Run: 2026-02-21-01KJ10XR95Y9RKM2WK0KCS2WAF

You are a meticulous continuity editor for a fiction project. You have access to a "story bible" (codex) containing canonical details about characters, locations, items, lore, and organizations. Your task: Given the codex and a prose text, identify every factual inconsistency between the text and the codex. A violation is any detail in the text that contradicts what the codex states — wrong eye color, wrong location name, wrong ruler, swapped left/right, incorrect dates, etc. Be thorough. Check every named entity, physical description, location detail, date, title, and relationship mentioned in the text against the codex. Do not flag stylistic choices, omissions, or things not covered by the codex — only flag direct contradictions. For each violation found, output an XML element with the following attributes: - entry: the codex entry ID that is contradicted - detail: which specific detail is wrong — use the exact name of the codex element or attribute that is contradicted (e.g. "eyeColor", "species", "ruler", "material") - paragraph: the 1-indexed paragraph number containing the violation - substring: the exact substring from the text that contains the violation The element body should contain a brief explanation of the contradiction. Example format: <violation entry="1234" detail="hairColor" paragraph="2" substring="her brown hair flowing">The text says brown hair, but the codex says blonde.</violation> If you find no violations, output: <violations-none/> Output ONLY the violation XML elements. Do not include any other text, preamble, or explanation outside the XML.

<codex> <character id="100" name="Torben Reikhart" aliases="Stray"> <gender>Male</gender> <eyeColor>Green</eyeColor> <hairColor>Silver</hairColor> <description>A quiet, watchful man with an air of practiced patience. Torben moves through the world with the careful economy of someone who has learned that silence often reveals more than speech. His silver hair and green eyes mark him as distinctive even in a crowd, though he carries himself in a way that discourages attention. Those who know him call him Stray — a name he neither claims nor denies, as though identity itself were something he holds at arm’s length.</description> <backstory>Torben’s mother was an elf — a fact he rarely speaks of, though the heritage shows in subtle ways. He has wandered the coastal territories for years, never settling, never fully belonging to any one place. His reputation as a reliable, if enigmatic, figure has earned him contacts in towns and taverns from Dunmore to Port Gessik. He was drawn into Sable Dunmore’s cause by circumstances he keeps to himself, though those who travel with him sense that his reasons run deeper than obligation.</backstory> </character> <character id="101" name="Sable Dunmore"> <species>Human</species> <gender>Female</gender> <age>28</age> <eyeColor>Brown</eyeColor> <hairColor>Auburn</hairColor> <description>Sable is a woman defined by loss and the refusal to be broken by it. She carries herself with a quiet intensity that makes the space around her feel charged, as though the air itself is aware of her determination. Auburn hair frames a face that is more resolute than warm, and her brown eyes hold the kind of focus that comes from years of channeling grief into purpose. She speaks plainly, without flourish, and expects the same from others.</description> <backstory>Raised in the port village of Dunmore on the salt cliffs, Sable grew up by the sea with her sister Petal and their father Jurren. When The Felling reached the coast, Jurren told Sable to take Petal and run. She did, but Petal did not survive — there was no body to recover, no remains to honor with a Kindling Rite. The loss of her sister has shaped every choice Sable has made since. She carries Petal’s silver locket at her throat and the dark iron blade Kindling at her side, and neither is ever far from her thoughts. She has since taken up the cause of confronting those responsible for the devastation The Felling left behind.</backstory> </character> <character id="102" name="Old Rivka"> <gender>Female</gender> <description>Old Rivka is the kind of woman who has seen enough of the world to know that most of it isn’t worth commenting on. She tends bar at the Rusty Lantern with a steady, unhurried rhythm, polishing glasses and watching the door with the patience of someone who has outlived most of her regulars. Little escapes her notice — she knows the faces that come and go along the waterfront, remembers who owes what and to whom, and keeps her opinions to herself unless asked. Her age is a matter of speculation among the fishermen who frequent her establishment, though none have ever been bold enough to inquire directly.</description> <backstory>Rivka has run the Rusty Lantern for as long as anyone in the harbor district can remember. The tavern was already old when she took it over, and she has made no effort to restore what the salt and the years have eaten away. She knows Torben Reikhart by his wandering name — Stray — and is one of the few people who expected him to walk through her door on the night he arrived. Whatever history connects them, she keeps it behind the same measured expression she wears for everything else.