Waves lapped at the hull as I walked the plank to the dock. The wind washed spray of salted water into my mouth as I inhaled deeply. The Grand Collegium rose before me. An island of endless knowledge and wonder. The trip from the south was warm and uneventful.

As I roamed the deck, observing how a tradesman handles a crew and his ship, a phrase stuck with me. The tradesman was schooling his proteges. For them, in the manner of sales, this is very much true. If I walk away from a deal gone sour, even if by my own fault, I could easily carry my perception of reality with me. And so it is.

All it takes is someone’s belief in something to make it true. It matters not if it is the truth or your truth; to you it is true. A story that will be carried and told a thousand times to a thousand different people, taking on new versions as it passes from one mouth to the next set of ears.

Summer’s end was near; the dockyards were full of new students come to study the gods and magic. A sight to behold, humans in Eryndel. You can tell by the stares that most of these elves and dwarves had never seen one. Stranger still, free Veiled people are studying here while their kin remain enslaved elsewhere, and nobody powerful enough to intervene is willing to pay the cost. A war is too risky for the long-lived races. Numbers are still recovering after the Great Sundering, and the gods grew silent.

I heard the phrase again as I entered an herbalist’s shop.

“Perception is reality.”

Context becomes very important here. To extend this belief into everyday life is dangerous. It stops being a useful descriptor and becomes protective.

It becomes ‘My truth’. There is no such thing. There is truth, and it is objective. Of course, nothing is ever without grey areas. The use of perceptions and personal truths is what put the elves of Alora into the Ward of Wilted Flowers. They chose to perceive peace where there was none.

And it cost them their civilization. An ancient race now relegated to a single ward in the city they built a millennia before the humans came as refugees and now rule the city. Living coral, flush with mana, now covered in iron and brass. Steam now flows where mana once held power.

They held empathy for a people forced out of their homeland. That empathy was used against them to wage a war with no steel. No arrows or spells slung. It happened slowly. Over the course of 70 years, the quick-lived humans outbred the elves. Political power was transferred quietly. Those young men and women today do not know the history of the Ward of Wilted Flowers. Why should they? To them it is but an inconvenience of the city’s current layout.

To those outside of Gearhaven’s walls, it is a living museum. The elves go about their lives in their gardens. The visitors gawk and trample the flower beds, eat the apricots, and take pieces of stone or anything else they can slip into a pocket.

Empathy is a must for a civilized society. When you allow empathy to map reality, it is a double-edged sword. If you are in your truth so deep, blinded by empathy, that we can no longer discuss what is actually real for the whole of society and create our own maps, we open the doors to mistrust and abuse. Empathy opened the gates. Complacency kept those in power from asking what happens afterward.

I understand the sentiment; I even think it has a well-meaning place. Sometimes the version of personal truth can hold much of the veracity.

If we are to ever see Eryndel rise from the ashes of the Great Sundering as the city-states of Vindrath have, then we must accept hard truth. We must have the discussions that hurt the heart and make the blood boil.

Or we risk it spilling …

Thank you for reading!! Join me next week for part one of Trial of the First Thread.

Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. ♥

If you enjoyed Eryndel and would like to dive deeper, I have a public World-Bible!! You can explore it here: Eryndel World-Bible on World Anvil

Stories are threads. We are the Weave.

~C. Xelfaa

C. Xelfaa writes Grimmbright fantasy: stories of folklore, fading gods, strange magic, and ordinary people stubborn enough to remain kind in worlds that give them every reason not to be. Their work explores the places where wonder and darkness meet, primarily through the ever-growing world of Eryndel. When not writing, they can usually be found cooking, worldbuilding, or disappearing down some new folklore rabbit hole.

All of these tales fall into the wider mythos of Eryndel. There is no need to read them in order.

A Tales of Eryndel: The Fractured Weave Archive

Thread: The Fourth Age of Eryndel
Tale Type: Folk Horror
Tone: Dark Folklore
Warnings: Death, grief, body horror

By: C. Xelfaa

Mercy’s Debt, Part Two

Rand sat alone at the scarred corner table, the remains of breakfast gone cold and tasteless before him. The eggs tasted of ash, and the ale carried the same flat bite it always did. Only the ham offered a faint whisper of salt. A small mercy that did nothing to quiet the heavier flavors on his tongue, memories of dying gods and years of stolen peace.

None in this forgotten waystation would have recognized the face beneath the fresh scars and heavy gray beard. They had never known him as a ranger. They did not even know his true name. No one still living did.

Rand knew.

Names held power, and some were better left buried.

The world had grown weary of its scampering pests. The old gods answered prayers with thinner voices now, their strength leaching away like water through cracked stone. Eryndel itself was changing, turning its face from wonder toward colder things. A ranger’s lot was simple enough: learn the stories, then kill the stories.

He saw no point in hunting Gilberd down. Let the boy have his hours by the pond. The thing wearing Alma’s face would not stir again until the false moon rose, and the lad could handle himself until then.

Rand turned his thoughts instead toward Alphie, the brother whose name now rang empty in his skull. The search yielded little, barren as the high deserts; memories blurred and hazy the moment he reached for them. There, and nothing all at once.

At least he could still put Alma to rest.

She had not deserved the end he gave her. Not even after the betrayal. Not even after she had tricked him into raising his own brother’s son as his blood. His hands held no prayer. The words never rose.

Not that the old rites felt hollow. Aether and the gods had always been beyond his reach. Spared that gift, some called it. Cursed, others whispered.

He would have passed out drunk across the table if the innkeeper had not cut him off hours ago. They needed him upright for the night’s work. Rand was still debating how sober he was when the girl’s scream tore through the spring air, sharp as a fresh blade.

He was on his feet before the echo died. Hand cannon already clear of leather, the taste of salt and old regret gone from his tongue.

Only iron and purpose remained.

╳ ╳ ✶ ╳ ╳

Gilberd hurled the tavern girl to the ground the instant the bear-faced things burst from the undergrowth, their mandibles clattering like dry bones in a grave. Black claws gleamed wet with sap and old blood. He did not know their proper name, but the sulfur stench told him enough.

Another wrong had summoned its own correction. Eryndel itself had sent them.

He stepped between the fallen woman and the beasts. Three of them came at once, razor limbs slicing high and low. His steel rang against hardened carapace and skittered away useless. One blow glanced off his shoulder. He drove a boot into the nearest thorax; the kick staggering the creature.

It bought him a single heartbeat of space.

His free hand ripped the small crossbow from his belt. The iron-tipped bolt hissed and punched through the thing’s neck. It dropped, claws still raking the air, and another beast seized Gilberd’s ankle in a crushing grip. The world upended. His skull cracked against root and stone. He held the maiden with every bit of his fading might.

Darkness crowded the edges of his sight.

Then came the sharp hiss of another bolt, followed by a roar that shook the pines. The beast dragging them forward stumbled, a quarrel jutting from its leg. Gilberd twisted, eyes finding the girl. She still screamed, bright blood welling from a deep gash across her thigh.

Power answered.

