Back in the orchard, the shrine answers Nhal’s touch at last. Its stone beats with the same violet pulse as their own making, slow and hungry.
The surface splits like a shell. Beneath the carved face is a living hollow, a void-fed chamber threaded with drifting lights, each one a stolen memory.
Slaan
It was remembering. Not the shrine, the hunger inside it.
Bren recoils a step, hand half-raised, while Nhal stares into the exposed spiral as names, faces, and bargains flicker through the dark like embers caught in water.
Nhal
So this is where they go. All of them.
The construct turns, not with a body, but with attention. The orchard hushes around Slaan, Bren, and Nhal, as if waiting to see whether the shrine will speak, feed, or finally be answered.
✓ Quest Accepted
Recover the memories trapped within the shrine
“"step away from the light love, I don't want you to fall in on accident" I tell nhal gently. I crack open one of Kynes books of notes he has of the archive and the sports that are tied to the hall of welcome. Then I created a summoning circle. And channel Kynes chant of making to bring the following sports here venom,Veyl,Vetta, Walter and to bring Ven to the summon circle. The chat is a call for help.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled +1)
Slaan opens Kynes’s notes and lays them beside the shrine’s glow. She speaks softly to Nhal, easing them back from the spill of violet light, then draws a circle in the grass with practiced care.
Her chant takes shape in Kynes’s cadence, not a perfect imitation, but enough. The ward line hums, answering memory with memory, as the orchard air tightens around the circle.
One by one, the names answer. Venom flickers in first, then Veyl, Vetta, Walter, and finally Ven, pulled through the call and gathered at the circle’s edge in a wash of breath and shadow.
Nhal
They heard it. All of them did.
The shrine’s hollow brightens as the summoned figures arrive, and the drifting memory-lights tremble like startled sparks. Nhal steadies beside Slaan, gaze fixed on the light instead of drowning in it.
Ven
Who called us to a graveyard of stolen remembrance?
The arch and ward line shimmer together at the challenge, and the void-fed construct holds open, waiting for Slaan’s answer or the next command.
“I look at Ven for a moment studying him for a moment. " Good , right, your the one who will have the most work." I explain to him the crystal caverns back home for holding memories, and ask him if he can recreate that. I then ask the other void-kin that their thing is to become keepers of memories, and I explain how to do it and what it entails.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled -1)
Slaan lets the silence settle long enough for Ven to meet it. The shrine’s violet glow flickers over the circle while the ward line keeps trembling under every word about memory.
Slaan
You are the one who will have the most work. Back home, crystal caverns hold memories in place. Can you make something like that here?
Ven’s attention sharpens, then shifts to the hollow light. Nhal stays very still, listening as if each phrase might matter more than the next breath.
Slaan
That is what you can become, keepers of memories. It means holding what is given, not feeding on it, and learning the shape of a memory so it can endure.
Ven
A keeper. So I do not guard a place, I guard what survives it.
The arch shivers at the claim, then steadies. Around the circle, the drifting lights stop recoiling and begin to hover, as if listening.
Nhal
Then this can be learned. Not taken, not swallowed. Kept.
Ven lowers their chin in slow understanding, and the shrine’s hollow answers by releasing a soft wash of pale images into the air, one after another, waiting to be received.
Quest Complete
Recover the memories trapped within the shrine
New Gift: Memory Weaver's Focus