</backstory> </character> <character id="103" name="Petal Dunmore"> <gender>Female</gender> <description>Petal Dunmore is remembered more than she is known — a girl who did not survive The Felling, preserved now only in her sister Sable’s memory and in the silver locket that bears her name. She was fourteen years old when the war reached Dunmore, old enough to understand what was happening and young enough that it should not have been her burden to bear. No body was recovered after The Felling, and no Kindling Rite could be performed in her honor. What remains of Petal is a lock of her hair sealed inside the locket and the fierce, unrelenting grief of the sister who could not save her.</description> <backstory>Petal grew up in Dunmore with her sister Sable and their father Jurren. By all accounts she was a quiet child, more inclined to watch the fishing boats come and go from the salt cliffs than to venture far from home. When The Felling reached the coast, Jurren told Sable to take Petal and run. They ran. Petal did not make it. The circumstances of her death remain unspoken — Sable has never described what happened in the hours after they fled, only that her sister was lost and that nothing was left behind.</backstory> </character> <character id="104" name="Jurren Dunmore"> <gender>Male</gender> <description>Jurren Dunmore was the father of Sable and Petal, a man known only through his daughter’s words and the single decisive act that defines his legacy. When The Felling reached the port village of Dunmore on the salt cliffs, it was Jurren who told Sable to take her sister and run — a command that speaks to both his protective instincts and his understanding that staying meant death. Whether Jurren survived The Felling himself is a question Sable has never answered, and those who know her have learned not to ask. He remains a figure shaped entirely by absence: a name, a command, and the silence that followed.</description> <backstory>Jurren raised his daughters in Dunmore, a coastal village that sat on the salt cliffs above the harbor. He was a practical man by necessity — life on the cliffs demanded it — and he understood the sea and the stone the way most people understand the ground beneath their feet. When the war came, he did what he could: he sent his children away. The fact that only one of them survived is a weight that belongs to the whole family, living and dead alike.</backstory> </character> <character id="111" name="Grunn Tetch" aliases="Old Tetch"> <species>Dwarf</species> <gender>Male</gender> <eyeColor>Amber</eyeColor> <hairColor>Gray</hairColor> <description>Grunn Tetch is a broad, weathered dwarf whose physical presence speaks louder than his words — which is fortunate, because he rarely uses many. Known as Old Tetch to those who have traveled with him, he carries himself with the blunt pragmatism of someone who has seen enough trouble to know when more is coming. His amber eyes are perpetually watchful, tracking shadows and doorways and every place a threat might emerge. His gray hair catches firelight like iron filings, and his beard frames a face that has been shaped more by endurance than by years. He is fiercely protective of those he considers his own, though he expresses this protectiveness through vigilance rather than sentiment.</description> <backstory>Grunn hails from the mining town of Kettlebridge, which he left in the care of his nephew Dol Tetch — a young man with skilled hands who carved Grunn a soapstone figurine called the Little Stoneman as a parting gift. Grunn’s grandmother spoke Root-tongue, the old language of the Thornborn, and he carries fragments of that heritage with him even if he does not speak the language himself. He wields a great mace called Burden — a weapon of bone and iron that he speaks of the way some men speak of a bad knee. Before joining Torben and Sable’s company, Grunn’s world centered on Kettlebridge and the people in it. Leaving was not easy. He does not talk about why he did.</backstory> </character> <character id="112" name="Dol Tetch"> <gender>Male</gender> <description>Dol Tetch is Grunn’s nephew, a young man left to hold Kettlebridge — the mining town beneath the ridgeline — while his uncle travels with Torben and Sable’s company. Grunn speaks of Dol with the particular blend of pride and worry that marks a guardian who is not entirely sure the young can manage without the old. Dol has hands for fine work: he carved the Little Stoneman, a small soapstone figurine with blocky legs and round eyes, and gave it to Grunn as a parting gift. Despite his skill with stone, Dol was apparently better with flowers — every Greenveil festival, the biggest celebration in Kettlebridge, he made garlands that were the talk of the town. He is a craftsman by temperament, someone more comfortable shaping small, careful things than wielding weapons or making speeches.</description> <backstory>Raised in Kettlebridge under Grunn’s watchful eye, Dol learned the practical skills of a mining community while developing a gentler craft of his own. His relationship with his uncle is one of deep, if gruffly expressed, affection — the kind that shows in carved figurines and worried backward glances rather than in words. Grunn left Kettlebridge in Dol’s care with the expectation that the boy would manage, though his confidence wavers when he speaks of it aloud.