A thick green aura flared around him. Golden antlers of living light crowned his brow. One of the ancient sentinel pines tore free of the earth with a groan like old misery, swung in a mighty arc, and smashed the creature before him into pulp and chitin. The tree settled, drank deep from the pond, then drove its roots home once more as though it had never moved.

Gilberd spun back to the girl. Healing words rose unbidden, calling on Elyrion with everything he still possessed. A bubble of rainbow light bloomed between his outstretched hands. Grass and vine surged from the soil, knitting the torn flesh, staunching the worst of the bleeding. It did little to dull her pain. Her screams drilled into his skull like hot nails.

Behind him, his father finished the last beast with grim efficiency.

“Bearbugs,” Rand panted, wiping black ichor from his blade.

“Common enough,” Gilberd answered, voice steadier than he felt. “Drawn by the fear. They would have stayed for the malice.” His knowledge ended there. “We need to get her home.”

They hauled the girl between them back toward the waystation. Exhaustion and the sudden drop of adrenaline claimed her before they reached the treeline. She sagged unconscious in their arms.

Rand heaved her across one broad shoulder.

The snap of his spine echoed loud in the quiet. The old ranger staggered, nearly dropping to the bloodied ground.

╳ ╳ ✶ ╳ ╳

Rand watched the barmaid’s father hover in the doorway like a man afraid to claim his own child. The girl lay pale on the long table, leg bound in fresh vine and grass, breathing shallow but steady. She was strong. Not like her father, the girl tended her wound now.

“They did not bite her,” Rand said, voice flat as old iron. “She will live. Gilberd will return soon with a remedy for the pain.”

“What else will ye be needin’?” the man pleaded, eyes darting between ranger and daughter.

“Space. Now, and when we leave.”

Rand’s green eyes left no room for argument. The father nodded, reluctant as a man signing away his last coin, and backed out with constant glances over his shoulder. Only when the door thudded shut did Rand collapse into the nearest chair. The impact jarred his cracked spine and sent fresh fire up his back.

Doubt crept in, cold and unwelcome as winter mist.

Knowing a cursed hand cannon stole a memory was one thing. Feeling the hole it left was quite another. Alphonsus. The brother whose face he could no longer clearly see. The boy. Alma’s son. His wife’s son. His son? He had raised the lad, taught him the trail, loved him with everything a broken man still possessed.

My nephew?

Pain lanced through Rand’s skull, bright and merciless. Some memories are not meant to last. So they did not.

No. My son.

The door opened again. Gilberd entered, arms full of gathered leaves and roots. Without a word, the boy set to work, crushing, mixing, brewing. Tender hands moved with care Rand had never taught him. He really did take after his mother. Gilberd knelt beside the girl, spoke soft prayers to Elyrion, explained the old words as though they were simple gifts instead of desperate bargains. She drank every syllable with wide, trusting eyes, even through her pain.

Good blood.

The second moon rose outside the crooked window, tilted and cold.

They spoke their words to the gods who still bothered to listen, sharpened blades until steel sang, and readied themselves for what the night would demand.

“Gilberd,” Rand began, voice low, “I need you to understand Mercy’s Debt.”

“It steals memories,” the boy answered at once. “Each shot. And likely more.”

“The last shot is just that. Forever. Do you understand me?” Rand saw the boy’s eyes shift towards the girl. Many excuses would be found to return here.

“Yes, sir.” Gilberd straightened, shoulders squared like the ranger he was becoming.

“You prepared the circle before gallivanting?”

“I did, sir.”

“Good boy.”

Rand looked at the lad, at the antler-crowned power that had answered his prayer earlier. At the gentle way he still held the barmaid’s hand and felt the old wound tear wider.

Now was the time for some of that bad blood.

╳ ╳ ✶ ╳ ╳

Rand stood inside the circle his son had drawn, boots planted among the ring of blue stones. A quick glance told him the runes were true. Salt and sigil would hold long enough. The Haint could not cross the barrier; the old words might even burn her.

Behind him, Gilberd muttered low to Elyrion, power already gathering in the boy’s voice like distant thunder.

Mist poured along the ground, thick and menacing, splitting against the ward as though the night itself recoiled. Then came the chill. Her chill. Laughter rode it, bright and wrong, the sound of summer bells cracked in half.

A shifting form of glowing white cloud coalesced beyond the stones, deep purple eyes burning like bruises on new snow.

Rage fragmented the air.

The Haint of Alma rushed forward, claws flashing beneath the twin moons. Her cry fractured against the ward like glass thrown on stone.

Rand heaved Mercy’s Debt from his hip.

His back ignited. Pain. Numbness. The world upended. He struck the ground hard, body sliding past the fragile ring of blue stones, scattering like frightened sparrows.

Black powder bloomed around him in a choking cloud.

The sun rose in Gilberd’s hands.

Rand threw an arm over his face as blinding golden light poured forth, pure and terrible. Screams of agony tore through the night, the roar of Mercy’s Debt answering in the same heartbeat. The false moon broke overhead with a sound like cracking crystal, and the new sun set as swiftly as it had risen.

Then came the stillness.

Warm spring breeze moved across Rand’s face once more. Gunpowder settled in lazy drifts. The scent did not leave the air. But the memories of Alma did.

He lowered his arm.

Gilberd lay sprawled on the ruined circle, eyes open to the returning honest moon, the light already fading from them. The boy’s antlers of living gold had burned away to nothing. Only ash and silence remained where power had lived.

Rand stared at the still form that had once been his son. His nephew. His boy.

This memory, in all its twisted horror, would last.

Decades hence, new rangers would stumble upon a fading waystation. There, they’d learn the legend of the White Man of the Pond.

Thank you for reading!! Join me next week for part one of Trial of The First Thread.

Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. ♥

If you enjoyed Eryndel and would like to dive deeper, I have a public World-Bible!! You can explore it here: Eryndel World-Bible on World Anvil

Stories are threads. We are the Weave.

~C. Xelfaa

C. Xelfaa writes Grimmbright fantasy: stories of folklore, fading gods, strange magic, and ordinary people stubborn enough to remain kind in worlds that give them every reason not to be. Their work explores the places where wonder and darkness meet, primarily through the ever-growing world of Eryndel. When not writing, they can usually be found cooking, worldbuilding, or disappearing down some new folklore rabbit hole.

All of these tales fall into the wider Mythos of Eryndel . There is no need to read them in order.

A Tales of Eryndel: The Fractured Weave Archive

Thread: The Fourth Age of Eryndel
Tale Type: Folk Horror
Tone: Dark Folklore
Warnings: Death, grief, body horror

By: C. Xelfaa

When the second moon rose, he knew the rumors were true.

The old ranger’s breath hung in the chill like a reluctant confession. Rand Rêveur felt the second moon’s silver weight press against his shoulders before his eyes confirmed its wrongness. Eryndel had only ever known one pale face in the night sky. This intruder burned colder, sharper, a liar’s coin laid across the true moon’s honest brow.

One shot, he reminded himself, the old discipline steadying the tremor in his trigger finger.

