Art and Lore

She broke the surface of the pool with a gasp, water cascading from her new form as the first breath of air scorched her mortal lungs. Stars exploded behind her eyes, too bright, too sharp, too real. The forest around her pulsed with colours her mind had no names for, scents that made her dizzy with their complexity.

Her fingers clutched at moss covered stone, the rough texture sending shocks through nerve endings that had never before known touch. She hauled herself from the shimmering waters and collapsed on the bank, trembling.

Weight. Her first coherent thought. Light no longer, but matter. Bound to edges. Bound to gravity.

She was mortal now, and yet something more had been forged in her unmaking, a kind of being the realms had never known.

She became aware of a presence within her that hadn't existed before. Not just her heart's new rhythm or the rush of blood through veins, but something deeper. A centre of gravity for her being that felt both intensely personal and strangely vulnerable. She now possessed something uniquely, permanently hers.

A soul.

The Arcavium

They traded mortality for memory, magic for knowledge, feeling for forever. Their skin is as pale as death, their eyes are cloudy white, their flesh marked with binding tattoos. They remember everything. Every word, every moment, the seven days of agony as the binding tattoos were carved into their skin to keep to keep their consciousness theathered to their bodies. 

They cannot forget

They cannot die

They cannot feel