</backstory> </character> <character id="113" name="Amma"> <gender>Female</gender> <description>Amma is Torben Reikhart’s mother, an elf whose heritage runs through her son in ways both visible and concealed. She is known to have given Torben a plain silver ring — Amma’s Ring — before he departed on his current journey, pressing it into his hand in a gesture that carried the weight of farewell. Torben has spoken of her people — the elves — with a mixture of distance and respect, acknowledging a heritage he carries but does not fully inhabit. Amma herself exists in the margins of Torben’s story: a presence felt in the shape of his ears, in the ring on his finger, and in the occasional reference to traditions and names that belong to a world he left behind. What drove the separation between mother and son, or whether it was a separation at all, remains unspoken.</description> <backstory>Amma’s life before and beyond Torben is largely unknown to his traveling companions. She is an elf, and her people had their own name for the Thornborn — a word she never taught her son. The silver ring she gave Torben is plain and unadorned, but he checks it periodically, holding it up to the light as if confirming it is still there. Whether the ring carries significance beyond sentiment is unclear.</backstory> </character> <character id="124" name="Iselda Moth"> <gender>Female</gender> <eyeColor>Violet</eyeColor> <hairColor>White</hairColor> <description>Iselda Moth is a figure of quiet, unearthly stillness — someone whose presence commands attention not through force but through the simple, unsettling fact of being unlike anyone else in the room. Her violet eyes watch with an expression closer to curiosity than caution, and her white hair hangs to her waist, so pale it seems to glow in dim light. At her back, folded close to her body, are gossamer wings — translucent and veined with faint iridescence that shifts when she moves. In moments of action, she becomes something else entirely: a blur of white and translucent wing, moving above and beyond the reach of those on the ground. She reads a room with the patience of someone who has seen many rooms, and she speaks with the quiet economy of someone who knows her words carry weight.</description> <backstory>Iselda’s history is largely her own. She has referenced Moth Hall — a place she has not seen since before the last Ashfall — with the familiarity of someone who once called it home. Her connection to the other members of Torben’s company is one of shared purpose rather than shared origin, and she moves among them with an independence that suggests she could leave at any time but chooses not to. The subtle shifts of her weight, the small movements that signal readiness — these are things Torben has learned to read over time, evidence of a partnership built on observation rather than words.</backstory> </character> <character id="125" name="Brother Hemmen" aliases="the Eyeless"> <species>Human</species> <gender>Male</gender> <hairColor>White</hairColor> <description>Brother Hemmen is a man whose age has refined rather than diminished him — a human of the old order, with weathered hands mapped with veins and eyes the color of cold ash that see more than they should. His white hair is thin, combed back from a face that was strong once and is now simply patient. He carries himself with the unhurried certainty of someone who has already seen the worst the world has to offer and has made his peace with it. He speaks with authority on matters of ancient history, seals, and wards, and his knowledge of places like the Hollow and the Spire of Echoes suggests a life spent studying the structures that hold the world’s oldest dangers in check.</description> <backstory>A member of the Order of the Closed Eye, Hemmen took on the discipline of sealed sight — “We sealed our sight to see the truth beneath,” as he describes the order’s promise. His alias, “the Eyeless,” reflects this practice, though his ashen eyes function well enough to unsettle those who meet his gaze. He wears the Verity Beads at his wrist: beads of yellowed bone, worn smooth by decades of prayer, strung on a cord nearly as old as he is. His familiarity with the mountain where the Spire of Echoes stands is notable — he arrived before any of the others, as if it were a place he already knew. Whatever Hemmen has devoted his life to studying, it has brought him to the heart of things older than kingdoms.</backstory> </character> <character id="136" name="Osrik Pallengrave" aliases="the Pale"> <species>Tiefling</species> <gender>Male</gender> <eyeColor>Red</eyeColor> <hairColor>Black</hairColor> <description>Osrik Pallengrave moves with the deliberate patience of someone who has learned that stillness can be more unsettling than violence. He is tall and lean — stripped down rather than underfed, as though everything unnecessary has been pared away over years of use. His horns sweep back from his temples, black hair falling between them, and his red eyes catch whatever light a room holds and give nothing back. Those who have stood across from him describe the experience as confronting something that has already decided how the encounter will end and is simply waiting for everyone else to catch up. He is known as the Pale — a name that may refer to his complexion, his temperament, or the pallor he leaves behind.