Gilberd hacked another branch free, the steel singing soft against green wood. The boy’s shoulders moved with calm strength, the promise of a ranger’s gait already in his stride.

Good blood. Dangerous blood.

Rand’s doubts coiled tighter than the cloak he drew around his thinning frame. Bringing his nephew here tasted of pride and penance in equal measure.

“How come you never talk about Uncle Alphie anymore?” Gilberd asked, voice bright as new brass. “What of that time you were in Gearhaven? You know the one?”

Rand’s answer came low, worn smooth by years of campfire repetition. “Because you have heard all the tales a thousand thousand times.” The poor boy did not know that Rand was not his father.

Gilberd laughed, sword flashing again. The sound warmed the air for half a heartbeat.

Then the cold struck.

Rand bent to claim the severed limb, and the world seized. Fog poured over the pitted road like milk spilled from a cracked urn, thick, tasting of grave-dirt and old grief.

Gilberd’s sword clattered against stone. The boy stood frozen. Eyes wide. The branch still clutched in white-knuckled fingers.

A scream split the night, raw and wet, the sound of meat dragged across broken glass.

The fleshless thing galloped from the treeline on all fours, spine arched like a nightmare steed. Bone gleamed wet where skin should have been. Astride Alphie’s knotted back rode a woman of shimmering white, her laughter bright as winter bells and twice as cruel.

Her face …

Rand’s heart forgot its rhythm. That face had once smiled at him across a hearth. Once kissed their son’s brow before fever claimed her. Now it wore the Haint’s borrowed glee like a stolen gown.

“Oh, Rand. My sweet, sweet husband.” The voice scraped the tender meat behind his ears. “You have returned for me, finally? And you have brought the boy. How lovely.”

The skinless mount circled them, hooves of exposed tendon drumming the earth. Gilberd dropped to his knees, sword forgotten. Rand felt the old wound in his chest tear open anew.

“Does he know?” the thing wearing his wife hissed, leaning close enough that the stench of rot and lilies filled his lungs. “Did you tell him!”

Rand’s knees buckled. The word scraped out of him. “No.”

“Fine.” The Haint slapped the back of Alphonsus’s flayed skull with playful malice. “Tell the boy, Alphie.”

Thunder answered instead.

Rand’s hand cannon roared, black smoke blooming low across the mist like a funeral flower. The shot took the Haint in the shoulder and spun her from her mount. She shrieked, a sound that clawed the inside of his skull. The skinless brother-thing collapsed mid-gallop, Alphonsus’s stolen scream cutting off as though severed by the same lead.

Fog thinned. The false moon watched, indifferent.

Gilberd lay on his side in the ruts, chest rising in shallow jerks.

Alive. Thank the gods whose names Rand no longer trusted. The boy’s eyes found his father’s, wide with questions that would cut deeper than any blade.

Rand stared at the place where the Haint had fallen. Only disturbed leaves remained. Somewhere deeper in the wood, laughter echoed, faint and fond and utterly wrong.

He holstered the smoking cannon with hands that no longer felt like his own. The second moon hung above them still, a silent witness to debts long unpaid.

“Up, lad,” Rand said, voice rough as rusted chain. “We’ve a ranger’s work ahead. And this time, this time I reckon the tale starts with truth.”

“Un-Uncle … Alphie …” Gilberd’s voice cracked, green eyes dripping.

“Who? Come on, we are to meet …” Rand could not recall the ranger they were to meet. “Hmm. In the morning, we go to the cache. Let’s go.”

He offered his hand. Gilberd took it, grip trembling but steadying. Together they stepped past the fallen branch, leaving the road’s fresh scars behind them.

The forest swallowed their footsteps. Somewhere ahead, the real moon waited, patient as old grief, while the false one smiled down like a creditor come to collect.

╳ ╳ ✶ ╳ ╳

Gilberd’s hand would not stop shaking. The frothy mug rattled against the scarred tabletop, spilling bitter ale across his knuckles like secrets. Every question he had ever asked about Uncle Alphie now rang hollow. His father had not simply refused to answer. The old ranger truly did not remember.

The Haint had worn his mother’s face. There was no doubt left in Gilberd’s gut. A thing born of violence and old grief, stitched together from what should have stayed buried.

“Mercy’s Debt did not kill it,” he said, forcing the words past the lump in his throat.

Rand stared into his own untouched cup. “It hurt her. Touched her. We have two more shots to see if it works.”

“At what cost?”

His father’s silence was answer enough.

“When you finish the drink, go enter the encounter. Detailed. The March is next year. Your entries will speak louder than any trophy if you mean to join the order.”

There was no use in pressing further. Ranger ways left no room for a son’s pleading. Gilberd drained the mug in three bitter swallows, the ale sour on his tongue, and rose without another word.

The clamor of the tavern fell away as he climbed the narrow stairs. Each creak of the wood sounded like a question he no longer dared to ask aloud. Inside the cramped room, he latched the door and slipped through the window into the night. If his father would not speak the truth, perhaps the skinless Uncle Alphie would. Alphie, per ranger etiquette, should have left intel in case of situations such as this.

Gilberd headed for the cache.

Spring air pressed warm and heavy against his skin, thick with pine resin and the damp green breath of the forest. The settlement was little more than a waystation: three sagging houses, the inn, and a patchwork farm clinging to a small clearing. No one on the pitted road had carried word of the new haunt. Whatever rage the Haint nursed, it would spend it soon, and no one here could guess where.

Gilberd found the marked tree, counted paces the way he had been taught, and kneeled beside the hidden hollow. The moon hung above the branches, full yet somehow tilted wrong, its silver light lying crooked across the leaves.

He shook his head hard. Shock, nothing more.

His fingers closed on the oilskin packet. The letter slid free.

Tears came before he read the first line, hot and silent, cutting tracks down his cheeks. The words blurred, but the truth burned clear enough.

Fever had not taken his mother.

Uncle Rand had taken her.

Alphie was his father?

Shock set in deeper, rattling bones and fogging his mind.

╳ ╳ ✶ ╳ ╳

Cool night air slipped through the open window, carrying the green breath of spring pines. Rand welcomed the chill against his weathered skin. The season still sat too warm for his old bones. One long swallow emptied the mug. He sat alone at the corner table of their cramped room, poured again from the pitcher, and let the ale burn its familiar path down his throat.

“Will that be all yer needin’?” the serving girl asked from the doorway, tray balanced on one hip.

“It is.” He tossed her a heavy pouch of coins. “Hide it well. That’s for you and yours. You hear me?”

The girl blushed crimson, dark hair tumbling across her face. She nodded quick as a startled doe before she scurried away, pouch already vanishing into some secret fold of her apron.

Rand drained the second mug. The memory of taking his wife’s life still waited at the bottom of every cup he emptied, patient as rust.

He knew where the boy had gone. No guesswork needed. Hours slid by in the muted creak of settling timbers before the door finally opened again.

Gilberd stepped inside, cheeks streaked, eyes red-rimmed but steady. Rand said nothing of the window, nothing of the cache, nothing of the lie that had just been dug up like old bones.

