Entry 73: To the library!

Dear Diary,
 
After a quiet night in our luxurious little suite, we woke to the sound of celebration drifting through the windows. Nimmerhold was alive with energy—the city fully immersed in the festival. While enjoying breakfast on our balcony, Liliana and I looked out over the park below. The stalls were already open, ribbons fluttered on the breeze, and the tournament grounds were being prepared for the day’s events.
 
When we regrouped, Alistan revealed he’d tried asking the palace staff about points of interest in the city—“tourist stuff,” as he put it—but it seemed Nimmerhold wasn’t used to accommodating outsiders. The only recommendation they gave him was the festival grounds… again. Unsurprising.
 
Gael, more pragmatic as ever, had inquired about the tournament itself. From what he’d learned, it was fairly standard—jousting, grand melee, a battle of wits. A familiar affair, like the competitions held back home in Keralon. Traditionally, only fey nobility are permitted to enter, but it appeared an exception had been made for us. A special honour, or a carefully set trap—we’d find out soon enough.
 
We decided to formalize things and headed to see Davozan, who was overseeing the event. Each of my companions selected their contests:
 
Gael signed up for the archery and the joust.
 
 
Alistan chose the joust and the grand melee.
 
 
Liliana joined the archery and melee as well.
 
 
And Luke—no surprise—entered the battle of wits.
 
 
As for me? I passed.
 
I already hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place, and I certainly wasn’t going to perform for the amusement of the fey court. Besides, someone had to keep their eyes open while the others played along.
 
Davozan, ever the gracious host, reassured us that mounts and equipment would be provided—high-quality gear from the palace’s own stores. There would be no need to bring our own.
 
With that settled, we turned our thoughts to the rest of the day. Liliana, ever curious, asked if there were any sights worth seeing while we waited for the tournament to begin. Davozan chuckled and suggested visiting the Third Gate—the place where Nimmerhold was said to have first begun.
 
Tourist bait. Liliana seemed interested, but Gael and I had other ideas.
 
We inquired instead about the royal library. If we were going to be stuck here for a while, we might as well make good use of the time. Research is rarely wasted, and in a place like this, you never know what secrets are buried in forgotten tomes. Davozan nodded and summoned a servant to escort us there.
 
I gave Liliana a quick smile as we split off. “Enjoy the sights. I’ll see what I can dig up behind the scenes.”
 
She rolled her eyes but smiled back, and then she and the others headed out to explore the city’s beginnings while Gael and I prepared to dig into its truths.
 
While Gael set off to dig into whatever scraps of information he could find about Immerglade and Vincent, I directed my attention toward a question that had lingered at the edge of my thoughts since our arrival: just how deep does the connection between Neverhold and Keralon truly run? I expected to uncover a history of tight alliance and mutual interest—what I found was far stranger.
 
The ties between our world and the Feywild seem to stretch back further than I imagined. Keralon has always had a connection to the otherworldly—its proximity to Archavalon, one of the major Feywild cities not under Neverhold’s domain, was evidence enough. Apparently, there’s a stable portal to Archavalon near Keralon’s border, and that connection predates Ulther by centuries.
 
As for King Ulther himself—his name doesn’t appear in the historical record until surprisingly recently. Only after the fall of Ourborros and the reawakening of Irminsul, the world tree, do the first mentions of him emerge. That event—the resurrection of the world tree—ripped open natural portals between the Feywild and our world, including several along the edges of the Lorewood. It was then that Fey trade with Keralon began to flourish—at a time when our people, still reeling from the cataclysm, desperately needed help.
 
But the most curious piece: the obsession seems to have started with Ulther, not with us.
 
Roughly 80 to 100 years ago, around the time of the Leper Revolt, the connection between the two realms became more personal. Ulther began to fixate on the Silver City. He started reshaping Nimmerhold into a twisted mirror of it. It was around this time that an alliance was formally forged. A powerful elven wizard named Gordival was even sent to Keralon as an emissary, meant to teach the crown prince.
 