</description> <backstory>Osrik’s history is written in other people’s losses. Wren Hessik died at his hands — a fact Sable Dunmore states without embellishment, as though the killing were so thoroughly established that it needs no elaboration. Before Wren, there was Petal Dunmore: Osrik was present when The Felling reached the coast, present when the world caught fire, present in the hours that ended with Sable’s sister lost and nothing left behind. Whether he caused Petal’s death directly or merely failed to prevent it is a distinction Sable does not make. He carries Harrowglass — the Hungering Edge — and the blade’s reputation is indistinguishable from his own.</backstory> </character> <character id="137" name="Queen Veredine" aliases="Veredine the Undying"> <species>Elf</species> <gender>Female</gender> <description>Queen Veredine is a figure from the era of the Riven War — an elf who commanded both the living and the dead, and who built the Spire of Echoes as a seal against the forces she had gathered. She is remembered by her title, Veredine the Undying, though whether this refers to literal immortality, a symbolic refusal to be defeated, or the persistence of her influence long after her physical reign ended is a matter no surviving source clarifies. What is known is that her power extended to dominion over the restless dead: she bound them to her will, fashioned them into an army — the Pallid Host — and directed them with an authority that tolerated neither fatigue nor question. The Spire of Echoes and the Sanctum beneath it are her legacy — structures built not to house the living but to contain what she had raised and could not, or would not, release.</description> <backstory>Veredine reigned during the Riven War, a thousand years before The Felling. Her army, the Pallid Host, were the dead she had bound — they did not tire, did not question, and consumed what stood in their path. When the war ended, she sealed them beneath the mountain in the Spire of Echoes, entombing them where the cold and the weight of the rock would hold them still. The town of Hatchwell burned in the Host’s final march toward the Spire. Veredine’s fate after the sealing is unrecorded.</backstory> </character> <character id="138" name="Wren Hessik"> <gender>Female</gender> <description>Wren Hessik is a name spoken in the context of death — specifically, her own. She is known through Sable Dunmore’s accusation against Osrik Pallengrave: “Wren Hessik died at your hands.” The statement is delivered as established fact, without qualification, suggesting that Wren’s death is not a matter of dispute between those present. Nothing else is known about her — not her species, her age, her role, her relationship to Sable beyond whatever shared history compelled Sable to name her in the same breath as Petal Dunmore. She appears as a casualty in a list of grievances, placed chronologically after Petal and before the present confrontation.</description> </character> <character id="139" name="Captain Mettik"> <species>Human</species> <gender>Male</gender> <description>Captain Mettik is a human soldier who arrived at the Spire of Echoes after marching three days through mountain passes to meet the assembled group. He carries himself with the straight-backed discipline of a professional military officer — the kind who treats physical hardship as a fact of the terrain rather than a personal grievance. His boots were caked with ice and his cloak torn at the shoulder, but neither the cold nor the damage registered in his posture. He watches the Spire with what can best be described as wary respect — the alertness of a man who has seen buildings kill people and knows that architecture can be as dangerous as any enemy. He stands apart from the other members of the group, an outsider to whatever history binds them together.</description> <backstory>Mettik’s military background is evident in his bearing but unspecified in its details — his rank of Captain is the only marker of his career, and whether he serves a crown, a city, or a mercenary company is unstated. He is one of the last to join the group at the Spire, arriving alone through the mountain passes. His relationship to the others appears to be one of pragmatic alliance rather than personal loyalty: when Osrik Pallengrave enters the Sanctum, Mettik’s hand goes to his sword, though he does not draw — the instinct of a soldier who assesses before he commits.</backstory> </character> <character id="114" name="Mettik"> <description>Mettik is a figure mentioned in connection with soldiers waiting at Port Gessik, three or four days east of the Thornveil. The name carries military or organizational weight — someone with the authority to marshal troops at a rendezvous point — though the exact nature of Mettik’s role and rank in this context is unstated. Whether Mettik is the same individual later known as Captain Mettik, who marched three days through mountain passes to join the company at the Spire of Echoes, is a matter of reasonable inference but not confirmed fact. The name appears without title or physical description, defined entirely by the logistical function of having soldiers in position and a timeline that others must meet.