The King's Road

No surviving record explains who built the King's Road. The name appears in old maps and local stories, but even scholars disagree over which king it supposedly belonged to. Some believe it once connected settlements that disappeared centuries ago, while others suggest the name was given much later to a road already ancient at the time.

Farmers and travelers still use the sections that follow useful routes, but deeper in the wilderness the road becomes stranger. It crosses streams where no bridge remains, passes abandoned clearings and sometimes continues straight through dense forest without turning toward any known destination.

Old travelers say that if you find an unfamiliar stretch of the King's Road, you should remember where you entered it.

Because not every part of the road appears on any map.

Mystery Hook — The Missing Mile

A hunter returns from the forest claiming he discovered a perfectly preserved section of the King's Road beyond a familiar trail.

Along it stood old stone markers, each carved with distances to places whose names he had never heard before.

He returned several days later with others to show them.

They found the road exactly where he described it.

The stone markers were gone.

Except for one.

It now bears the name of the nearest village.

And beneath it, a distance of one mile.