The candle's flame flickers faintly, casting long shadows across the dusty corners of the adventurer's guild. From where I sit by the window, I watch them - those strange figures who stir the whispers in every tavern and market square: the Lorewind Sentinels. They carry a dragon's head like a trophy, and their every move seems to pull the very threads of fate tighter around this land.
I am no longer the woman who stayed behind, clutching grain sacks and hiding boots beneath the hayloft. I left all that - my husband's worried smile, the soft warmth of home - to answer the call my dreams laid upon me. The dreams that first shook me awake months ago, the blood-red moons and shadowed bows, the whispered name - Treebean.
At first, I thought those dreams were just restless wanderings of the mind, the kind that haunt the fields during the harvest. But one night, they began to come true.
The sapling I saw in my dreams appeared near my village, stout and watchful, like a living omen. The stories followed soon after: a great fight where a forgotten one fell and its lair was taken - similar to a trophy of a power I only began to understand, the weave. Each step I take now feels guided by that promise, that silent vow whispered by Vihi herself?
I clutch the worn tooth my grandmother gave me, tied tight with a faded ribbon. "Vihi guide me," I whisper, even as I miss the quiet life I left behind. My husband's face visits my thoughts, a bittersweet warmth that steadies me in the cold nights on the road.
Inside this guild, the Sentinels speak softly of portals to strange realms and plagues creeping beneath the surface. The world grows heavier with every tale, but I have learned I can no longer stand on the sidelines. Then I heard the name, a druid in Sister's Peninsula - Treebean Wildsprout, or Woodsprout. Some sprout...
One day, I will stand among them, shoulder to shoulder, facing the darkness pressing against the light.
Until then, I watch. I learn. I move forward. Next on the way is the steamcart, and maybe a boat. Someone not afraid of the Sea of Breeze, and Mermaid, Winston or any other pirate.
Because destiny calls us all, even those who once only heard it in whispered dreams, in the name of my lady.
Vihi guide me.