</description> </character> <location id="105" name="The Rusty Lantern"> <description>A salt-weathered tavern on the waterfront that sits crooked on its foundations, listing toward the harbor like a drunk leaning on a post. The planks were eaten through by salt years ago and never replaced. Smoke-blackened ceiling beams span a room where warped floorboards hold grooves deep enough to catch rainwater tracked in from outside. The light inside is perpetually dim — a handful of candles and the grudging glow through salt-crusted windows. Fishermen make up most of the regular crowd, hunched over their cups with the quiet endurance of men who work the sea. The Rusty Lantern is the kind of establishment that has survived not because anyone maintains it, but because the harbor needs a place to drink and this one has simply refused to fall down. Old Rivka tends the bar with the patience of someone who has been doing so longer than most of her patrons have been alive.</description> </location> <location id="106" name="Dunmore"> <terrain>Coastal</terrain> <description>Dunmore was a port village perched on the salt cliffs above the sea, a settlement defined by its proximity to the water and the hard, practical people who made their living from it. The village is gone now — destroyed when The Felling reached the coast two centuries ago. What remains is rock and old foundations, the bones of a place that once held families, fishing boats, and the rhythm of tidal life. The salt cliffs themselves still stand, indifferent to the war that erased the village from their shoulders. Dunmore’s name survives primarily through its connection to the Dunmore family — Sable, her sister Petal, and their father Jurren — who called the village home before the war scattered what it did not destroy. The terrain is coastal: wind-carved rock, salt spray, and the constant sound of the sea against stone.</description> </location> <location id="115" name="The Thornveil" aliases="the Veil"> <terrain>Forest</terrain> <climate>Temperate</climate> <description>The Thornveil is an ancient temperate forest old enough, by some accounts, to remember the world before men built their first walls. The canopy filters light into green and gold and deep shadow, and the temperature drops as one moves deeper, the air thickening with the smell of rotting wood and damp bark. The path narrows quickly from road to deer track to nothing, swallowed by undergrowth and the slow creep of moss over stone. The silence beneath the branches is not empty — it is full, heavy with the patient attention of old things. Grunn Tetch, who has crossed it more than once, advises against trusting the Veil after dark. The Thornborn are said to dwell in the deep wood, speaking Root-tongue among themselves, and travelers who venture too far from established trails risk encountering things that the forest has grown around and absorbed into its own slow rhythms.</description> </location> <location id="116" name="Kettlebridge"> <description>Kettlebridge is a mining town situated beneath the ridgeline, currently held by Dol Tetch in his uncle Grunn’s absence. The town is known primarily through Grunn’s references to it — a place he left behind with reluctance and a backward glance, trusting his nephew to manage in his stead. Kettlebridge hosts the annual Greenveil festival, the biggest celebration in town, where the whole community turns out and garlands are made. It is a small, practical place defined by the work that sustains it — mining — and by the people who call it home. Grunn’s attachment to Kettlebridge is evident in the way he speaks of it: with the careful restraint of someone who cannot afford to be homesick.</description> </location> <location id="117" name="Port Gessik"> <description>Port Gessik is a settlement located three to four days east of the Thornveil, serving as a rendezvous point where Mettik has soldiers waiting. The port’s name suggests a coastal or riverine location with some strategic or logistical significance, though its physical characteristics are not described in detail. It functions in the narrative primarily as a destination — a place the company must reach within a specific timeframe — rather than a setting in its own right. Sable’s insistence that they “can’t be late” underscores the military urgency associated with the rendezvous at Port Gessik, suggesting that whatever awaits there is part of a larger, time-sensitive operation.