Legend CXXXVIII – Brother Moorg, the Opener of Thresholds

More about Legend CXXXVIII – Brother Moorg, the Opener of Thresholds

It is said that every place has two guardians: one to preserve, and one to lead onward, and in Graystone, Brother Moorg was the latter, the restless breath beside the still heart. While his brother, the Lantern-keeper, tended the paths of memory like a gardener guards ancient seeds, Moorg carried the light forward, to where no step had yet been written. He was taller and more angular than the other, with a nose like a crooked dagger and eyes that looked as if they had seen too many doors from the inside. His staff was a gnarled branch topped with a skull that rarely smiled, and his lantern was brass, etched with symbols that even the scholars of Kalyr could not decipher. Those who met Moorg initially felt resistance, like a wind pressing against their brow, but those who stayed soon realized that behind his severity lay a patience born not of gentleness, but of experience. He moved through the corridors of Graustein as if every crevice in the stone belonged to him, and sometimes with a single glance he opened doors that had never possessed a key. People said Moorg had once been a border crosser between villages, a smuggler of letters and last words, until a storm drove him into the monastery and the walls would not release him. Since then, he tested those who thought they were ready for a new beginning, and many turned back when they saw his face in the lantern light. One winter, a woman named Elira came to Graustein, having lost her husband to the sea, yet finding no grief, only an empty room in her heart. She had heard from Moorg that he could open thresholds, and hoped to meet her husband once more through one of them, to learn parting like a prayer. The brother received her in the east corridor, where the plaster fell from the walls like old skin, and gazed at her for a long time, as if reading a book whose pages were made only of breath. Then he led her to an unassuming door, lower than a coffin lid, and placed the lantern before it, so that its light transformed the grain of the wood into a face. Moorg explained that each threshold demanded a price, not out of cruelty, but to test whether desire was stronger than habit, and Elira nodded, though her hands trembled. When she opened the door, she saw not the sea, but an evening from her youth when, for the first time, she had not kissed her husband, for fear of her own happiness. The brother placed the skull-rod against her back like a silent support, and she understood that farewell doesn't begin at the end, but at the missed beginnings. Elira stepped through, spoke the unspoken words into the air of dust, and when she returned, her face was lighter, as if someone had lifted a weight from her bones.