AZEROTH · CHRONICLE
Last Call in Aeternum
Pembington Barns wears a dozen names in Azeroth and means none of them. The one he meant was somewhere else, behind a door that's closing for good.
The Telling
Everybody at Greybear's Rest has a place they loved best, even if most of them are too proud to say so out loud. Ask Pembington about the face he wears in Azeroth and he'll shrug the way a man shrugs about a coat he only wears because it was already hanging by the door — fine enough, never chosen, one of a dozen names he's worn through there without bothering to make any of them matter. Ask him about Aeternum instead, and watch how much longer it takes him to answer.
The Axeman was the one he meant. He grew into that name slowly, over years long enough to turn a shore into a home instead of a stop along the road — a treeline he knew by heart, a forest he'd cleared and re-cleared until clearing it felt like coming back rather than starting over. He swung that axe like the forest owed him something personally, and for a long time it kept paying up.
Nobody beat him. That's the part he wants understood, on the rare nights he'll talk about it at all. No warlord, no rival clan, no invasion swept down out of the hills and took the island from him. The way there just started to fail him instead, a little more with every crossing, the way a house goes quiet room by room when everyone's finally said their goodbyes and gone. Then came word that the door wouldn't hold much longer. After that, no door left standing that opened onto it at all.
He came to Azeroth afterward the way a man takes any road left open to him once the one he wanted has closed for good — competent, unbothered, careful not to get attached to the furniture. That face was easy enough to wear and easier to set back down, and that was rather the point. He's told Kaldor as much, once, on a night generous enough with the ale to loosen him: he wasn't in the market for another world worth losing.
So now he tracks a tab instead of a treeline, and it suits him better than anyone expected it to. The chair he keeps at the Rest doesn't come with a closing date printed on it anywhere. That, as far as Pembington's concerned, is most of what recommends it.