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As the first rays of dawn hit the head of Jonathan Riker’s statue a cloud of dust swept over it born on a thunderous rush of wind. No change in weather was in the offing. However when the dust settled the only change that spoke to the source of the gust was a lone man picking his way through the graveyard. There was an odd quality to the man. It had little to do with his rumpled brown duster, heavy boots or even the unusual shirt wrapped around his torso. His face was unlined but his eyes were deep and hard. Unnatural streaks of silvery hair shot through his bangs and long ponytail but otherwise there was an unsettling, ageless quality to him.

The man stopped by at the Riker family crypt and nodded in greeting. Then he turned his attention to the unnatural eclipse locked in place over the bay. “My apologies, Jonathan,” the stranger said. “I kept telling myself I’d sort that one out eventually but others kept making demands on my time and I never got to devote my full attention to running him down. This never should’ve landed on your doorstep.”

With a twitch of one hand he moved the edge of his coat back and unlimbered his weapon. It was a long, gently curving sword with minimal hand guard and no mount to hold a sulfurite crystal. To the casual weapon enthusiast it might look like a Hodekkian tachi. Those familiar with such weapons could tell it was no such thing as soon as he drew it. A gleaming pattern like oil ran down the edge of the blade, nothing like a tachi’s hamon, and the hilt wasn’t wrapped in the diamond patter most Hodekki weapons favored. Still it gleamed brightly in the growing light of dawn.

The stranger casually threw the weapon over one shoulder as he studied the lighthouse, the bay, and the magic and crowd surrounding them both. “A fine place you’ve made here. I’ll step lightly. Someone kept old Heinrich from dragging your town off the face of the map and I’ll leave as much of their hard work in place as I can. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll just take him back with me as payment. Unless he runs again. Either way, I guess we can call it even.”

He raised his sword to salute the founder of Riker’s Cove, then walked out of the graveyard at a sedate pace. As soon as the gate to that place was fully behind him he vanished from the human eye with a loud bang. A deep bootprint crushed into the dirt path was all he left behind him. Even if they had been looking that way, no one in the town watching what happened would have understood what they saw. From its vantage on the bluffs the statue of Jonathan Riker was better suited to the task.

Beyond that, its eyes of stone saw many things human eyes could not.

It clearly saw the stranger tear through town, barely more than a blur, once more pulling a wave of dust and debris in his wake. Sunlight glanced of his blade, reflecting in a dozen windows as he passed by. The force of his passage rattled doors in their frames and tore shingles from the roofs but none of the townsfolk at the docks heard him approach. Like the dust, the sound of his footsteps roiled along behind him.

Before he reached the docks the stranger slowed just a hair, leaping up the harbor master’s shack and using it as a platform to leap over the assembled crowds. In spite of his reduced speed the thunder following in his wake leveled the building and scattered the people like leaves. The candles they held were dropped or thrown aside yet didn’t blow out. In spite of the wall between their time and that of their creator the magic of the candles had linked themselves to Avery’s spell and now far more than simple combustion kept them lit.

As he flew through the air the stranger lifted his sword overhead in both hands, blade aglow with the force of daybreak. He landed only two steps from the edge of the lighthouse’s prison. The man rolled his momentum forward one step and struck straight down with his blade.

Heinrich von Nighburg’s bubble of warped time parted before it.

With a single flowing cut the moon prism split asunder and the stranger rolled back, letting the momentum carry him around and back into the wave of dust and thunder following in his wake. Once again he shifted his weight and looped his momentum forward again. The crackling wave of sound and air caught up the candle flames and the magic they contained as if it would drive the stranger’s sword forward again, this time with all the collective power of Riker’s Cove behind it. With a flick of the wrist, as simple yet delicate as skipping a stone, he sent that power upwards towards the malignant sky. The second wave cut away the malignancy there as easily as the first split the prism.

In the space of two, perhaps three heartbeats it was over. The sound and fury was past, the unnaturally long eclipse ended and a single, mangled body fell from the sky into the waves of the Cove once more.

