Keeper of the Flame

The wind howls a mournful song through the skeletal branches of the Whisperwood, a song you've known since you were a child. You remember your grandmother humming it as she spun wool, telling tales of the Star-Weavers and the Great Loom that held the cosmos together. Back then, the song felt comforting, a lullaby under a blanket of stars. Now, it grates on your nerves, a constant reminder of the chilling solitude that has become your life. For generations, your family has been the Keeper of the Verdant Flame, a mystical fire said to hold back the encroaching Blight. It's a lonely duty, one passed down from parent to child, a weight you carry with every sunrise. The flame flickers merrily within its ancient brazier, housed in the crumbling Stoneheart Shrine. For now. But the wind has brought with it something new. A disharmony. The animals grow skittish, the crops wither prematurely, and the whispers in the wind are no longer tales of old. They are frantic, desperate pleas. You feel it in your bones: the Blight is growing stronger. This morning, you found it – a single, iridescent spore clinging to the ancient stones of the shrine. It pulsed with an unnatural light, cold and unsettling. You crushed it under your worn leather boot, but the act felt futile. One spore is nothing. An infestation is everything. Your grandfather's grimoire, bound in dragon hide and smelling of ancient herbs, lies open on the worn stone table. Its pages are filled with cryptic warnings and desperate solutions, gleaned from centuries of Keeper's facing similar threats. But the solutions are not clear. They require dangerous ingredients, forgotten rituals, and journeys into the heart of the very corruption you seek to repel. Tonight, the stars are hidden behind a veil of unnatural fog. The Whisperwood groans. The Verdant Flame flickers uncertainly. The choice is yours. Do you bury your head in the sand and pray for a miracle? Or do you face the encroaching darkness, armed with nothing but your knowledge, your courage, and the fading embers of hope? The fate of the land, perhaps the world, rests on your shoulders. Welcome, Keeper. Your vigil begins now.