“Don’t feed me that lie.

There’s nothing easy about giving up.

Nothing.

People think surrender is simple—

doing nothing, thinking nothing,

cutting yourself off,

throwing everything away…

as if that were painless.

But it isn’t.

It tears at you.

It crushes you.

And I know, because I tried.

I told myself there was still hope,

that maybe I could make a difference—

but now I see the truth.

There’s n...

The fire cracked softly, the smell of cedar smoke curling through the stillness. Their camp was quiet—too quiet. The others were gone now; the latest quest had scattered the party to the winds. Only Ivel and Valaenor remained, bound by habit, loyalty, and a bond neither of them had ever tried to name.

Ivel sat cross-legged beside the fire, shoulders hunched forward, head bowed. He’d removed his a...

The morning sunlight pierced through my shutters like a blade, and the gods themselves seemed to be drumming inside my skull. I groaned, face down on the cot, still half-dressed in last night’s ale-soaked clothes. The scent of sweat, smoke, and mead clung to me like regret.

“Never again,” I whispered to the gods I didn’t believe in.

Eventually, I dragged myself into the kitchen, holding onto the w...

ENTRY I: The Ember Beneath the Stone

Date: The First Collapse

They say the world ended today.

I disagree.

It was never a world worth preserving.

I was born in the undercity of Virellium — a place so deep beneath the surface, light had to be taught to us like a myth. We weren’t born blind. No, that would’ve been merciful. We were taught to see and then told we didn’t deserve the stars. Our ceili...

Journal of Eltheren Virelith

Archivist of the Obsidian Grove

Ruins Expedition – Year 1304 of Silvanus

36th of First Blooms, 1304

It has been three centuries since the last human died—if the records can be believed. I was not yet born when they fell, but I grew in the long shadow of their war. That war. The one they called the Sundering.

The humans sought dominion over the land, claiming divin...

The Indrik stirred from its sacred glade with a ripple of unease trembling down its luminous spine. The winds no longer whispered in rhythm. The stars had begun blinking out of sequence. And somewhere deep within its belly — an ache, dull but growing, throbbed like a discordant note in the song of the world.

It had felt something like this once, centuries ago, when the glaciers wept and the seas ...

The morning was wrong.

It wasn’t colder, though cold had long passed the limits of measure. It wasn’t darker—light had become a dull blur without sun or shade. But the air pressed heavier, like the sky itself had exhaled and chosen not to breathe in again.

No one spoke as they packed the camp. They didn’t need to. The Icebreakers knew first—restless, snorting, hooves twitching on the ice. One le...

When first they go, the world falls still,

A hush too loud, a void too real.

The air they filled now clings with ache,

A hollow carved that will not break.

Their laughter haunts the quiet rooms,

Their absence thick as winter gloom.

We reach for words we meant to say,

But grief has stolen them away.

The days crawl by in shattered light,

Each morning feels a losing fight.

A thousand questions left...

The battlefield still smoldered. The taint of the Drekh’s dark sorcery clung to the charred earth like a sickness. Twisted bodies littered the hillside where the ambush had sprung from shadow and death. The screams had faded. The fighting had ended. But the silence that remained was worse.

Serenya knelt beside Torwyn, her hands pressed desperately to his chest, a soft violet light flickering from ...

To my old friend, Alex—

I don’t even know if this will ever reach you. Hell, I’m not even sure I’ll get a message back. But if by some miracle this makes it through—if the wormhole stabilizer holds—then maybe this letter will find its way across the years.

It’s been 100 years, Alex. One full century.

Somehow, I made the jump. I skipped forward. I don’t fully understand how I survived it—or why....