Nesdurand -

The name came to him on a windless night, carved into the base of an iron lamppost in the old quarter. Nesdurand . No surname. No date. Just seven letters, worn smooth by rain and the indifferent hands of strangers.

Nesdurand. It had the weight of a forgotten language — perhaps Old Corvantine, perhaps something older still. In the scholar’s dialect, nes meant “neither” or “beyond,” and durand echoed the word for endurance, or the slow hardening of stone under centuries of frost. nesdurand

But every few decades, when the river ran low and the drowned bells of the lower city could be heard ringing on their own, a traveler would appear at the North Gate. Gray-eyed, soft-spoken, carrying no weapon but a long walking staff. They would ask for bread, listen to the news of the realm, and leave before dawn. The name came to him on a windless