Abynt.
A word
spoken in Landros
with uneasy breath
and sharpened caution.
What is an Abynt?
A curse?
A blight?
A walking omen?
A bearer of sickness and vanished footsteps?
No one agrees.
But everyone fears.
The term has existed for centuries —
muttered behind tavern doors,
carved into alley walls,
passed from parent to child
as a warning
disguised as wisdom.
An Abynt is said to bring:
illness,
misfortune,
disappearing neighbours,
and a coldness in the bones
that lingers long after they leave.
People keep their distance.
They glance.
They whisper.
They tighten their grip on their children.
And the slur Abyntian
was forged
to make sure the fear
could never be softened.
But what are they, truly?
Outcasts.
Lonely souls.
Humans who happen to stand
a little further from the circle
than others are comfortable with.
People who were labelled
before they could speak.
Condemned
before they could breathe.
There is nothing divine about them.
Nothing cursed.
Nothing supernatural.
Nothing monstrous.
Only the myth
built around their silence.
And like all myths
born from ignorance,
this one grew teeth.
There was once a girl
accused of being an Abynt.
Not because she caused misfortune —
but because misfortune
needed a face.
Her story ended quietly.
As most Abynt stories do.
No graves.
No records.
No apologies.
Just a name
that never belonged to her
to begin with.
Fear created Abynts.
Cruelty kept them alive.
And reality?
Reality remembers none of them.
Because myths leave stronger scars
than the truth ever could.