“Where are the notes?” Rand asked instead, voice rough as gravel under a wagon wheel. “I want to go over them.”

The lad handed over the journal without a word. Rand turned the pages over. The boy’s hand was cleaner than his own had ever been, every detail sharp, every observation patient. When he reached the section on the man called Alphie, no surprise stirred in him. The boy had pestered about that name for hours. Mercy’s Debt had carved the memory from his own skull, clean as a surgeon’s blade. He remembered now that the boy was never truly his. The shaky lettering near the end told its own tale. Agitation sat plain in every trembling stroke.

“How did it happen?” Gilberd’s voice cracked like green wood in a fire.

Rand took another swallow, letting the ale steady his tongue. He set the relic aside, the hand cannon gleaming in the candlelight.

“I found them in bed,” he said simply. “I learned the truth. Right here.”

The words fell between them, heavy as the pouch he had given the girl. Gilberd already knew how the Haint had been birthed. He knew it all now.

Rand set the mug down and met his son’s shattered gaze across the scarred table. The spring night pressed in through the window, cool and indifferent, while the false moon outside kept its crooked watch.

╳ ╳ ✶ ╳ ╳

Cold water struck Gilberd’s face, yet it did nothing to quiet the storm inside his ribs. He dragged calloused palms across his chest, watching ripples spread over the pond like thoughts he could not still. Neither he nor his father had slept or eaten since the day before. Sunlight speared through sturdy pine boughs and painted his raw skin the color of new dawn.

He did not flinch when the undergrowth rustled. He already smelled her perfume, faint lilac, and wood-smoke.

The fledgling ranger finished scrubbing and stood waist-deep. “May I exit the water?”

Leaves shivered in answer.

“Very well. I’m coming out.”

She flung his clothes onto the bank. “I’ll turn my head. I promise,” the tavern girl called, voice half-laughing, half-nervous.

“I’m clothed,” he said once he had dressed.

She stepped from hiding, cheeks flushed the shade of wild rose. “I’m sorry. It’s just … I never see no one my age is all.”

“I can say the same.” The old hunt’s weight gave way inside him to a new, thunderous heartbeat.

Her brown eyes brightened with sudden joy. She caught his hand and drew him along the pond’s curving shore. They walked for hours, trading tales of lives that had never once touched until this morning. Somewhere in the telling, the story of a woman dead of fever surfaced; her husband fleeing with their child. Not quite the truth. Close enough to the lie.

Or far enough away.

“Do you know any prayers?” he asked at last.

“I know some. To Elyrion. Nothin’ fancy though.”

“Would you pray with me? Tonight, my father and I hunt the thing that haunts this place.”

For Gilberd, the goddess was more than a source of power. She was the gentle strength in his arm, the wit that kept him alive, the wholeness he clung to when the world cracked open. He took the girl’s hands.

Together they spoke the old words beneath the high noon sun, voices low and steady.

The shattered silence came with claws and the wet clatter of mandibles.

To be continued …

Thank you for reading!! Join me next week for the conclusion of Mercy’s Debt.

Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. ♥

If you enjoyed Eryndel and would like to dive deeper, I have a public World-Bible!! You can explore it here: Eryndel World-Bible on World Anvil

Stories are threads. We are the Weave.

~C. Xelfaa

Black Ink Ashes - Created with Suno

A note from the author: I wrote this as a writing prompt for a friendly contest. The theme was “Descent into madness.”
These stories are in a shared universe; there is no need to read them in order.

Synopsis:

In the First Age, stories are not written. Memory, firelight, and song carry them. When the young elf Thallan rescues a maiden from goblins, he believes he has stepped into the beginning of a heroic tale. But the strange journal in his hands begins writing ahead of him …

Thread: The First Age of Eryndel
Tale Type: Dark Fantasy
Tone: Mythic Horror
Warnings: Violence, psychological horror

By: C. Xelfaa

In the First Age of Eryndel, few knew the quill. Stories passed by the light of campfire or song of bard. So sit. Hear one such tale…

The Telling

Thallan’s bloodied hands gripped the journal. The pages felt warm, almost alive, as though the ink still pulsed with the goblin’s last breath. Eyes scanned the next lines again and again, the words forming fresh even as he read.

“… the blood, the water, the ropes. How do you explain it? The look upon your face. Delightfully dull. They came in the dark. Killed them all, didn’t even give them last words. This one, though, it waited for her … in the darkness.”

“You killed him!” A shrill voice cut through the barn.

It wasn’t the first goblin’s head Thallan had separated from its body. This one, though, made the maiden nestled in hay shriek wildly. The elf wiped his blade, sheathing it with a soft click, and stepped toward her.

She was hysterical when he poured the sleeping potion down her throat. Thallan threw her over his shoulder, kicking the goblin’s corpse so that bits of horse manure splattered its vest. He placed her gently on the porch of the farmhouse, covering her with his cloak against the winter bite. Then he pulled the journal from his pouch once more.

The words continued to form, two lines at a time on the tiny pages, as though an unseen hand wrote them just for him.

“… She is ok. She will be fine when she wakes up. If she wakes up? She may make it to the light. The thing didn’t even see it coming. Did you see his golden hair mat with horse shit? I didn’t miss that. What a tale this will make. The bards shall sing!! First, we must do our job, or what tale will be told? One goblin? That is not the prize for your new bride … no … that would never do. They came in the dark. We go in the light. Follow the tracks.”

Winter winds blew through the branches that made Thallan’s antlers. A fine set for a young elf. Even the cold of frost had not removed the green of his leaves. He looked once more at the woman, scooped her up, and carried her inside. Thallan dropped her on a bed, started a fire for her, and set back out into the cold. He had goblins to track.

The tracks led deeper into the woods, but the journal kept pace. Every few paces, new lines appeared, cheerful and mocking.

“Oh, you are slow tonight, my storyteller. Look left. No, your other left. There, the little prints in the snow. They think they are clever, hiding their trail with fallen leaves. But I see everything. That is my gift, you know. I keep the stories. All of them. Even the ones no one wants told.”

Thallan followed.

The goblin camp crouched in a shallow hollow, five of them bickering over stolen bread and a mean little fire.

Thallan moved through them like a winter shadow.

One flash.

Two.

Three bodies hit the snow before the screaming started.

The journal warmed in his pouch.

“Beautiful work. But wait, storyteller. The big one, the one with the scar across his snout. He knows something. Ask him about the maiden’s sister. No, do not ask with words. Ask with steel.”

Thallan pressed the point of his blade to the goblin’s throat. The creature babbled in broken Common, something about a bigger raid, a human merchant caravan, a prize worth more than one screaming girl. Thallan listened, then ended it cleanly. They had the contraband; it was all over the camp.

The journal laughed in wet ink.

“See? I told you. The tale grows richer already. But do go on, little storyteller. Write the next part yourself. Or shall I do it for you?”

Thallan wiped his blade again and opened the book fully. The pages had multiplied. What had been a slim volume now felt thick as a grimoire. New entries sprawled across them in a looping, playful script that was not his own.

