Geysers of magic filled the sky of Aelwyth Morghaine. The first few bursts had been pure magic—straight from the ley lines beneath the city, which fed into the Gossamer Heart. Yet, second by second, threads of entropic power joined the flow of magic throughout the once-fabled fey city. The effects started weakly but rapidly turned devastating.
Sections of the curved wall around the manor vanished. A beautiful café down the block turned into dust and blew away in the wind. The world groaned as time fractured, history threatened to unravel, and the power of a Chorister fed upon the Gossamer Heart.
An unexpected voice spoke to Dahlia.
Quest: Kill Maeravel Thornheart (Again).
Offered by: Amun-Ra
Reward: The Last Ember (Upon Accepting Quest), Dark Chorus: Dirge of the Unwritten (Upon Accepting Quest), Scythe of the Solar Requiem (Upon Completion of Quest), Title—Keeper of the Last Light (Upon Completion of Quest).
Do you accept?
The voice of Nantes, or perhaps Thoth, sounded slightly nervous—how Dahlia and her sisters had acted when Lady Nyxaria stood over their shoulders. Did that cantankerous old bastard in his sun ship crack open an eye, see history unraveling on one of his worlds, and decide to do something about it?
“I accept,” Dahlia muttered.
A crack formed in the heavens. Not a deleterious effect from Maeravel. Clouds separated and left a clear space to see the sun—a hole shaped like a solar disc, which revealed the stunning vision not of the typical sun above Nantes but of the fiery solar barge of Amun-Ra. A single drop of golden light descended, impossibly slow.
This was not sunlight, not as mortals or even fey know it. The single drop held the power of the God of Gods, the Hidden Ruler of this, and many other material worlds filled with mortals beyond count. It transcended light and power and held ethereal things that only a fey could appreciate. Memory. Sensation. Even coalesced into physical form, it drifted like a falling ember. No shadows were cast, and its glow was undiminished by the world's physical laws.
Nantes grew still, and time bent toward the drop, recognizing a force older than history. The members of the Ebon Chorus, at least those who were spiritual beings, grew denser with the arrival of the drop; their fading forms solidified and reinforced against the rapidly expanding, ravenous disintegration powers.
Dahlia felt it arrive, a source of magic more profound than even Lady Nyxaria—a weight pressing against her chest as if she’d been teleported into the deepest recesses of an ocean by some inescapable, ancient power. In the back of her mind, she snarled and hissed at the absolute power of this stupid god—it offended her.
Then, the drop struck Dahlia. The blob of golden liquid swallowed Dahlia whole, and dozens of raindrop-sized splatters hit the ground. Fissures ran out a few feet from where they hit the ground, and Nantes responded. An ancient white-golden bone, polished smooth by time and wreathed in the soft burning glow of a sun that never sets, emerged. The Will of Amun-Ra reshaped the bones like soft clay, shrinking and twisting them upon themselves until the golden bone became a spiral—in the spiraling golden bone, Dahlia saw the reflections of a thousand other material worlds visible from Amun-Ra’s barge until she saw a world formed from stardust. Nantes was born before her eyes—Dahlia had never considered that planets could be borne this way.
Dahlia held her hand out, and the ring flew onto the middle finger of her right hand. The smooth, golden bone sent surges of warmth through her, and pulses of light surged through her essence, giving her an inner light that refused to die.
The Last Ember
Divine Relic—Ring of Golden Bone forged by Amun-Ra, the Sun That Remembers
Type: Ring
Description: Forged from the marrow of an ancient sun and the bones of Nantes and inscribed with the names of the lost, The Last Ember is warm to the touch. It is a relic of remembrance, ensuring that those who should not be forgotten are preserved against oblivion.
Effects
Eternal Name (Passive)
-The wearer’s existence cannot be erased, unmade, or rewritten by any external force, including effects that erase memories, consume fate, or unravel souls.
Keeper of the Forgotten (Passive)
-The wearer may bind names into The Last Ember, preserving individuals, spirits, or entities against being forgotten.
-Those marked by this ring are anchored to reality, resistant to powers that consume souls, rewrite fate, or erase history.
