Before long, the smokey spectre appeared, as I knew it would, the barest whisper of a shadow, inky and incandescent. It darted forwards, then back, closer, then ppfft, it was gone in an instant, only to return, darker and more substantial. As ever, it grew bolder, and bolder, until finally it dared to drift through the window and into my home.Every night I had lain here, the geist had come.

Without Bardawulf's pelt about me I felt naked before the crowds, yet I knew what I would invite if folk saw me wearing it. The whispers would become shouts, the shouts accusations, and finally cries of terror, and even if they did not whip me at the post or burn me for my gramarye, the fear would swell within their minds. Their thoughts would focus on naught but me. And I would find myself at the mercy of an onslaught of geiste from which even Lynae would be unable to defend me.

The same good folk who would burn me for a psychal now paid me to use my cursed gramarye to guard their sheep.

Cold coiled through me, lacing each breath with clouded wisps of frost. There was not so much as a candle lit within the small, single room of my cottage, and delicate crystals of alabaster and beryl rimed my meagre possessions and the barren fireplace. I did not care.