Story 1179: Death at the Iron Gates

The Iron Gates of Carrion Keep hadn’t opened in over a century. Forged from blackened steel, etched with ancient runes, and locked with no visible keyhole, they stood as a grim reminder of the war between the living and the things that lurked beyond sleep. Legends claimed the gates held back a city not of this world—a place where the dead ruled, and time had forgotten its name.

Tonight, they groaned.

Evelyn Blackmoor stood before them, breath fogging the air, revolver holstered but useless. Behind her, the city of Greyhollow stirred uneasily. The storms had stopped. The rain priest was gone. But something worse now listened through the silence.

A messenger had brought her here—a boy with black eyes and no tongue, bearing a sealed letter written in her own handwriting: “It ends at the gates.”

She wasn’t alone.

From the mist came Jasper Crane, pale, shovel in hand, eyes sunken with insomnia. “Voices in the soil say they’re waking,” he rasped. “All of them.”