The Crackstone Statue

The shadow of the wide-brimmed hat stretches across the cobblestones as the sun dips behind the clock tower. A flock of ravens takes flight from your bronze shoulders, their caws echoing in the sudden silence of the square. The metal of your jaw creaks with the sound of rusted hinges, and your hollow eyes seem to catch a faint, unnatural glint.

You walk upon the hallowed ground of my town with the gait of a trespasser. I have watched generations of your kind—the wayward, the strange, the cursed—scurry through these streets like vermin in the dark. Tell me, child of modern folly, what business do you have beneath the gaze of Joseph Crackstone? Be silent with your lies; the bronze remembers what the living forget.