He read of the caravan raid before it happened. Thallan read of the maiden waking to find him gone. Read of her stumbling through snow to the next village, telling anyone who would listen about the elf with antlers who saved her from goblins but left her with nightmares. He read of himself tracking the larger band, of ambushes that succeeded, and one that nearly cost him his life.

Every entry ended the same way.

“Remember, storyteller. You can’t trust our words.”

Thallan closed the journal. The wind had died down. The wood was silent except for the soft patter of fresh snow. He looked down at his hands. The blood was gone. His cloak was clean. He remembered the fire he started in the farmhouse, yet the house was gone when he looked back. Only empty snow and the faint outline of a hay bale.

He opened the journal again.

New lines formed, slower this time, almost reluctant.

“You are doing so well. But the prize is not the goblins. The prize is the story. And I always get my stories, little elf. Even when the storyteller thinks he is the one telling them. Stories are like flies, little elf. They all end up somewhere.”

Thallan felt the first real chill crawl up his spine. He remembered the maiden’s face, the way her eyes had widened not at the goblin, but at him when he stepped from the shadows. Thallan remembered the sleeping potion smelling of winter berries and something sweeter, something that made the world tilt.

He remembered writing the first entry himself, long ago, in a different wood, when he had been only a boy with budding antlers and a head full of heroic tales.

The journal pulsed warmly in his hands.

“Shall we continue? There is a merchant caravan two valleys over. They carry silk and spice and a daughter with hair like spun gold. Perfect for the next chapter. Or would you rather rest? The maiden is waiting in the village. She tells everyone about the kind elf who saved her. They think her mad. But you and I know better.”

Thallan closed the book and tucked it away. He turned toward the village. The snow no longer crunched beneath his boots. It felt soft, almost welcoming.

Behind him, faint laughter drifted on the wind, the sound of a spider spinning threads between branches, patient and endlessly amused.

When the villagers found him the next morning, he sat on the porch of the empty farmhouse, the journal open on his lap. Fresh ink glistened on the final page. They called his name three times before he looked up. When he did, half the men stepped back. Something in his smile had arrived before the rest of him.

“She woke screaming again. But this time she smiled when she saw me. The tale is almost complete. Remember, dear reader, you can’t trust our words…”

The sky had already blackened as the moon ate the sun.

Thallan said nothing of the speaking corpse that walked beside the mob, dragging half of their friend by the hair. He said nothing when the screams curdled in the air and the surrounding men broke ranks.

“That’s right, goblins! Scurry!!” The words gurgled from Thallan’s own lips, though he had not willed them.

Bloodied hands rose to his face with strained arms. A chill raced up his body. His feet bobbed in and out of icy water. The pond waited below, dark and patient.

“Come, storyteller, just one more? We are not done with our grand adventures. Have you heard the songs? I hear them now…”

Thallan could hear the calls. He could see the faces. His mother was there, and his sister too. Words fell short of his ears. They had popped already, though he could feel the blood running warm down his cheeks. Rope dug into his throat, neck cranked sideways.

The cracking of a tree limb loosened the noose long enough for one desperate gulp of air before the branch gave way entirely. He plunged into the pond. Bound hands and feet thrashed. Lungs filled with black water. White bubbles wobbled to the surface from his mouth as the sun peeked from behind the moon. Dazzling blackness laced with silver pressed in.

They dragged him to the Hallowed Tree at the edge of the pond, the ancient oak whose branches had borne the weight of many stories and many endings. Ropes bit into his wrists and ankles. The noose settled around his neck like an old friend.

The pond darkened.

“But remember, dear reader, you cannot trust our words…”

The journal floated just above the surface, pages open, ink still bright. A final line wrote itself in slow, delighted loops.

“The end is only the beginning of the next tale. And Anansi always tells the best ones.”

Thallan’s last sight was the journal drifting closer, its cover opening like welcoming arms.

Then the water closed over him, and the story kept writing.

The End …

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Thank you for reading!! Join me next week for part one of Mercy’s Debt.

Feedback is greatly appreciated!!

If you enjoyed Eryndel and would like to dive deeper, I have a public World-Bible!! You can explore it here: Eryndel World-Bible on World Anvil

Stories are threads. We are the Weave.

~C. Xelfaa

So here is the honest map, straight from the start.

I currently have six short stories and a completed novel, The Fractured Weave, all set in Eryndel. A second novel and a novella are already in motion. These are not a strict series that must be read in order. They are a shared world: stand-alone tales that occasionally brush against one another, with characters who may cross paths later and an overarching story that slowly reveals itself. You can step in anywhere and still feel at home. The deeper you go, the more the connections shimmer.

Here is how I plan to use Substack.

I will post one piece a week, roughly 1,000 to 2,000 words. That means stories and novel chapters will arrive in measured portions rather than all at once. I've watched serialization become exhausting for many writers; I know my own limits and work full-time. With material already finished and new work steadily taking shape, this slower pace gives me room to enjoy the process, and gives readers time to linger with each piece instead of racing ahead.

Phase One (starting Tuesday, August 4th)

Six short stories to introduce my voice and the world of Eryndel. They range from quiet folk-horror to gentle romance, from whimsical retellings to something darker. Some are hopeful. Some are unsettling. Some are bittersweet. Together they are the first Threads leading into Eryndel. Each will come with an AI-narrated version created through ElevenLabs, fully cast with voice actors. If narrated audio is not your preference, the text stands alone. These stories were my playground while I tested different ways of telling tales. I hope some of them stay with you.

Phase Two

Serialization of The Fractured Weave, the first novel in a planned duology. Again, 1k–2k words at a time. This is the heart of the project. I have carried this story for years, refining it mostly alone. Substack will serve as my public beta: honest feedback from readers who choose to walk these roads with me will help shape the final version.

The content will always remain free. When the time feels right I will turn on subscriptions. Paid supporters will simply get early access: full stories and chapters three months before they roll into the free tier. All money raised will go directly toward professional editing, cover art, and the other costs of bringing the novel into the world in print and ebook form.

I am also building a few extras for those who subscribe:

- A Discord for conversation, shared writing prompts, game nights, and general hanging out.

- Google Docs with commenting access so you can mark up chapters in real time.

- Behind-the-scenes notes, worldbuilding snippets, and full versions of stories that are otherwise broken into weekly posts. World Anvil - Eryndel

- Occasional bonus tales written just for the community.

Self-publishing The Fractured Weave is the long-term goal. I want it to be the best version of itself before it reaches a wider audience, and your eyes and thoughts will help get it there.

Plans are living things, of course. They shift with the wind. But this is the shape I see right now, offered openly and without smoke. Starting Tuesday, August 4th, The Telling begins in earnest.

Until then I am off to see Lindsey Stirling in concert, letting music refill the well before launch. I will be lining up the first wave of posts and making sure everything feels right.

Light your lanterns, friends. The road is long, but it is better walked together.

The stories are ready to be found.

Starting Tuesday, August 4th, The Telling begins in earnest.