To the people of the town it looked downright miraculous. One moment they were gathered, staring at the twisted sky, then there was a blinding flash and a thunderclap and they found themselves on the ground, looking up at a normal morning horizon, a total stranger standing in their midst with a satisfied look on his face. Satisfaction that quickly turned sour.

“Gotterdammerung,” he said, sheathing his weapon as he waded into the surf. “Why did he have to land in the ocean?”

Roy was just beginning to think he couldn’t hold the flame anymore when a sound like ripping cloth tore through the beacon chamber. The cacophony of voices from the sky paused, as if they all drew a breath at once. In that moment of quiet Roy thought he heard the echoes of Sam Jenkins laughing then dawn broke over the lighthouse in a thunderclap. A surge of power carried quiet thoughts of concern and hope from the shore, quickly overwhelmed by singular purpose.

Something shifted in the mindscape and the flame Roy was holding flared ten times as bright. Deep inside it, Johan’s sunstone flared up, then burst. The power swept away the candle flame, the sunstone and the last wisps of Avery’s control over the mindscape then shattered all the glass in the lighthouse reflectors for good measure. It would’ve been a scary sight if the six of them weren’t blinded by the sunstone flaring already.

When Roy could see again he looked around and saw nothing. The rest of the roof had been torn away and they had an unobstructed view of the early morning sunrise over Riker’s Cove. The sky over the waters was empty.

“Dust and ashes.” Roy dashed to the edge of the building and looked down but he didn’t see anything disturbing the waters of the bay.

“What happened?” Brandon asked, the bark of his yew retreating back into his body as he shifted back to a more normal appearance. “Did he escape with that thing?”

“I don’t think that was something that would just vanish,” Avery replied, still lying flat on his back. “Felt like the kind of creature that likes to let others know it’s around.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Roy snapped, hustling back to the stairs. “Whether his patron is here or not, I’m not letting that blackguard leave this town alive.”

Proud Elk was only a step behind him. “As always, Bright Coals, when it comes to hunting vile creatures you see the clearest.”

From the clattering on the stairs Roy could tell there were only two people behind him and he didn’t have to stop and look to know who they were. Avery and the Fairchilds were dependable enough souls but they’d never seen something like that before and it was the kind of experience that took some getting over the first time you did it. Besides, it was the three of them who owed Jonathan the most. The three of the them should finish it.

Roy’s first instinct was to head to the mirror and return to the manse, which seemed like the most likely place for von Nighburg to go after… whatever happened up there. But when they reached the bottom of the stairs they found the glass in it shattered just like the reflectors up above. A quick glance to Johan, a shake of the head, and Roy knew there was no way they were going to do anything with the mirror so he continued down to the base of the tower. Maybe the wizard was somewhere in the bay.

However as he reached the stairs to the ground floor Roy was greeted by two familiar voices speaking. One was Samson Riker. The other he hadn’t heard in a long, long time.

“Dangerous in here,” Riker was saying.

“Probably the most dangerous place left in town.” The other was speaking in a cheeky tone. “There’s no sign of Heinrich in the bay so if he’s anywhere it’s going to be in here.”

“Check again.”

Roy cleared this throat and approached the two men, politely declining Jenny’s offer to take her spot next to her father. “Nothing to see in here. Von Nighburg had some kind of a bolthole built on the other side of a mirror. The sheriff called it a shallowing. Problem is the mirror leading to it is shattered and near as we can tell no one’s getting through it.”

The stranger made an irritated noise and shoved his hands into the pockets of his brown duster. “Frustrating. Heinrich is pretty good at contingency plans but he’s never been so gifted at running away.”

Riker glanced at Roy and raised one eyebrow and tilted his head out towards the water. “You gonna check?”

“No. If he says von Nighburg ain’t out there then he’s not there.”

“You seem awfully confident about that,” Avery said, climbing down the stairs with tired, heavy footsteps, the Fairchilds right behind him. “I thought you said everyone else you asked to come was unavailable.”

“They were.” Roy gestured at the stranger. “This is the one we didn’t ask. Sheriff, Fairchilds, Mr. Riker, allow me to introduce you to the one the Sanna call The Strongest Man in the World.”