Karma of the Fallen Angel

Prologue

In a small corner in the countryside in a town nobody has heard of, there lays an inn. Dawn was approaching, and the Scorned Angel lay in silence. It was a silence of three parts. First and simplest was a hollow, echoing silence made of things that are lacking. Wind, drinkers, gamblers. If there was music... but no, of course, there was no music. Inside the inn, a pair of men drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing so, they added a small, sullen silence to the large, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint. The third silence was difficult to notice. If you listened for a day, you begin to sense it in the wooden floorboards underfoot, and the rough, cracking barrels behind the bar. It was the weight of the hearthstone that nurtured a long dead fire, and it was in the calloused hands of the man who stood behind the bar, polishing an already gleaming stretch of wood. The man had true red hair, red as a flame. His eyes were a green so light it could have passed for grey. He moved with the subtle confidence that comes from the knowledge of that which should not be known. The inn was his, as was the third silence. It was the greatest of the three, wrapping itself around the others. It was vast and slow, like the death of autumn. It was heavy as a great smithstone forged from the sea floor. It was the patient, cut flower silence of a man waiting to die.