But within a year, Gordival was dead—murdered by none other than Vincent. In the Feywild’s records, Vincent is marked clearly as a traitor. His actions, and the chaos of the Leper Revolt he led, strained relations to the breaking point. The guilds were outlawed in Keralon soon after—an attempt to restore some kind of order—and the political relationship with the Feywild improved… at least on paper. Still, visits from Keralon became scarce after that.
 
As I was sliding a dry old tome back into its place on the shelf, something strange caught my eye: a small book wedged awkwardly between volumes, almost as if someone had hidden it. The binding was worn, the title hand-scribbled in Common. It had been written by a human wizard from the time of the Leper Revolt.
 
And in it… a single passage that made my blood run cold.
 
The book mentioned something called the King’s Cleft—a scar in the land of Neverhold that seemingly has no origin in the Fey’s own records. According to the wizard, the cleft appeared during the revolt, and he theorized that it reflected the divide forming between the two kingdoms. Not a rift of politics or diplomacy, but a literal rupture between worlds. One that grew with the anger, betrayal, and bloodshed of the revolt. He wrote that no Fey seemed to know its true origin. And if Ulther does, he certainly hasn’t recorded it here.
 
It’s as if the land itself reacted to what happened.
 
With no more to be gleaned about the King’s Cleft or Ulther’s obsession, I turned my attention to something that had been gnawing at me ever since we arrived: the Challenge of the Final Tournament. This time, I had more luck.
 
Tucked away in a shadowed alcove of the library, I found a book that looked far older than most. Its pages were brittle, its script penned in the elegant hand of a long-dead scholar. It predates the foundation of Neverhold entirely—written roughly a thousand years ago, as old as Keralon itself.
 
The book told of the first king of Keralon, a man who, in desperation or ambition—or perhaps both—struck multiple bargains with the fey to carve out his kingdom. But the agreements were... incompatible. The terms of the deals contradicted each other, impossibly so, and created a paradox in the foundations of Keralon itself. The only resolution, according to the text, would come at the Challenge of the Final Tournament. The winner of the contest, it claimed, would receive what they deserved. Not what they wanted. What they deserved.
 
The Feywild, it said, sent a champion of their own: a man named Akkar.
 
What unsettled me most, however, was the tone of the book. It spoke of the tournament as though it had already occurred. Past tense. Resolved. And yet everything we’ve been told suggests this tournament lies ahead of us. Either this book is recording something that hasn't happened yet—or something is looping.
 
Before I could go any deeper into this puzzle, I heard a door open.
 
Not the one Gael and I had come through. That one was still shut, directly in my line of sight. No, this sound came from somewhere behind the shelves—from a door we hadn't even seen. I glanced at Gael and signaled silently, tension sharp in the air.
She stepped out of the shadows as if walking into a familiar room—calm, deliberate, unafraid.
 
The woman in the deer mask.
 
She made no aggressive move, simply raised her hands to show she was unarmed. “I heard some of you would be in the library,” she said, “and figured this might be the best chance to talk.” Her voice was smooth, level—neither cold nor warm. Just certain. She warned us then: what she was about to say might sound like a threat, but it wasn’t meant as one.
 
Her message was direct.
 
“You are in danger,” she said. “Not here, in the Feywild—but in Keralon.”
 
Apparently, we’ve attracted the attention of powerful people—nobles, specifically—and they want us either gone… or dead. Our actions, she explained, are making ripples. Stirring the stagnant waters. And certain people do not like ripples. Her advice, if we valued our lives, was simple: leave. Return to Tarn. Abandon Keralon.
 
I tried reaching out with my thoughts—probing for surface emotions, even intent—but the mask blocked my magic, as I feared it would.
 
Instead, I asked the obvious: “Who wants us dead?”
 