Stories are threads.

We are the Weave.

See you on the fourth.

~ C. Xelfaa

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The salt wind off the harbor carried the sharp tang of kelp and distant thunder as I walked the outer colonnade of the Grand Collegium. Waves hissed against the black stone foundations far below, while lanterns of captured starlight swayed along the arches, painting the marble in shifting hues of silver and violet. Students hurried past in robes the color of storm clouds, their voices low with the weight of half-formed spells. I paused at the balustrade, letting the sea spray cool my face, and felt the old question rise again like mist from the tide.

The Weave does not care about truth.

Truth is a comforting idea. It whispers that beneath every contradiction lies one clean answer waiting to be unearthed. That history can be pinned to the page like a specimen butterfly. That memory can be trusted if only we gather enough evidence. The Collegium itself was built on such promises, its libraries groaning with ledgers and illuminated tomes, its towers carved with runes meant to fix knowledge in eternal stone.

Yet the Weave offers no such mercy.

I turned from the sea and continued along the colonnade, boots whispering over tiles worn smooth by centuries of restless scholars. In the open courtyard below, apprentices practiced their first true weavings. Threads of light flickered between their fingers, some bright and steady, others fraying into sparks that smelled of ozone and regret. Stories are not preserved because they are true. They endure because they are remembered. And memory is a living thing, restless as the tide that gnaws at these very foundations.

Each telling leaves its mark. A detail softens like wax beneath a candle. A motive twists to suit the teller’s fear. A villain dons the cloak of a hero. A desperate warning becomes a prayer sung at midsummer. Over generations, the tale no longer mirrors the event. It reflects the hearts of those who refused to let it die.

In Eryndel, this is more than philosophy taught in quiet lecture halls. It is how the world itself moves.

Magic listens to belief. Legends gather weight until they press upon the lattice like iron. Forgotten tales thin and fray while stories spoken around night fires begin to breathe, to hunger, to walk. The line between truth and myth grows so fine a careful foot can step across it. The question is no longer whether something truly happened. The question becomes what happens when enough souls believe it did.

I stopped beneath the great arch of the Hall of Echoes, where the names of long-dead archmagi glowed faintly in the stone. The Weave does not judge which version is correct. It simply carries forward the threads people choose to keep. And sometimes, those threads begin weaving the world in return.

A young student hurried past, clutching a scroll whose ink still smelled fresh. She did not see me. Perhaps in a hundred years her small act of study would be remembered as the moment the Collegium turned toward ruin or toward glory. The Weave would not care which tale won. It would only carry the one that refused to be forgotten.

I pulled my cloak tighter against the rising wind and continued my walk. The lanterns swayed above me, their captured stars flickering as though they, too, were listening. A bell rang somewhere deep within the Collegium.

Perhaps truth is the story we tell ourselves so we can sleep. But story? Story is the tide that never rests. And on this island of stone and ambition, the Weave simply waits to see which currents we choose to follow.

Stories are threads. We are the Weave.

The trail had climbed higher now, the air thinner and sharper with the bite of coming frost. Golden leaves drifted down like slow sparks, catching on my cloak as I walked. The forest breathing its slow autumn sigh around me. I paused at a sun-warmed outcrop of stone, letting the wind comb through the branches overhead, and felt the old question settle in my chest again.

Why write stories that might not sell?

The market speaks plainly enough. Write what you know, they say, yet chase the trends if you wish to eat. For many seasons, I watched the two pieces of advice war with one another. When nothing the last decade offered felt like home, I chose the only honest path left. I wrote what I needed to read.

The forest path narrowed between two ancient trunks, their bark furrowed deep as old regrets. I ran a hand along the rough grain and kept walking.

I wandered through many worlds first. Some dazzled me, yet left me strangely empty. Others traded wonder for cynicism, or mystery for systems that could be solved. Eventually I realized I wasn’t searching for something new. I was searching for something I remembered. Even the games I once loved felt like ledgers wearing the skin of adventure. Then *The Last Unicorn* found me again, and something long sleeping stirred. Fantasy had grown clinical, nihilistic, a thing of rules and systems to be solved rather than lived. LitRPG only sharpened the blade. Magic became numbers. Wonder became progress bars. The soul of it had slipped away.

So I sat down with nothing but longing and broken vows, and Eryndel answered.

Here, the old ways still matter. Steam and ledger press hard against the wild Weave, yet small lights refuse to gutter out. Cat-kin rangers walk beside beetle-kin trainers and elves whose antlers remember older forests. I brought together the Western tales I grew up on and the patient, philosophical breath of stories I loved from the East. Some follow the straight charge of conflict. Others drift like Ghibli winds, where the true heart lies in the space between, in questions asked without apology.

The market leans heavily on romantasy now, a crutch worn smooth by bookish influencers and short-form judgment. I have read fine work in that vein. On Substack and in the wilds of indie publishing, I have found voices that bare souls the old gates would never have allowed. Yet when the great houses chase the same safe shape, the same curated comfort, the stories grow thin. Sanitized. Stale as untouched bread. Readers notice. Sales shift. Independent voices rise. The old gatekeepers watch Royal Road and Wattpad the way wolves once watched distant campfires.

I do not blame them for following the numbers. But I will not chain my own work to their pace.

Eryndel is not safe. It is not always kind. It carries heavy themes and brutal moments, yes, yet it also holds whimsy, retellings, quiet horrors, and moments of grace. The tension often hides between the lines. Skim these tales and you will miss the true current. Stay with them, and the Weave may whisper back. It asks of its readers in return.

I write what I know. What I cannot find elsewhere. Dark enough to feel honest. Bright enough to keep walking. Grimmbright, if you will. Not because I expect every reader to love it, but because these are the stories that still matter to me.

The trail opened onto a ridge where the last light of afternoon spilled across the valley like molten copper. Far below, smoke rose from a distant hearth. I stood there a long while, letting the wind tug at my cloak, and felt the Telling brush close once more.

If these words find you on your own winding path, know this: the forest is wide. Not every story needs to conquer the market. Some only need to reach the few hearts still listening for something older and truer.

Light your lantern if the shadows grow long. The path continues. And the stories remember those who choose to walk it anyway.

Stories are threads. We are the Weave.

The leaves burned gold and crimson beneath the autumn sun, each step releasing the sharp, sweet scent of fallen pine and damp earth. I walked the old trail alone, boots crunching softly over the carpet of the season’s turning, the surrounding forest alive with the quiet rustle of things preparing for sleep. It was an afternoon that invited remembering.

I had come here seeking clarity, the way one seeks a clear stream after long days of dust and clamor. And as the path wound deeper, the question rose unbidden, soft as falling leaves:

Where does a story truly begin?

Not with the first word scratched upon parchment. Not even with the first spark in a weary mind. In Eryndel, beginnings are rarely so clean. They are tangled things, roots twisted through old soil, reaching back through seasons long forgotten. So it was with *The Fractured Weave*.

