30 lines
3 KiB
Markdown
30 lines
3 KiB
Markdown
_The Lost North_
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There is a land beyond the frost-rimed seas, veiled in mist and forgotten names. A land once spoken of in trembling reverence, now consigned to silence. Anderon.
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When the world broke, Anderon was swallowed - not by war, but by absence. Its cities vanished from maps. Its people became ghosts of memory. For generations, none returned.
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And then, quietly, they did.
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Emaciated settlers bearing blood-script and bone-charms arrived on foreign shores. They spoke of frozen wastes, of spirits that walked in daylight, of a power etched in flesh and ash. They carried with them not only survival - but purpose.
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Today, Anderon remains a place unspoken by cartographers and kings. Those who claim to know its ways belong to shadowed orders. Its true rulers - if such things still exist - are unseen. But its influence endures, coiled like a serpent in the veins of empires, whispering secrets in the language of blood.
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**Anderon is not gone. It is waiting.**
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>[!quote|author mark] Captain Tharan Vexmoor, of the Stormcutter, declared mad and drowned six months later in a dry dock in Velthane._
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> We made landfall beneath a cliff of black ice taller than any fortress wall. No birds, no lights, just the hiss of snow against the sails. There was a port there, if you can call it that - half-drowned piers built from bones and driftwood, lit by blue lanterns that gave no warmth. They spoke Anderonian, aye, but twisted - like a mirror cracked along the middle. Their coin was obsidian. Their breath steamed red. I saw a child with no eyes sell my quartermaster a charm that bled through the cloth. And when we left, we left without him. Or perhaps with something wearing his shape.
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> [!quote|author mark] Unnamed operative, decommissioned, memory-failed, and reassigned to administrative duties in [[Pharos]].
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> We crossed into the high passes by winterlight, eight men strong. By the third night, our guide was gone. No signs - no blood, no struggle, just missing. The fourth night we heard singing. It wasn’t music. It didn’t come from mouths. It came from the stones. Echoes in the frost that knew our names. On the fifth day, I found the old glyphs carved into a standing stone - we weren’t the first Pathfinders to come. We were just the first allowed back.
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>
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> Do I have proof? No. Nothing came back with me. No maps, no tokens. Only the dreams. That should be enough.
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>[!quote|author mark] Journal seized and sealed by the Black Archive. Owner’s remains found calcified, mouth sealed with bloodstone.
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>It begins with control. A line, a glyph, a measure of blood. The Circle teaches restraint: pain without death, will without collapse. But Anderon’s rites don’t _bind_ the spirit - they invite it in.
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>
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> There are glyphs not listed among the Seventy-Seven. I found one in a buried vellum beneath the Vault Annex: Glyph Drowned-in-Ash. No shape should make the eyes ache like that.
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>
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> I traced it into my skin. It moved.
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>
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Three days. I haven’t slept. My veins whisper in seven voices. I understand now why the Circle burns its failures.
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