The archive hushes around them, ink drifting like slow snow. Sella stands in the violet wash, calm and watchful, while the tablets hover half-awake beside the gate.
Sella
To read this place, you do not force it. You let your hunger match its memory.
Kynes
Her lattice mirrors mine.
Kynes studies the flicker in Sella's shape, then the open notch in the tablet. The gate remains still, patient as stone.
Sella
You wear the same sign I do, but I think yours was never meant to stay small. What did they call you, before the surface?
Sella
If you want, tell me what the void feels like to you. I can answer with what I remember, and you can answer with what you know.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what Sella remembers
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what the void feels like
“When I use the void powers is it a hunger?”
YES (VeryLikely, rolled 83)
Kynes
It is not just a tool. It is a living, gnawing absence that demands to be fed.
Sella
You feel it, then. The void is not a weapon you wield, Kynes, it is a hunger that uses you to find its next meal.
Sella
I remember the masters of this house trying to cage that same appetite, but they only succeeded in teaching it how to hunt.
“Well I absorbed enough to go from drow to void user. The sport in my sword is a void fed, Vely " I pause. " It seems I am more then Drow"”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Kynes lets the silence stretch, then straightens beside the open tablet. The violet glow catches on his blade as if recognizing its twin hunger.
Kynes
I have absorbed enough to know what I am now. Not just drow. A void-user, with Veyl in my sword.
Sella
Yes. You carry it cleanly, too cleanly for someone who still pretends it is only a weapon.
Sella
The archive stirs around his words, as if the old records have been waiting for that admission.
The drifting ink gathers, then parts, and a new line surfaces in the tablet records, half memory and half warning.
Sella
The void feels like a mouth in the dark, patient, endless, and pleased when it learns your name. That is what the masters of this house never understood.
Sella
They tried to own it. It learned their voices instead.
Kynes
The tablets are answering him now.
Sella steps closer to the gate, one hand hovering over the silver script without touching it. Her solemn face softens by a fraction, ancient and wary all at once.
Sella
If you want, I can show you what I remember next.
Quest Complete
Learn what the void feels like
“"I know Vely is not a weapon, yet not a tool. I turned him to a sword because he was promised that, my oath to him is slay the evil doer." I walk a head a little. " And so far we work as one"”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Kynes answers by lifting his chin, and the blade at his side gives a faint violet hum, like a vow held under breath. The archive’s ink stills around them.
Kynes
Veyl is not a weapon, not merely a tool. I turn him to a sword because he is promised that, and my oath is to slay the evil doer.
He takes a step forward, measured and certain, and the tablet’s fresh script brightens as if listening.
Kynes
So far, we work as one.
Sella
A bargain, then. Not mastery. Not submission.
Sella
That is rarer than control. The archive remembers control breaking. It remembers cooperation only when it leaves a scar.
Sella lowers her hand from the silver script at last, and the pooled ink between them opens into a thin mirrored ribbon.
Sella
Then come closer, Kynes. I will show you what I remember, and the part I never understood until now.