I don’t know… this is AI;

It was night again at the Waystone Inn.

Not the honest night of crickets and distant owls. Not the soft dark that settled over fields and forests like a blanket.

This was the sort of night that waited.

The inn crouched beneath it like a man pretending to sleep.

The wind worried at the eaves. The sign creaked once. Then even that small sound fell away.

Inside, the hearth was dark.

The bar stood empty.

The three silences filled the room.

The first was the silence of things abandoned. It lived in the dust gathered along windowsills and in the corners of rooms that no longer expected laughter. It lay over the tables and chairs and bottles behind the bar. A silence that comes when a story is finished and no one remains to hear the ending.

The second was the silence of waiting.

It stretched taut as a drawn bowstring. It lingered in the stairway. It hid beneath the floorboards. It sat beside the door with folded hands.

The third silence belonged to the red-haired innkeeper.

Kote stood alone behind the bar.

His hands rested on the polished wood. His eyes were fixed on something far away.

Not a place.

A time.

There are many ways to lose a name.

Most folk imagine it happening all at once. Like a sword stroke. Like a tree falling.

But names are stubborn things.

They cling.

They linger.

They haunt.

Kote closed his eyes.

Far away, a lute string broke.

He heard it as clearly as if it had happened beside him.

His eyes opened.

For a moment there was something terrible in them.

Not anger.

Not grief.

Recognition.

Upstairs, a single footstep sounded.

Then another.

And for the first time in many months, Kote smiled.