from warmth to cold purpose.
"Well," Claudia said softly. "That's a heavy truth."
"Who wins?" Ora asked, voice hollow.
"Nobody wins the Bone Game," Claudia said. "We just reveal what was always there." She pushed a map across the table. "Vorgoth's workshop. The Forgotten Foundry. Three miles east, where reality breaks completely."
"You're giving me the location anyway?"
"I'm giving you a choice." Claudia stood. "The same choice your mother saw. Become the monster that saves everyone, or remain human and watch everyone die."
"Why help me?"
"Because," Claudia touched the bones, and they crumbled to dust, "I know what it's like to lose everything and choose to become something else. And because your sister asked me to, before she died."
"Lyra spoke to you?"
"Lyra spoke to everyone who would listen. She was trying to prevent this, trying to change the future she'd Seen. She failed, but she made sure the right people would be in the right places when you needed them." Claudia moved toward the door. "The tavern will disappear when I leave. The patrons aren't real—they're echoes of travelers who died here over the years. But the innkeeper..."
She looked at the large man still smiling his empty smile.
"He's real. Has been running this tavern for fifty years, serving drinks to echoes, waiting for someone to notice. He's quite mad, but harmless. Take him with you if you have any mercy left."
"Wait," Ora called. "The riddles. The poetry locks on the ancient artifacts. Lyra said you created them."
"I did. Each one contains a fragment of my daughter's soul. Solve them with genuine grief, and you free a piece of her to move on." Claudia paused at the door. "There's one in the Forgotten Foundry. On the weapon that can kill the God-Eater. You'll need your grief to open it. All of it."
She left. The tavern began to fade. The patrons dissolved like morning mist. The fire went out. The walls became transparent.
Only the innkeeper remained, still smiling, still holding his pitcher of not-quite-ale.
"Oh good," he said cheerfully. "The illusion's ending. I was getting so tired of pretending the dead were alive. They're terrible conversationalists. Always telling the same stories."
"You knew?" Kaelen asked.
"Of course I knew. But what else was I going to do? The wrongness killed my family, destroyed my home. This tavern was all I had left. So I served drinks to ghosts and waited." He set down the pitcher. "I suppose now I'll have to find something else to do."
"Come with us," Ora said, surprising herself.
"To almost certain death?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's better than certain madness." He grabbed a pack from behind the bar. "I'm Marcus, by the way. I make excellent stew from things that shouldn't be edible. You'd be surprised what you can cook with enough salt and desperation."
They left the tavern as it dissolved completely. Where it had stood was now just more desolation, more wrongness. But Marcus was real, solid, sane enough.
"The Forgotten Foundry," Ora said, looking at Claudia's map. "Where Vorgoth builds his abomination."
"Where the God-Eater waits," Kaelen added.
"Where reality ends," S'pun-duh said.
"Where we're going anyway," Marcus said cheerfully. "Because what else is there to do at the end of the world but walk toward the thing ending it?"
They set off east, into wrongness so complete that even direction became negotiable. Above them, the sky cracked like glass. Below them, the ground forgot how to be solid.
But Ora kept walking, her mother's last words echoing in her mind: "My beautiful monster. My necessary evil."
She'd thought it was delirium. Now she knew it was prophecy.
The question was: would she fulfill it, or defy it?
Three miles to the Forgotten Foundry. Three miles to choose who she would become.
Behind them, where the tavern had been, a single flower bloomed in the desolation. It was impossible—nothing could grow here. But it grew anyway, white petals in dead soil.
Claudia's daughter's favorite flower, though none of them would ever know it.
Even in the wrongness, grief could still create beauty.
Even at the end of the world, love could still leave marks.
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*End Chapter 10*
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