The Library · MARKER
Chapter 112
A Barrow-Road Cairn Warning
also called the sentinel cairn
A cairn on the barrow-road out of the Eastern Hills, stacked by travelers who turned back at the first sight of the Rampart Foothills' leaning columns and the things that still pace them.
Someone has added a stone to this cairn every season for longer than anyone living remembers. Under it, scratched into older rock, the same line repeats in three different hands: the columns still walk their rounds, and nothing down there answers to a living voice. Past this point the barrow-road stops being a road anyone maintains, and the quiet you'll hear once the fallen city comes into view is not the quiet of an empty place.