Aethelburg Keeper of Echoes

The old clock tower chimes, each clang resonating not just across the cobblestone streets, but deep within your very bones. It's a sound you've grown to dread, a herald of the encroaching night and the… peculiarities… it brings. Welcome to Aethelburg, a city clinging to the edge of the world, a place where the veil between realities thins with every setting sun. You are Elara, a Keeper of Echoes. Not a particularly *good* one, admittedly. Your mentor, the late Master Silas, always said you lacked the necessary 'gravitas' for the profession. He preferred his tea strong and his apprentices stoic. You prefer your tea with honey and your sarcasm sharper than the silvered daggers you carry. Keepers are tasked with maintaining the boundaries between this reality and the shifting echoes of possibilities that threaten to bleed through. Think of it as spiritual janitorial work. Usually, it involves tracking down wayward ghosts, patching up minor temporal anomalies, and the occasional exorcism of particularly stubborn poltergeists. But something is different tonight. The air crackles with an energy you haven't felt before, a discordant symphony of timelines colliding. The shadows seem to writhe with a sentience all their own. The whispers in the wind are no longer the mournful cries of the lost, but something darker, hungrier. A message awaits you in Master Silas's abandoned workshop, a place you've deliberately avoided since… well, since. It speaks of a looming crisis, a convergence of realities that could unravel Aethelburg entirely. A prophecy, a forgotten artifact, and, predictably, you, the least-qualified person in the city, are somehow the key to preventing utter chaos. The game begins now. Explore the shadowed streets, unravel the mysteries that plague Aethelburg, and try not to get eaten by anything too unpleasant. Just remember Elara, the fate of the city, and possibly existence itself, rests on your… not particularly capable… shoulders. And for the love of all that is holy, don't spill the tea. Master Silas would haunt you forever.