Story 1173: Gravedigger’s Pact

By lantern light and fog, Jasper Crane dug.

Always the same rhythm—shovel, breath, earth. And always at night, when the townsfolk of Greyhall slumbered under roofs they prayed would not leak into their dreams. Jasper had long since learned not to pray. Prayers, in Greyhall, had a cost.

His graveyard, Wyrm's Hollow, was older than memory, stitched across crumbling hills. The headstones shifted when no one watched. Names faded. Some plots dug themselves. And Jasper never questioned it.

Not after what he had done.

The pact was simple. One life spared—his brother, dying of fever—and Jasper would bury whatever the voice asked. No questions, no funerals, no crosses.

The first time it spoke, it came from the open earth.

“You will dig. We will feed. You will never ask for whom.”

That was fifteen years ago. His brother had lived, untouched by sickness, but changed. Quiet. Feral in moments. And Jasper had kept digging.

Tonight, the voice returned.

“The soil is restless.”