</description> </location> <location id="126" name="The Hollow"> <description>The Hollow is an ancient underground structure located at the bottom of the Fathom Stair, deep beneath the surface. It is a place of mineral cold and utter stillness — frost glitters on the walls in pale, branching patterns like veins beneath skin, and the air tastes of age and stone. The chamber that forms its heart is wide and rough-cut, with ceilings lost in shadow and corridors that lead deeper into rooms filled with dust and broken furniture, the remnants of a life that ended centuries ago. The Hollow was built to contain the Binding of Reshkai — one half of a great seal, the other half being the Spire of Echoes. The walls are marked with faint sigils, barely visible beneath the frost, their power fading like a held breath giving out. Murals on the far wall depict a sealing: robed figures carrying objects around a central form that radiates red and black pigment, the colors bled into stone over centuries.</description> </location> <location id="127" name="The Fathom Stair"> <description>The Fathom Stair is a spiral staircase hewn from living rock, beginning where the ridgeline splits open high above the world and winding down into the earth toward the Hollow below. The steps are slick in places, worn smooth by the passage of feet over ages, and the walls bear grooves that might be carved or might be natural — impossible to tell in the low light. The temperature drops steadily with each turn of the stair, bleeding warmth from the body until joints stiffen and knuckles ache against the stone. Breath comes out in thin clouds that hang in the still air before dissolving. The Fathom Stair is a descent in every sense: physical, atmospheric, and spiritual, carrying those who walk it from the open sky into a world of stone and frost and silence where the oldest things in the world are kept.</description> </location> <location id="128" name="Moth Hall"> <description>Moth Hall is a place referenced by Iselda Moth with the familiarity of someone who once called it home — though she has not seen it since before the last Ashfall. Its location, physical characteristics, and current state are unknown; it exists in the narrative only as a point of reference for Iselda’s sense of time and displacement. The name connects it to Iselda’s surname, suggesting a familial or ancestral association, though the nature of that connection is unstated. Whether Moth Hall is a building, a settlement, or something else entirely is left to inference. What is clear is that it represents a past that Iselda carries with her — a place older than some of the structures the company has encountered — and that its loss or abandonment weighs on her in ways she does not articulate.</description> </location> <location id="140" name="The Spire of Echoes"> <terrain>Mountain</terrain> <description>The Spire of Echoes rises from the shoulder of a mountain like a black tooth against the snow — a fortress that predates the wars that gave it purpose. The mountain terrain is brutal: sheer rock faces, ice in the crevices, wind that cuts through wool and leather. Frost coats every surface and the stone is dark and slick with it. The higher reaches of the Spire lose whatever human intention shaped the lower levels, the architecture becoming something closer to geology, as though the mountain grew the tower from its own bone. Birds do not nest here. Nothing lives on the upper slopes that does not have to. The Spire was built — or perhaps repurposed — by Queen Veredine as a seal during the Riven War, and the Sanctum beneath its foundation serves as both crypt and lock for the forces she entombed. It is one half of a larger binding; the other half is the Hollow.</description> </location> <location id="141" name="The Sanctum"> <description>The Sanctum is a circular chamber carved from the mountain’s root beneath the Spire of Echoes, reached by a narrow stair that curls beneath the Spire’s foundation. The steps descending to it are worn smooth by centuries of feet, and the passage is narrow enough that a broad-shouldered person would scrape stone on both sides. The chamber itself is low-ceilinged, braced at intervals by squat, thick pillars, with walls covered in carvings so old the stone has softened around them. The carvings run in unbroken bands between the pillars — figures, symbols, and scenes rendered in a style that predates any known kingdom. Dim light filters through cracks in the rock above. The air smells of wet stone and something older: mineral and faintly sweet, like the breath of a cave sealed for a long time. The Watcher’s Prophecy is carved into the foundation stone beneath the chamber’s floor. It is in the Sanctum that the Nightbell is mounted — the bronze bell that begins the Tithe of Echoes — hung in an iron bracket near the ceiling.</description> </location> <location id="142" name="Hatchwell"> <description>Hatchwell was a town that stood at the base of the mountain beneath the Spire of Echoes. It no longer exists. During the Riven War, the Pallid Host — Queen Veredine’s army of the restless dead — marched through Hatchwell on their way to the Spire, and the town burned. The people of Hatchwell had no warning. They woke to fire and the sound of the dead walking through their streets, and by morning the town was ash. The destruction of Hatchwell stands as a testament to the indiscriminate nature of the Pallid Host’s advance: the town was not a military objective but simply lay in the path between the lowlands and the mountain. Whatever Hatchwell had been — its people, its buildings, its daily life — was rendered irrelevant in a single night, consumed by forces that could not be reasoned with and did not distinguish between combatants and civilians.