The Unsealing

A heretic splinter of barrow-keepers who believe the Wright's Shard was never meant to be kept asleep — and work, in the dark of the Vallen's Barrow, to wake what the prophecy says to leave sealed.

Every Asheni is raised on the barrow-prophecy: the relic stays sealed until the wind names the hand. The Unsealing read the same prophecy and decided the wind has been naming hands for ages and the Ash-Fathers keep refusing to listen. They have not the strength to take the barrow, so they haunt its outer galleries — re-cutting wards the wrong way, teaching the wights old names, leaving the deep doors a little less shut than they found them. The Asheni who keep the Vallen's Barrow hunt them as oath-breakers. The Wrights' Heirs, who would very much like the relic awake and in reach, make sure the Unsealing never quite run out of lamp-oil.