S02E04 - 04 The Box and Olythrae

Olythrae sits quietly, her gaze cast sideways,
listening as you describe the blackwood box, the iron bands, the whispering runes.

For a long moment, she says nothing.

The lights circling her drift more slowly, as if listening too.

Finally, in a voice that seems to come from both the room and the roots themselves, she murmurs:

"Three seals, three sins... and a breath to wake them."

She leans her head back, strands of moss and hair threading together above her brow.

"Bound not to protect the bearer, but the bearing. Dreamt long ago. By hands wiser than these."

A single pale vine curls upward from her wrist, spiraling aimlessly in the air.

"To unlock such a binding is to unbind not only the breath... but the Hunt that follows it."

Olythrae’s eyes cloud briefly, as if seeing something distant and terrible.

When she speaks again, her voice is a whisper:

"The horn waits. It waits beyond the rivers of blood. It waits beyond the call of kings. It hunts without end... once awoken."

The lights around her flicker again, one by one —
and the air grows just a little colder,
as if some distant, unseen awareness turned briefly toward you.

And then —
Olythrae simply turns away, withdrawing into the slow, tangled breathing of her mossy throne,
leaving you with no more answers — only the growing certainty that some doors, once opened,
can never be closed again.