The air hung cold and still in the night, shrouding the village in a blanket of darkness. Lifeless, everyone was long gone, with only the spirits left behind, tending their own graves, minding their own business.

A short distance from the village laid a crumbling ruin. A magnificent castle, in her days of glory a century ago, it is now nothing more than a pile of bricks and rubble. The royalty she used to housed and the prisoners she used to confine are now merely bones, picked clean by her most recent tenents, the vultures, who have left decades ago, to seek better luck elsewhere. Anywhere is better, than this ghost town.

In front of the castle laid a courtyard. Complementary to her backdrop, just like she did a century ago, she serves no more than to remind anyone who stumbles across this land that this place is dead. Broken walls made up the boundaries and the ground was barren. Even the hardiest of all weeds simply could not thrive in this miserable place of doom.

Something glistens in from the center of the courtyard as the moon peaks out from behind the clouds. Right in the middle of the courtyard were four statues in a circle, four memories, four clues that could ever suggest that humans once lived on these lands and prospered.

There was the Prince, smelted from the finest grades of bronze. Beneath his feet were a pile of books, also frozen in bronze, with inscriptions running through every inch of space available. The facial features of the Prince was still as striking and charming as ever, even after countless years of weathering.

Besides him stood the Queen, cast in pewter. Jewels were once set upon the hollowed out sockets and adorned her body. One would guess that thieves and looters have eventually claimed it on their own. Standing on a rostrum, she reigned over the other three statues. She was tall, slender and beautiful, a stunning sight to behold in her days.

A gilded figure with a huge round belly was next. It was not hard to guess that this was the Merchant. Scales in one hand and a book in the other, he was once an imposing character in the marketplace, yet today he stands next to the others, unmoving and dead.

The last figure was a bit perculiar. Cast in stone and sculptured roughly, it was the least decorated amongst the four. In one of his hands held a scepter and on top of his head was a long triangular hat. From the chipped off and weather face, one can visibly see a huge smile running through it. This was the statue of the Jester.

Though frozen in space and time, these characters each had a story of their own and when interwined, brought about both life and death to this village.