!!top!! | Nesdurand

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.

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

He whispered it aloud, and the alley seemed to hold its breath. nes meant “neither” or “beyond