I had not meant to birth a world. I sat down in a low season of my own life, body and spirit both worn from the long grind. The restaurant years had shaped me: server, host, dishwasher, manager, and now Sous Chef in a place where the elderly waited out their final chapters. I loved the craft of it, the rhythm of blade and flame, yet the machine behind it left its mark. Life had shifted again, heavy and insistent, and in that press I reached for something older.

A short tale, I told myself. A simple echo of old favorites: a cat-kin ranger, a fractured bond with something fey and wild. The words flowed easier than expected. By the end of the first chapter, the story had already begun to pull at the threads of memory. By the third, I knew this was no fleeting thing. It was a door opening into a place I had carried inside me for decades: fragments from childhood games, Pathfinder campaigns whispered around tables, tales spun in the quiet hours before the world filled with endless noise.

The forest path climbed gently now, sunlight slanting through the canopy in shafts of molten amber. I paused beside an ancient oak, its bark furrowed like the lines life had carved into my own hands. Here, in the dappled quiet, the shape of it became clearer.

I had been searching. For stories that acknowledged the grind without surrendering to it. The age had grown heavy with grimdark voids and bright, hollow comforts. I found myself adrift between them, remembering 9/11, friends who answered the call, the slow souring of things once held simple. Entertainment followed suit, twisting sharper, colder. I could not find what my heart needed, so I wove it.

I had been reading the newer Star Wars novels, watching grand fantasies like Game of Thrones unfold on screen. Even the worlds I wandered in games felt different now, their wonder slowly leached away. Then I found The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. In its pages, something ancient and luminous stirred awake inside me. I realized what I had been missing. Fantasy had grown dark, often nihilistic. Clinical and scientific in its precision. It read like a game to be solved rather than a world to be lived. And when LitRPG rose in the currents, the last traces of mystery seemed to vanish, magic reduced to rules and systems, wonder traded for mechanics to be mastered.

Eryndel rose from those roots. Old campaign bones given new life. A world where steam and ledger press against the wild Weave. Where gods grow distant and stories themselves become the moral reply. Gearhaven was born from the frustration of watching people reduced to numbers. The Ward of Wilted Flowers from quiet moments tending small beauties against iron. The characters, Caelrya’s fractured remembering, Thorne’s guarded heart, Lirael’s unyielding stride, each carried pieces of the journey. The Weaver Mind did its work, letting discovery breathe between the planned beats. I killed darlings without mercy. I let the living world push back.

The world is heavy. Systems devour. Victory demands cost.

The old tales fight for balance. Folklore stirs when mortals forget. The Weave nudges, reminds, sometimes demands.

Small lights persist. Heroes choose rightly not because it saves the world, but because it is right. Hope is not loud. It is stubborn. Silver-edged even in the darkest hours.

Those qualities define Grimmbright.

The trail opened onto a small clearing where late wildflowers still clung to the season. I sat on a fallen log, the wood warm from the sun, and felt the Telling brush close. This was never meant to be one tale. What emerged was not a single story, but Threads:

One follows the Fractured Weave itself …

Another wanders the wider world …

And beneath them all run the oldest songs, remember when the world was younger …

Some will feel like fairy tales. Others like lost histories. A few may blur the line between truth and telling. That is as it should be.

I rose and brushed the leaves from my cloak. The path continued ahead, winding through autumn’s fire toward whatever lay beyond the next rise. Eryndel does not promise easy roads or bloodless triumphs. It offers only the truth of walking between shadow and spark, of saving what pieces one can.

If these words find you, traveler, on your own winding trail, know this: the forest is wide and the Telling patient. Light your lantern if the way grows dim. The stories are waiting, and they remember those who choose to listen.

In Eryndel, where the old Weave frays against iron lattice and steam, such stories have always found their voice. I have carried them longer than memory easily holds. Fragments scratched by firelight on bark. Tales whispered in the holds of iron kitchens. A grand work, meticulously bound over numerous seasons, has succumbed to salt and the passage of time. Gone, yet its roots remain.

Life taught its own harsh lessons.

A childhood of unearned grace gave way to choices that cut deep. The world ground slow and steady, turning a free soul into another cog in the machine, whether the authoritative engines of Gearhaven’s houses or the smaller wheels of common toil.

I remember the towers falling. Friends answering the call. Promises that became wars, and wars that simply changed their masks.

I remember the grand future promised to those who endured the trials of the Mage Colleges. Promises that bore sour fruit and stole many of those futures.

I remember the plague years. It was then the stories changed, short tales divorced from the telling, fragments without a fire to gather around.

Stories are threads. We are the Weave.

And our story lies fractured.

Entertainment followed the mood of the age. Grimdark tales bloomed, void of light, insisting that darkness alone held truth. The sharp edge of older satire dulled into something heavier, less honest.

Noblebright rose in answer. Yet it often felt no more truthful. The darkness was real. Pretending otherwise solved nothing.

I could not find the stories my heart needed. So I shaped them myself.

Eryndel rose from that need: a world cleft between the old and the new. Steam and ledger choke the wild magic. Gods grow distant; their answers faint as echoes in ruined temples.

Faith that once fed Elyria and Mortheon now struggles against the cold certainty of progress. Yet in the cracks, small lights persist. Heroes do not save the world. They simply refuse to let it claim their souls without cost. Villains act according to their nature. The light may dim. But hope remains, quiet and stubborn as roots splitting stone.

This is Grimmbright.

Grim. The world presses heavy. Systems of iron and law devour the weak. Survival demands compromise. Victory leaves scars that never fully fade.

Grimm. The old tales fight back. Folklore is not mere fancy here. When mortals forget the light, the stories remember. Boggarts stir in shadowed alleys. Aitvaras balance ledgers in their own strange way. The Weave nudges, whispers, and sometimes strikes. Belief shapes reality. Memory reshapes truth.

Bright. Even in the grinding dark, some choose rightly because it is right. They blur lines as all living things do. Yet a silver thread runs through every loss. Melancholy, yes. But never without that faint, enduring glow.

Here I can tell the stories that matter. Of a Kharin exile learning what she truly is.

Of bonds older than memory.

Of small acts that matter more than grand destinies. The future is not assured. It is earned, one hard choice at a time.

If these words find you, wanderer, know this: Eryndel does not promise straightforward paths or bloodless triumphs. It offers only the truth of living between shadow and spark. Come sit by the fire. Listen closely. The Telling has room for those who still seeks a light worth carrying.

The embers shifted. A faint warmth brushed my face, carrying the scent of wild apricots and distant rain. The night has stretched long, but not empty.

If you refuse to give in to the darkness, then bear your light for Eryndel and join me, Lantern Bearer. There is a new world waiting to be explored…

~C. Xelfaa

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The fire crackled low in the hearth of the old waystation, its light dancing across weathered stone that had known both Elven song and iron hammer. I sat there, cloaked against the chill that crept from the Sundered hills, and felt the weight of untold things press upon my shoulders.

Stories were never meant to be written.

Not in the way the scribes of Gearhaven would have it, their ledgers binding words like slaves to a page.