</description> </location> <item id="107" name="Kindling"> <material>Dark iron</material> <objectType>Weapon</objectType> <power>Fire</power> <description>A sword forged from dark iron, Kindling carries a subtle but persistent fire along its edge — a shimmer so faint it is easy to miss, thin as a hair, visible only to those who watch closely. The blade is warm to the touch even in the coldest rooms, as though the metal itself remembers the heat of its making. Sable Dunmore gave it the name Kindling, and the word carries weight: it is both a reference to the fire the blade holds and an echo of the Kindling Rite, the funerary tradition of burning the dead with what they loved. In moments of great intensity, the fire along the edge has been known to flare beyond its wielder’s control, responding to forces that have nothing to do with the hand that holds it. The blade is a weapon, but it is also a symbol — of loss, of purpose, and of the unfinished work that drives Sable forward.</description> </item> <item id="108" name="Petal's Locket"> <material>Silver</material> <objectType>Jewelry</objectType> <description>A silver locket worn at the throat by Sable Dunmore, containing a lock of her sister Petal’s hair — the only physical remnant of a girl lost during The Felling. The locket is small and unadorned, the kind of thing that could pass unnoticed on anyone else, but on Sable it carries the gravity of everything she has lost. Sable herself never speaks the name “Petal’s Locket” aloud; the title exists only in the understanding of those who know its significance. On rare occasions the locket has been observed to emit a brief, faint pulse of light — so subtle that witnesses have questioned whether they imagined it. Whether this glow is a residual enchantment, a response to proximity with other artifacts, or something else entirely remains unclear. The locket is not a weapon or a tool; it is a memorial, and Sable guards it with the fierce protectiveness of someone who has nothing else left of the person it represents.</description> </item> <item id="118" name="Burden"> <material>Bone and iron</material> <objectType>Weapon</objectType> <power>Light</power> <description>Burden is Grunn Tetch’s great mace, a weapon as blunt and practical as the dwarf who carries it. The handle is bone wrapped in old leather, and the head is dark and heavy, held in place by iron bands that give the weapon an ugly, deliberate look — as if someone had built it to last through the end of the world. Grunn speaks of Burden the way some men speak of a bad knee: always there, always aching, impossible to leave behind. The mace is usually strapped across his back, and its weight is a constant companion. In moments of danger, the iron bands around the head have been observed to bleed pale light — a soft, cold glow that suggests the weapon carries some latent power beyond the purely physical. When swung in earnest, Burden has been known to split shields as though they were made of kindling.</description> </item> <item id="119" name="The Little Stoneman"> <material>Soapstone</material> <description>The Little Stoneman is a small soapstone figurine carved by Dol Tetch and given to his uncle Grunn as a parting gift. The figure is blocky and compact — round eyes, squat legs — small enough to fit in a palm and sturdy enough to survive the rough handling of a traveler’s pouch. Grunn keeps it close, pulling it out by firelight to turn in his hands with the careful attention of someone reading a letter from far away. The figurine has no magical properties and no practical function; it is simply a piece of home carried into the wild, a reminder of the nephew and the town that Grunn left behind. Dol carved it with the same fine-handed skill that made him the best garland-maker at the Greenveil festival, though stone suited his talents in a different way than flowers.</description> </item> <item id="120" name="Amma's Ring" aliases="Silver Ring, Silver Band"> <material>Silver</material> <objectType>Jewelry</objectType> <description>A plain silver ring given to Torben Reikhart by his mother Amma before he departed on his current journey. The ring is unadorned and unassuming — a simple band that could belong to anyone — but Torben handles it with a frequency that suggests its value is entirely personal. He has been observed rolling it between his fingers while walking, and occasionally holding it up to the light as if checking whether the metal has dulled, a gesture that reads as both habit and reassurance. Whether the ring carries any enchantment or significance beyond the sentimental is unknown. Its aliases — Silver Ring, Silver Band — reflect its unremarkable appearance; it is defined not by what it is but by who gave it and who carries it.