[c=#2dba69]Elyra's Diary - Part 1
The Awakened Breath[/c]

[c=#e3aaeb][i]3rd Sombreveil, Year 342 of the Era of Remembrance
Under the Moon of Veils - Day of the Silent Veil[/i][/c]

It had been ten years since I last walked the stones of Éstranor.
And yet, they had waited for me.
The mist clinging to the headstones seemed to recognize me, as if the cemetery itself remembered my name.
Kael had appeared to me here the last time, and today, it was he who was calling me.
His memory, stronger than the wind, pulsed in the ankh I wore around my neck.
I didn’t know what I was searching for, only that I was ready to listen.
At the foot of the weathered grave, I knelt.
The ankh reacted like never before: it warmed in my palm, gently, like a heart awakening.
Then a light emerged from the stone. Faint. Bluish. A grave-soul. The first.
"You came. The bond is not broken."
He spoke of a breath. Not of an object, nor a name. But of an essence.
And he said this:
"There will be eight. Eight breaths. Eight truths. Eight silences."

[c=#e3aaeb][i]15th Sombreveil, Year 342 of the Era of Remembrance
Under the Moon of Veils - Day of the Black Marshes[/i][/c]

I descended into the marshes of Narthol.
Here, the water reflects nothing. The roots twist like bones.
I found a half-submerged grave without a name, at the edge of a hollow tree.
When I placed the ankh there, the mist responded.
And within that mist, a glow. A female voice, like a held breath.
"I am the one the water forgot. But my memory rises."
A boat. A silhouette. And in her hands: a fragment. Dense. Black. Inert. Then the water. The silence.
When the vision faded, only a smooth, cold black stone remained in the mud.
"What sinks does not die. It waits."
I picked it up without understanding.
But this stone vibrates. Not like the ankh, no. More subtly.
As if something sleepswithin it, held back, waiting to be called.
I feel it wasn’t just any object.
It was a trace of memory, as tangible as Kael’s silence.
And in that moment, I understood: what I am chasing is not something to forge nor to find.
It is an echo to gather.
Two breaths now accompany me.
I still don’t know what I seek, but I know this: death is not silent. Graves speak.
You just have to listen differently. And I... I hear them.