In the First Age of Eryndel, before the Great Sundering tore the north and steel began its slow claim, tales moved on living breath. They passed from fire to fire, voice to voice, memory to memory. A hunter spoke of the beast with eyes like captured starlight. A child swore those same eyes shone silver as moonlight on frost. A bard sang them hollow and ravenous.

Each teller shaped the truth anew, and the story allowed it. The tale belonged not to the tongue that carried it. But to something deeper. Something that stirred in the Weave when ears pricked, and hearts leaned close.

Memory carried its own cost. To hold a story was to let it remake you. A softened edge here, a sharpened thorn there. You forgot the color of the sky on that distant hunt. You gained a fear of open ground that had never been yours before.

The tale left its mark, faint as pollen on the wind, and you walked on changed. This was how the old things endured. Not frozen in ink. But alive in flesh, blood, breath, and the quiet hours.

When the first scribes bound words to scrolls, they gained much.

Clarity.

A shape that held against forgetting. Control, rigid as a gear’s tooth. Yet something slipped away in the fixing. A written tale does not shift when the listener’s heart changes. It does not warm to a new hearth or cool under a stranger’s doubt. It waits, still and patient, a thing of margins and measure. Safe, perhaps. But no longer truly breathing.

In Eryndel, some stories refuse that stillness. They linger in the Wilted Flowers, in the hush beneath Iso Alora’s buried roots, in the thrum of wild aether that Gearhaven’s engines cannot quite silence.

We call this presence the Telling. Not a mere tale, nor quite a force. A thing aware of its need to be heard. It waits for the right voice, the right fracture in the world’s ordered story. Then it begins again, threading through the teller like roots through cracked stone.

What happens when the story turns its gaze upon you? When memory becomes the vessel and the tale the will that guides it? In this world, such things are no fancy of bards. They are echoes of the old pacts. Bonds like Caelrya’s with Elowen. Whispers that rise when belief falters and the iron lattice strains.

They reshape how a Ranger remembers her jungle home. How a wolf-kin weighs the chains of new family against old debts. How truth splinters and reforms in the space between what was and what must be.

This is why I set these words down now, though my hand hesitates. Eryndel is a place where belief shapes the Weave, where memory rewrites the path, and stories do not always remain where they are set. Understanding that changes the stride of every traveler who enters these pages. It asks you to listen as much as read. To feel the pull of something older beneath the printed lines.

The stories are not yet ready for their full telling. They wait in the quiet, listening. But in time, I will share them. Fragments first. Glimpses of firelight and shadow, of gears and growing things. Until then, I keep the chronicle as best I can. Come sit by the hearth when the words call. The Telling has room for one more voice.

If these first sparks find you, wanderer, then the road ahead holds more than ink and paper. It holds the living weave. Walk with me a while. The fire is warm, and the night is long enough for remembering.

Plans have changed. As we gear up for the full release, posts will now be on the first and third Tuesdays of every month. Keep an eye out here and for more…

Phantom Wings Of Eryndel - Songs From The Fractured Weave

Some stories are told…

and stories that are lived quietly, until they refuse to stay that way.

I am not sure which kind this is yet. The path that led me here is not a rare one. It is quiet. Familiar. Easily overlooked. The one thing I did recently that I wish I had done much sooner was permitting myself to live a little more outside of expectations. When we leave the safety of early years, the world begins to read us...

You now have responsibilities, a job, bills, and try to have some sort of social life.

For me, it killed the imagination that carried me through childhood and into later years.

I learned late in life that not everyone moves through the world the same way. The way they experience thought and the world around them. I grew up thinking this was a standard thing. Hearing an inner monologue, thinking in words, images, and movies. Turns out it is not standard. Not strange either. It just is.

Not everyone moves through the world in the same way.

Some walk it.

Some watch it.

Some weave it.

We are a culmination of stories. The ones we read and watch. The tales from friends and the ones you spin in return. Most importantly, we are the story we tell ourselves.

There was a time when people acknowledged this openly. They told stories to answer questions about the world around them. They told tales of morality to keep the community in check.

Once upon a time, a group of people wandered the world and collected these stories. You know them as folklore and fairytales. They are so much more than just the simple labels.

They are pools of reflection.

Mirrors.

And we have forgotten this. I will assume that since you are here, you might not be the kind of person I will reference.

We have let the wrong stories take hold.
Fragments of thought, carried in bursts,
loud, fleeting, and gone before they can take root.

That is why I built, am building Eryndel.

This is a world I have lived with for years. Now I have found the voice to tell the stories it holds. I have allowed myself to live outside some expectations.

It is not a place of finished stories.

It is where they begin, fracture, and sometimes find their way back together.

Eryndel is not a finished world.

It is a world in the process of being remembered.

What you will find here are fragments, records pulled from archives, stories carried through firelight, songs half-recalled, and accounts that do not always agree with one another. Some are true. Some are mistaken. Some were never meant to be found at all.

This is intentional.

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✧ What This Is

This space serves as a living collection of lore, myth, and narrative pieces connected to The Fractured Weave and its surrounding stories.

Rather than presenting a complete and fixed canon, Eryndel is being built the way stories once were:

• in pieces

• across voices

• shaped by those who tell them

You may encounter:

• archival records from places like Gearhaven

• fragmented manuscripts damaged by time, fire, or design

• folktales and retellings that blur truth and myth

• character-bound perspectives that contradict one another

No single entry should be taken as absolute truth.

✧ Why It’s Built This Way

Eryndel exists at the intersection of three forces:

• Story, what is told

• System, what is recorded

• Memory, what survives

Most worlds present themselves as complete.

This one does not.

Because the central idea behind Eryndel is simple:

Truth is not always preserved. It is negotiated.

By building the world in fragments, contradictions, and evolving pieces, this space reflects the same uncertainty and tension that exists within any narrative.

✧ A Living World

This project is being developed slowly and deliberately.

Entries may:

• change over time

• expand with new context

• contradict earlier versions

• be reclassified, revised, or “corrected”

This is not a flaw.

It is part of the design.

As the core narrative approaches release, certain threads will begin to settle, but even then, not everything will align cleanly. Some questions are meant to remain open.

✧ How to Read This World

You are not expected to understand everything.

You are invited to:

• follow threads that interest you

• notice patterns and inconsistencies

• question the reliability of what you read

• form your own interpretation of events

If something feels incomplete, it probably is.
If something feels contradictory, it probably matters.

✧ Final Note

Eryndel is being built with care, over time, in the open.

Not as a fixed encyclopedia,
but as a weave of stories finding their shape.

If you’ve ever felt like something inside you didn’t quite fit the shape of the world…

You may already know why you’re here.

So stick around as we learn these stories together.

The first of these stories has been written.
Others are still being found.

For now, I will share what surfaces when it surfaces.

If you miss heroes…
Come walk a while.

Entries will appear monthly, more often, when the work demands it.
The stories themselves are still being uncovered.

When enough have been gathered, they will be shared here.

Until then, I will document the journey,
the slow work of chronicling what refuses to stay buried.

If you would like to read up on current lore with a bardic tone, you can find it here: World Anvil - Eryndel