The Echo Wine Myth

Long before the walls of Camp Hope rose and the Sonohoka Era began, there was a world on the brink of collapse—a world of great beauty and terrible loss. In the last days before the Fall, hidden among the rolling hills and forgotten estates, grew a vineyard unlike any other. Its grapes were nurtured by the soil soaked with sorrow and tears—tears shed by those who watched their lives unravel, their loved ones vanish, and their world burn. It was said that these vineyards were watered not by rain alone, but by the grief of the lost, the fallen, and the forsaken.

From these grapes, a wine was born. Not an ordinary wine, but one infused with the essence of memory itself. They called it Echo Wine, for those who drank it heard echoes—whispers of the past carried on the breath of the grapevine. The wine’s deep crimson color shimmered faintly in the glass, as if holding the spirits of those who had perished in its depths. To drink it was to open a door to forgotten times, to listen to the voices of ancestors and ghosts.

The story tells of a lone vintner, a man whose name has been lost to time but whose soul remains bound to the legend. In those dark days, he sought to capture hope within a bottle—to preserve the final moments of the world before it slipped away forever. Using grapes from the last harvest, he crafted the wine, hoping to grant his people a glimpse beyond the veil of suffering. But the wine was more than hope; it was a mirror reflecting truths too deep for the living.

When a sip touched one’s lips, memories not their own flooded their mind—the laughter of children who would never grow old, the last embraces of lovers torn apart, and the silent screams of those consumed by the darkness. Some who drank saw visions of the future, fleeting glimpses of salvation or doom. Others heard warnings whispered in voices both gentle and terrible, guiding or condemning.

Yet the gift was a double-edged sword. Many who tasted the Echo Wine became lost in the reverie, unable to separate their own memories from the echoes. Madness crept in for some, as the past’s weight crushed their minds. Others were haunted forever by the voices, walking the camp like restless phantoms, tormented by secrets no one else could hear.

To drink the Echo Wine is to listen—to the voices of the lost, the secrets of the fallen, and the fragile hope that, through memory, humanity might one day rise again.