The Guardian's hovering hand kindles with the same steady pulse as the root seam. Moonlight and barkbeat answer one another, as if the hollow has been waiting to finish a sentence.
Guardian of the Grove
This place owes a debt older than the blight. It called you here because it remembers what was lost.
Roots rise in slow spirals around Goat, not tight enough to bind, gentle enough to measure. Thin strands brush his legs, his chest, his horns, tracing him like a key against an old lock.
Guardian of the Grove
You are not trespass, little keeper. You are the shape we sought, the keeper this architecture can bear.
Elowen
So the hollow was not random at all. It was waiting for him.
Hilda
Then the door was never meant to open for us. It was meant to know him.
The mirror-pool brightens, reflecting Goat haloed in rootlight, while the seam settles into a calm, patient glow.
✓ Quest Accepted
Comprehend the keeper's burden and ask questions
“... This may or may not be related, but I see a wound on one of my... Well, part of the being I am connected to, an old one, seems to be being bled which is draining, seemingly, much of my own light. Which is very important to me, for obvious reasons as that's my essence.”
SUCCESS (Fair Arcane Resonance, rolled +1)
Goat
The seam is tied to him. Something old in the grove is drawing from the light inside Goat.
Goat angles his head toward the glowing roots, and the pulse in them answers. A thin thread of pale light leaks from a knot in the wood toward the seam, while his own sheen dulls by a shade.
Guardian of the Grove
Yes. You see it now. The hollow bears a wound, and the wound drinks from its keeper.
The Guardian lowers its hand, solemn and exact. The roots around Goat loosen just enough to let the truth breathe, then tighten again around the answered shape of him.
Elowen
Then this place is not merely waiting. It is leaning on him.
Hilda
And if he turns away, the burden does not vanish. It stays broken.
Moonlight slides across the mirror-pool, and Goat’s reflection flickers with a faint gap at his side, as if part of his light has already been spent. The hollow falls quiet, asking what he does with that knowledge.