Brand of the Sun’s Final Light (1/day)
-Brand an unraveling entity with the Sun’s Final Light.
This forcibly binds them into reality, making them vulnerable to destruction and removing their ability to fade into nonexistence.
-Entities bound take radiant and necrotic damage whenever they attempt to unmake others.
Twilight’s Keeper (1/week)
-The wearer may invoke Amun-Ra’s power to restore a soul that was erased, consumed, or unmade, provided there is a lingering memory or trace of their existence.
This does not resurrect the dead but returns a forgotten being to the cycle of remembrance, ensuring it is no longer lost and making resurrection, reincarnation, or summoning possible.
“Not bad, you old Ram,” Dahlia murmured appreciatively of her new piece of jewelry. Internally, Dahlia wondered if the Amun-Ra were stupid, short-sighted, or desperate to have Maeravel taken care of. The Discordant Ones had erased whole material worlds before, minor gods included. Or was this Amun-Ra’s way of giving Horus the finger? Dahlia liked to think it was the latter.
That was when the glob of liquid light that enveloped her spoke—sort of. There were no words. It was knowing in the way Dahlia knew the feel of dusk against her skin. She found that the Light of Ra felt akin to the beams of sun that used to slip between the Towers of Mourning and warmed her in the Soulweald. The best part of wandering the Soulweald were finding the places where the sun gave contrast to the eternal twilight.
The light flowed into Dahlia and empowered her. A swarm of images that made no sense flooded her mind. Glimpses of the vaporized lives of those who once patronized the deleted café and many other forgotten histories expunged from reality teased her while the light seeped into her essence.
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You have gained the Dark Chorus: Dirge of the Unwritten. This does not count against your Dark Chorus limit.
Dark Chorus: Dirge of the Unwritten
Legendary Gloamcaller Invocation—A Reward From Amun-Ra
“The dead rarely weep for themselves; they weep for those who were forgotten and unmourned.”
Description: Not all deaths are remembered. Not all names are carved into tombs or whispered into the wind. Some are stolen, others are devoured by oblivion, erased as if they never had been. The Dirge of the Unwritten is a Gloamcaller’s defiance of that fate—a secret lament that pulls the lost from the brink of inexistence and binds their names back into twilight.
To know this Dark Chorus is to become a herald of the forgotten and weaponize memories, pulling erased beings back into the world and shattering the power of those who consume history.
Lament of the Lost
“The names you have stolen are not forgotten, I call them back!”
* When you bind a spirit, it becomes anchored against oblivion, immune to effects that consume, erase, or rewrite its existence.
* You may call forth the lingering shade of an erased soul, summoning a spectral revenant that fights for you for two minutes once per combat.
* Spirits summoned by this Dirge deal additional damage against enemies that unmake, erase, or consume fate.
* Killing an enemy that unmakes, erases, or consumes fate will partially restore the spirit to existence, making it a candidate for Twilight’s Keeper.
Grave-Scribed Name
“You cannot delete what I have written in the gloam!”
* You inscribe a name into existence, preventing it from being erased, consumed, or rewritten.
* Valid targets: Living creatures, spirits, places, concepts.
* When used, the target gains resistance to fate-consuming effects, reality shifts, or illusions that would erase them.
Whisper of the Unwritten
“Even when the world forgets, I will remember.”
* You perceive the remnants of erased events, lost souls, and hidden histories, allowing you to witness what was meant to be forgotten.
* You may speak with the dead erased from history, calling back their lingering memories and truths.
* You see the true form of things rather than what reality has been forced to accept, allowing you to counteract illusions, deception, and rewriting effects. (True Sight)
* Regardless of how reality is altered or time is rewritten, you will never forget what came before.
The world remained motionless. A lingering hush hung in the air, reluctant to dissipate. Slowly, the wind stirred, and the forgotten voices of the dead filled the air. A chorus of pleas, begging to be saved from the hunger of the Discordant Ones. Mortal souls and Fey spirits alike clamored for the salvation that could come only from Dahlia.
