The dry wood cracked as I pushed open the door. All it took was the trained motion, twisting the familiar iron knob, the expected weight needed to make the device move. Each mechanical movement cascaded memory after memory until I was the same young child I had been fifteen years prior.

Expectation gripped me. Memories of when I had come home with Father from our hunts, or from going out by myself, there was always something waiting for us when we came home. Conversation. Not the niceties he had become accustomed to, but honest engagement. Scolding. Sometimes just relief. Sometimes food, sometimes stories. Sometimes it was me waiting to tell something to Mother or Father. It wasn’t just who we were as people, it was the very environment itself that fostered our behavior, that created who we were.

So once again I surrendered myself unto the environment as the door swung open. The familiarity of the furniture, the kitchen, the table, all remained where their users had last kept them. Dust and years of disuse had settled over the items. Yet, in spite of the avalanche of feelings the house brought back, there was one thing that stood out from all the others.

Centered directly in front of the door stood a figure, draped head to toe in an arrangement of black garments. I instinctively looked to the eyes of the figure, but I was met with the dead gaze of a human-shaped mask. The pinkish-tan hue of fair skin had faded enough to reveal the cold alabaster foundation of the concealment, lending the stoic air of a statue of old. The mouth and forehead of the false face were covered by separate black cloth pieces, as if masking the mask itself.

But it wasn’t these details that locked me in place. Over the nose, a symbol scorched into reality by shining black metal hung in front of the mask. The symbol stretched over the eyebrows, where four miniature swords hung like ornaments adorning a tree, like paint dripping down a wall. The two closest to the nose were depictions of black broadswords, stretching down from the forehead covering to the mouth covering, while two straight daggers lined closer to the mask’s temples. And in the middle of those four weapons sat the two horns of a bull I would never forget.

“You p-”.

But they were already gone. In a moment, in a flash, they had disappeared. I blinked and tried to remember if what I had seen was even real, or some memory. Maybe a part of me had wanted to see it here. Yet the symbol over the mask burned into my mind, as it had the first time I had seen it. Even when I closed my eyes, I still saw the black metal glowing in my mind. I was closer to him than I had ever been, I could feel it. The Traveler had been here.

“Anything there?” that timid voice came from behind me.

For the first time, I really, actually saw the room. Chairs toppled over, dust covering every possible surface. And instead of the comfort I had felt when I had come home, instead of even a blank foundation I could use once this was all over to build up a new life, all I could feel looking at the furniture was rage. I slammed the door and turned back towards the snowy path, “He’s close. We won’t stop tonight.”