Name: Lyssira Vell, the Whispering Veil

Titles:

The Once Seen

Mistress of the Last Bow

The Empath of Passing Things

Race: Forgotten Fey

Realm: The Veil Between Curtains 

Appearance:

Lyssira is always slightly blurred, as if you’re remembering her rather than seeing her. Her eyes are reflective pools of others’ memories. Her skin glimmers like stage dust in moonlight. She wears a shifting costume stitched from applause, sighs, and silken regrets. Every time you blink, she’s changed.

Legend Says:

When someone is on the brink; of sorrow, decision, truth. Lyssira may appear, perform just once, and vanish. Her performances are gifts of catharsis, never repeated. People remember them like dreams: vivid but unravelling.

Some say she was once mortal, a court jester whose understanding of sorrow was so complete that she stepped sideways into myth. Others say she is a shard of a forgotten god, sent to mend stories with fleeting beauty.

“The Curtain Falls Once”

The village of Harrowmere had not seen music in a long time. Not since the mines collapsed and swallowed half their sons. Not since the river turned to ash and the grain wouldn't rise. Grief hung from the chimneys like smoke that never cleared. The silence there was thick, like wool, or mourning.

But one evening, just before dusk, a stranger stepped onto the old fountain square. She wore a costume of silver thread and torn lace; her face painted like joy trying not to cry. No one saw where she came from. One moment there was nothing, the next; her.

The children were the first to gather. Then the elders. Then the half-drunk and the long-cold. And slowly, the square filled with people who had forgotten they had feet that moved.

She said nothing. She bowed low, as if she were greeting royalty, or ghosts.

Then, she played.

A stringless lute. A voice like memory. A dance that traced the shape of every loss the village had endured and gently stitched it into something that hurt less.

She sang of the boy who whistled in the mines. Of the girl who braided bread with laughter. Of the mother who still lit two candles every night, though only one child remained.

She did not name them. But everyone knew.

And somehow, through the tears, they felt seen.

Not pitied. Not fixed. 

Just, understood.

When she finished, she bowed again. The crowd was silent, their hearts swollen with something they hadn’t felt in years. It might have been sorrow. It might have been release. It might have been something new. 

A child stepped forward with a flower. 

“Will you stay?” they asked.

The woman smiled; soft, sorry, and gone.

Like breath on glass, she vanished.

Only the scent of sage remained, and a single silver thread caught on the fountain’s edge.

The villagers never saw her again. But when their own grief became too sharp to hold, they remembered her performance, not in full, but in feeling.

And that, they learned, was enough.