Sable’s Tale: The Night I Chose

Founder didn’t take her. He held the satchel open… and waited.

You want to know how I met Founder?

Fine. But don’t dress it up like destiny. Destiny is just a prettier word for a choice you can’t unmake.

It happened on the salt flats, where the wind talks like a judge and the Red Wound sits on the horizon like a wet smile. Men go out there thinking they’re hunters. Most come back as bones.

Founder wasn’t most men.

And I wasn’t the first thing he carried…
I was the one who chose to climb in last.

The Story

If you want myth, I’ll give you myth.

But don’t confuse myth with mercy.

The flats don’t do mercy.

They stretch out like a dead sea made of salt and old bones, white and sharp beneath a sky that never learned kindness. The wind out there isn’t a breeze—it’s a blade with opinions. It scrapes the ground clean and then keeps scraping, like it’s trying to sand the world down to something honest.

And beyond that endless whiteness—past the shimmer where the air starts lying—sat the Red Wound.

Not a cliff. Not a cave.

A tear.

Reality split like flesh split. A wound in the rules themselves. The world bled there. Wanting bled there. Every hunger that ever swallowed a man and still asked for more.

Even from far away you could taste it in the air—sweet as ripe fruit, sharp as iron, warm as breath.

That’s where I found him.

Or, let’s be truthful: that’s where I decided to step into his path and see what kind of man he really was.

He had a fire, but it was the kind of fire that looked embarrassed. Thin flames, nervous heat, more stubborn than strong. The salt around it hissed and popped like it hated warmth.

He sat beside it like a thing carved out of hardship.

Founder.

Broad shoulders. Thick arms. The kind of strength that isn’t for show—it’s for breaking doors, lifting bodies, and surviving nights that would kill softer men. He looked like he’d wrestled the world and refused to yield. A face worn by sun and violence, and eyes that didn’t beg anything from anyone.

No horse. No men. No camp worth bragging about.

Just him.

And a satchel.

Plain leather at first glance. A strap rubbed raw by long miles. Stitching dark with old use. Nothing fancy.

But the air around it felt… tight.

Like a throat holding back a scream.

And there was something else too—faint, almost nothing. A smell that didn’t belong on open flats.

Old smoke. Cold metal. Burnt parchment.

Like words that had been set on fire and still refused to die.

I stepped close enough for my boots to crunch the salt and announce me. Most men out there snatch steel the moment they hear footsteps.

He didn’t even twitch.

“You walk loud,” he said, still staring into the fire.

I smiled.

I wore a shape that would sit easy in a man’s eye—traveler-woman, cloak pulled close, hair loose enough to look harmless. Pretty enough to invite a mistake. And I let my scent ride the wind first: crushed roses with a kiss of brimstone. A promise and a warning braided together.

“I thought you might be dead,” I said. “This land likes to swallow the lonely.”

“Not yet.”

He finally looked at me.

Not like a hungry pup. Not like prey. Not like a fool praying for company.

He looked like a man measuring the distance between now and blood.

That alone made my pulse go sweet.

“You out here alone?” I asked, soft as silk.

His gaze drifted past me to the flats, to the Red Wound.

“I’m not alone.”

There was nobody.

Only salt. Only wind. Only that bleeding tear in the world.

So I laughed once, quiet and cruel. “Then you speak with ghosts.”

He didn’t smile.

He didn’t bristle.

He simply said, “Maybe.”

And something in my belly tightened, because that wasn’t a joke.

That was a man admitting the world around him was full of things most people can’t see—and he wasn’t frightened by it.

I crouched across from him, close enough to feel the heat lick my knees.

“What do they call you?” I asked. “A man like you must have a name heavy enough to leave prints.”

His eyes didn’t soften.

“I don’t have one you can use.”

Oh.

That was delicious.

Names are handles. Names are chains you pretend are bracelets. If I can name you, I can start pulling.

So when he denied me that, it wasn’t stubbornness.

It was discipline.

I leaned in a little. Not too much. Just enough that a weaker man would feel the shift and forget how to breathe.

“You’re bleeding,” I said.

He glanced down, calm as stone. “Am I.”

“You are,” I purred. “Not from your skin. From the seam. Like something inside you was stitched wrong.”

That finally moved him—just barely. A flicker, like a knife shifting in its sheath.

“Explain,” he said.

Straight to it. No begging. No nonsense.

Good.

“The Red Wound doesn’t just sit there,” I told him. “It sniffs broken things. It whispers promises. It offers what you crave and charges you in ways you don’t understand until the bill comes due.”

His gaze drifted toward the Red Wound like he could hear it calling, even from here.

“And what does it offer you?” he asked.

I paused, because I hate giving truth away for free.

“A mirror,” I said at last. “And the lie that I can climb through it.”

He didn’t pity me. Didn’t judge. Didn’t try to soothe.

He just nodded, like a man hearing thunder and deciding whether it’s worth moving camp.

Then he asked again, “Why are you here?”

I could’ve lied clean.

Instead I told the truth with a smile.

“Because,” I said, “I heard there’s a man walking these flats with a pouch that can swallow monsters.”

