Story 1164: Madame Grin’s Tavern

Every city has a place where the lost gather. Not the drunk or displaced—but the truly lost: the cursed, the forgotten, the ones who speak to mirrors and wake up with sand in their veins. In the City of Echoes, that place is a crooked, ivy-choked structure wedged between two impossible alleys.

No signs.

No hours.

Only a flickering lantern swinging over the door.

Madame Grin’s Tavern.

If you find it, it’s because she wants you to.

Calia Morn had been a medium once—until the dead stopped speaking to her. Now, she wandered the city's edge, chasing scraps of meaning in strangers’ footsteps. The night she arrived at the tavern, she hadn’t meant to. One wrong turn off Bleeding Street, and she stood before the door, cold wind pressing against her spine.

She entered.