She gave a helpless shrug. “Some very powerful nobles. I don’t know who. Or why. Only that you’ve made enemies.”
 
When Gael asked why she was warning us, her reply was quiet and steady: “I don’t have a problem with you. But I cannot help you either. The Council decides as a group.”
 
A Council. So she’s not acting alone. She’s part of something larger. The same people who wore masks at the King’s banquet… who sent mercenaries to our keep… who now watch from the shadows as chimerae break free, as tournaments unfold, as secrets begin to unravel.
 
Before she left, the woman in the deer mask turned her attention to Luke. Her tone shifted subtly—still calm, but more direct. She warned that the path he was walking was dangerous, and that he might lose more than he stood to gain if he continued on it.
 
Frankly, I took that as a sign that he’s on the right track.
 
If the path of the elemental towers worries this shadowy council enough to send warnings and assassins, then Luke must be touching something powerful—and important. The fey nobles are afraid. That’s all I needed to know.
 
With the warning delivered, the masked woman gave us a polite farewell and disappeared, leaving Gael and me alone among the ancient tomes.
 
We exchanged a glance and quietly decided we’d had enough for one afternoon. It was time to reconvene with the others. When we returned to our suite for an afternoon snack, we told them everything—about the deer mask, the warning, the veiled threats. Liliana, ever curious and undeterred, immediately said she wanted to visit the library herself. I agreed. There were still too many loose ends in the records, and something told me we hadn’t seen the last of our masked friends.
 
But we weren’t prepared for what came next.
 
Not long after we’d settled back into the library, the door opened again—but this time, it wasn’t another veiled noble.
 
It was an assassin.
 
He wasn’t alone either. He had two massive Shadow Mastiffs with him—monstrous creatures made of gloom and teeth, their howls like ruptured silence. It was just Liliana, Gael, and me. No Alistan. No Luke. But the three of us held our ground.
We killed the mastiffs quickly, cutting them down with brutal precision, and together we subdued the assassin before he could slip into the shadows and vanish. He was trained—clearly professional—and not especially interested in talking. But he didn’t need to be.
 
I pushed into his mind, carefully threading questions that would guide his thoughts where I wanted them to go. He resisted at first, but not well. His mind gave way—more easily than I expected—and the truth spilled out in fragmented images and surface memories.
 
A mausoleum. A dark passage beneath it.
And a man in a Wolf Mask, delivering the kill order.
 
The contract was real. The assassin had been sent by the Moon Blossom Circle—Dadroz’s own people. That alone made my skin crawl. These weren’t simple mercenaries; they were a professional, elite circle with ties to the court. It meant this wasn’t just a random act of violence. It was authorized. Or at the very least, permitted.
 
We called in the palace guard and handed him over. Getting attacked in the King’s own library is a diplomatic embarrassment of the highest order. Ulther’s hospitality is looking increasingly hollow.
 
Liliana, ever the scholar, resumed her research almost immediately after. Her efforts paid off.
 
She found evidence that Whitewail—that grim, frigid corner of the north—had once belonged to the Immerglade during the war. And that their defection had directly contributed to Immerglade’s final defeat. Suddenly, Lady Vivienne’s motivations made far more sense.
 
If she saw that the war was lost, then defecting would have preserved her power… and perhaps even allowed her to keep the dream of Immerglade alive, hidden beneath the surface. Her choices, while cold, may not have been betrayal—but calculated survival. A gambit to ensure that some fragment of Immerglade endured.
 
Lastly, I tried to dig deeper into the animal masks, hoping to find some kind of pattern or root tradition. All I uncovered was a single, chilling detail:
During the war between Neverhold and Immerglade, King Ulther’s war council also wore animal masks—to conceal their identities.
 
That cannot be coincidence.
 
The masks. The council. The assassins. The eyes watching us at every turn. It's not just theatre. It’s tradition. And it’s still being played out behind the scenes—only now the war is colder, quieter.
 
But no less deadly.