The Last Ember provided warmth against the cold whispers, while inside, the potent magics of the Dirge of the Unwritten wrote themselves upon her very identity. She quickly spread the mark of The Last Ember to the members of the Ebon Chorus, anchoring them to reality. Sure, she could replace them, but they were hers, and what was hers wasn’t for others to take. It was the principle of the matter, but even more than that, Dahlia found she’d grown attached to most of her minions.
The Voice of Amun-Ra echoed through the ruins of Aelwyth Morghaine.
Even when all else is lost, The Last Ember will still burn.
The solar barge of Amun-Ra vanished from the break in the clouds, and time reasserted itself to the natural order.
“Hurry,” Dahlia commanded. “We must reach the Gossamer Heart before it’s fully consumed.”
Ruth had a vague idea of how to get to the underground chambers, but that wasn’t enough. Their desperation found salvation in a familiar figure—the ghostly image of a high elf flickered before Dahlia—and only Dahlia. Yet she recognized the woman from the illusion and paintings of the Enchanter’s Guild. This was Elyssandra, Ruth’s mother and High Enchanter.
This way.
Dahlia quickly used Grave-Scribed Name and wrote Elyssandra’s name into the Gloam. The specter gestured with even more urgency. The fairy snapped telepathic orders to the Ebon Chorus, all shot into motion.
Flicker. Shimmer.
Dahlia’s heart filled with a new experience. Excitement warred with anxiety as uncontrolled bursts of magic and oblivion formed around them. They went through halls and jumped through holes in the elaborately constructed sub-levels that had been erased from existence until they charged into a large grotto.
The cavern pulsed like a living wound in the world, ancient and wrong. Existence itself struggled to overwrite what stood there. The walls, covered in veins of opalescent crystal whose color shifted unpredictably between twilight hues and raw, bleeding scarlet, shimmered in nausea-inducing waves. The air—thick and heavy with the weight of something half-remembered and partially erased—had the uniquely putrid scent of rotting timelines.
At the center of the chamber floated the Gossamer Heart—a comically large mass of living flesh, grotesquely organic yet undeniably majestic in its presence. Dahlia recognized the undying essence of a Fey Noble when she saw one, and that was a piece of something that should never have been left behind. Thick layers of magical energy had solidified around it to encase the still-beating core within crystalline shells. The jagged crystal edges flickered with ghostly remnants of the power of Titania and Mab, the Twin Queens of Summer and Winter. Each crystalline layer told a story frozen in time, a tale woven of fate and memory, but all were cracked, fractured by the monster that attempted to devour the Gossamer Heart before their very eyes.
True Sight pulled back the layers of illusion and misdirection, revealing a terrible truth—this was not another incarnation of the ghost of Maeravel Thornheart. The Chorister had already consumed enough power to ascend, and she had become something new.
Where once there had been the shroud of a banshee, now was something Dahlia could only call a Sable Elegy or a Hollow Cantor. It was a vile abomination that frayed the edges of reality by merely existing, a creature of oblivion that existed to end worlds. She and her sisters had dealt with its like—on a vastly diminished scale—in their defense of the Soulweald.
“You should not have come,” the thing gnawed at the Gossamer Heart even while it cackled in a sing-song, off-tune voice.
“You should not have remembered.”
No battle had yet begun, yet Dahlia could feel the anticipation build in the air. The weight of every soul lost in Aelwyth Morghaine cried out for a fate they had already been denied. Existence. Salvation. Legacy.
Then, an unexpected voice lashed out.
Shriekfang had been the warden of Maeravel’s torment, the blackened edges of her prison, the sole enjoyer of her pathetic wails. Bound within its essence were the echoes of her sorrow, the keening lament that had given her form as a banshee. But now, now she had escaped the fetters of its cursed steel, fed upon the Gossamer Heart, and become something new.
The rapier had only lost one thing before—its freedom to Dahlia. Now, it lost another—Maeravel had escaped it. Shriekfang was the devourer, the breaker, the inscriber of fates, and the Chorister had escaped him.
Unacceptable!
Coils of Sanguis Argentum, Blood Silver, appeared out of thin air to try and bind the Hollow Cantor.
“Attack,” Dahlia commanded.