Chapter Text
There's a bend in the River Usk north of the town of Caerleon that some traveling merchants and peddlers know well. It has a pleasant stand of trees that provide shelter from the heat of the noonday sun with soft mosses and grass underfoot, good for sleeping on when camp must be made for the night.
The uplands stretching beyond are rich with barley, rye, and oats, the road winding its way between the fields and the river.
On certain nights some say if you listen quietly you might hear the soft notes of a harp or the song of a young man, his voice velvet and deep, carried on the breeze.
In truth, the locals are rare to speak of it, or about what some remember of the time before the bend in the river came to be, of the old fortress that once guarded its far side but vanished mysteriously into the mists.
Some say the woods are haunted. Bad luck. Yet most travelers who’ve used the river bend to rest along the road themselves dismiss these claims as old wives' tales and wild imaginings, the phantom songs nothing more than the sound of the wind whistling through the yew trees.