His eyes flicked to the satchel.

Sharp. Direct.

So he knew exactly what he carried.

Good.

“I’m not swallowing anything,” he said.

“Of course not,” I murmured. “You just carry a very hungry mouth.”

The air tightened around us.

Like something inside that bag had perked up.

The fire popped. The wind pushed. And for a moment—just a moment—I swear I felt the satchel listen. Not like leather listens. Like a room listens when someone says a forbidden name.

Founder rose, slow and steady.

Not rushed. Not puffed up like a braggart. Just controlled—like a man who’s been in enough fights to know that wasted motion is how you die.

“Stand,” he said.

I lifted a brow. “Bossy.”

“Stand.”

So I stood.

He took one step toward me.

Then another.

He didn’t move like a man trying to scare me. He moved like a man who already decided what happens next, and the world simply hadn’t caught up.

“What are you?” he asked.

Not who.

What.

I smiled and let my disguise ripple at the edges—shadow where shadow shouldn’t be, light bending away like it didn’t want to touch me. Just a taste. A tease. A promise.

He didn’t flinch.

He simply nodded once.

“You came to feed,” he said.

“I came to see,” I corrected, voice low and sweet. “I can feed anywhere. But you… you’re wrong in a way I haven’t tasted before.”

His jaw tightened—just a little.

Then he reached down and lifted the satchel.

My instincts snapped awake.

That wasn’t just leather.

That was a law.

He opened it.

Not wide. Not dramatic.

Just enough.

A crack. A mouth.

And the flats changed.

The wind faltered like it had stepped into a temple. The salt seemed to shrink back. Even the fire leaned away, offended by what had entered the room.

Inside that opening wasn’t darkness the way night is dark.

It was thick.

Like a place folded wrong. Like a chamber that shouldn’t fit inside anything made by hands.

It smelled stronger now—old smoke, cold metal, burnt parchment—and something else underneath it, faint but undeniable:

Ash.

Not fresh ash.

Old ash.

The kind that remembers fires.

I took one step back before I meant to.

Founder saw it.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You feel it.”

“What is that?” I snapped.

“A hold,” he said. “A place for what won’t stop following me.”

He held it open like he was offering me two roads:

Walk away and keep hunting him like a curse…

Or step inside and become something he carries.

“Close it,” I said, and my voice sharpened. “You don’t want to do this.”

“I don’t want a lot of things,” he answered. “But I’m done being chased.”

The Red Wound shimmered in the distance like a watching eye. The wind screamed again, furious it had been silenced.

Then he said the part that made me angry—because it was true.

“I’m not taking you,” he said. “You’re choosing.”

I laughed, but it cracked.

“You think you can leash me?”

“No,” he said. “I think you can either circle me until something worse eats you… or you can get in.”

“Terms,” I said at once, because I might be wicked but I’m not foolish.

“You don’t touch my mind,” he said. “You don’t speak my name if you find it. You don’t pull me off my path.”

“And what do I get?” I asked, voice velvet over teeth.

He looked at me like a man who’d already buried the part of himself that trembles.

“You get to live,” he said.

I scoffed. “I already—”

“And,” he added, “you get to watch.”

That landed.

Because it wasn’t about survival then. Not fully.

It was about standing close to whatever storm he was becoming. A man stitched wrong, carrying a mouth that could swallow monsters, walking toward a wound in the world like he meant to put his fist in it.

Founder didn’t reach for me.

Didn’t grab.

Didn’t plead.

He just held that satchel open like a dare.

So I stepped forward.

“Don’t get comfortable,” I whispered.

He nodded once. “I won’t.”

The darkness breathed out—cold, dry, ancient.

It tested me like a tongue.

I smiled like I hated him for making me curious.

And I stepped in.

The world folded wrong around me. Rules twisted like cloth being wrung.

Inside was bigger than it should be—hallway-dark, quiet like a held breath. Walls that weren’t wood or stone, but decision. Boundaries made by will and stitched tight.

I turned back toward the opening. Founder’s face hovered there, framed by the flap.

For the first time all night, his eyes looked tired.

Not scared.

Not unsure.

Just tired, like he’d been carrying fate on his shoulder and refusing to set it down.

“Welcome,” he said, flat as a fact.

Then the satchel closed.

The buckle snapped like a judge’s gavel.

Darkness swallowed me whole.

I laughed—soft and furious—because I understood exactly what happened.

He didn’t steal me.

He didn’t conquer me.

He carried me.

And that meant I chose him.

I was still smiling when the darkness shifted.

Not the way a shadow shifts with a candle.

The way a room shifts when someone clears their throat.

A voice spoke close by, calm and clean as a turning page.

“Hello,” it said. “I’m Ledger.”

Another voice followed—older, steady, warm like embers buried under ash.

“Hello,” it said. “I’m Grandfather Ash.”

End of Tale

If you’re reading this from the satchel’s edge—know this:

Founder didn’t collect spirits like trophies.

He walked into places that wanted to eat him… and kept walking anyway.

And some of us?

Some of us climbed into the dark to see what kind of man could carry the world’s worst hunger and still refuse to kneel.