You enter a quiet space between the trees and find a neglected shrine half-swallowed by green shoots. Heavy grain heads bow over its stones, though no field lies anywhere nearby.
Lillith remains beyond the forest, following Mara’s blackened bark trail, while you have returned alone. The soil around the shrine is gray and starved beneath the impossible harvest.
A calm harvest woman steps from the growth. She is a mature woman with warm brown skin, dark braided hair, and a russet-green dress layered beneath a woven grain mantle. Wherever she walks, color returns to the soil.
Nara
You have found a shrine that remembers abundance, though the wound has taught it to grow without blessing.
She rests one hand above the shrine without touching it. The grain heads straighten, then black veins briefly show through their stems before fading beneath renewed green.
Nara
I am Nara. The sigil’s corruption has crossed beyond your grove, carried through hungry roots and remembered paths.
Nara
Tell me, guardian: does protecting the forest require denying every outsider who might help it?
✓ Quest Accepted
Earn Nara's aid for the threatened woodland