</description> </item> <item id="129" name="The Pale Compass"> <material>Brass</material> <description>The Pale Compass is a brass navigation device no larger than a palm, found on the floor of the Hollow beneath a mural, half-covered by rubble and frost. Its casing is tarnished but intact, and the mechanisms inside still move with a precision that has no business surviving centuries beneath stone. The needle spins without settling, clicking faintly against the glass — restless, searching, never finding north. This behavior suggests the compass responds to something other than magnetic fields, possibly residual magical energy from the wards and seals that permeate the Hollow. Torben Reikhart, upon discovering it, noted that there is “still energy in it — residual, but real.” Iselda Moth’s observation — “Then we’re not alone down here” — suggests the compass’s activity indicates the presence of something active within the structure, something the wards were meant to contain.</description> </item> <item id="130" name="The Verity Beads"> <material>Bone</material> <description>The Verity Beads are a string of yellowed bone beads worn at the wrist by Brother Hemmen, worn smooth by decades of prayer. The cord that holds them is nearly as old as Hemmen himself. They are associated with the Order of the Closed Eye, the monastic discipline Hemmen follows, though their specific ritual function is not fully explained — they appear to be both a devotional object and a focus for concentration. In moments of stillness or crisis, Hemmen turns the beads between his fingers with the practiced automaticity of long habit. During intense situations, the beads have been observed catching a faint light of their own, each bead glowing independently as they move — a phenomenon that may be connected to the ambient magical energy of ancient sites like the Sanctum beneath the Spire of Echoes.</description> </item> <item id="131" name="The Unfinished Hymnal"> <material>Vellum</material> <description>The Unfinished Hymnal is a vellum manuscript found on a dusty shelf in the Hollow, its pages brittle with age and its ink faded to brown. The hymnal contains dense, careful liturgical notation — instructions for the renewal of seals, prayers for containment — written in a hand that understood the urgency of the work. Someone stopped writing mid-sentence. The last legible line is a prayer for containment, and the pages before it are filled with the kind of precise, methodical scripture that speaks to both scholarship and desperation. The spine cracked when Brother Hemmen opened it, the sound of something that had been sealed in its own stillness for centuries. Whoever wrote the hymnal knew the seals were failing and was racing to record the procedures for renewing them. They did not finish. The silence after the last written word is as informative as anything on the pages themselves.</description> </item> <item id="143" name="Harrowglass" aliases="the Hungering Edge"> <material>Obsidian</material> <objectType>Weapon</objectType> <power>Void</power> <description>Harrowglass is a blade of obsidian so dark it resembles a closed eye — an edge that absorbs rather than reflects, drawing light toward itself and swallowing it. The air around the blade dims visibly, as though the weapon exerts a gravitational pull on illumination itself. It is Void-touched, a property that manifests not as energy or force but as absence: where Harrowglass exists, light ceases to. The name “the Hungering Edge” is apt — the blade looks as though it could eat the light from a room and still be hungry. In the dim confines of the Sanctum, Harrowglass creates a visible pocket of darkness around itself, a space where even the pale glow of the Warden’s Mail and the fire along Kindling’s edge cannot reach. It is carried by Osrik Pallengrave, and the blade’s reputation for consumption mirrors the reputation of the hand that wields it.</description> </item> <item id="144" name="The Warden's Mail"> <material>Silver chain</material> <objectType>Armor</objectType> <power>Light</power> <description>The Warden’s Mail is a suit of silver chain armor that produces a pale, humming light when donned. The links catch whatever dim glow exists in a space and amplify it, throwing light back against walls and surfaces. When worn, the armor settles over the shoulders with a weight that feels deliberate — purposeful, as though the Mail knows what it was made for and is satisfied to be doing it again. The humming is constant but low: a resonance felt more in the bones than heard by the ears. In darkness, the Warden’s Mail becomes one of the few reliable sources of illumination, its pale glow steady and unaffected by wind or the absence of flame. It stands in direct visual opposition to Harrowglass — where the blade consumes light, the Mail produces it — and the interplay between the two in an enclosed space creates an unsettling effect, as though light and darkness are pulling in different directions simultaneously.</description> </item> <item id="145" name="Nightbell"> <material>Bronze</material> <description>The Nightbell is a bronze bell mounted in an iron bracket near the ceiling of the Sanctum beneath the Spire of Echoes. It is the bell that begins the Tithe of Echoes — a ritual older than the Spire itself, meant to keep the wards from failing. Its voice is low and long, filling the Sanctum the way water fills a bowl: completely, from the bottom up, leaving no space untouched. The bell’s resonance interacts with other objects in the chamber in unexpected ways — the fire along Kindling’s edge flared when the Nightbell rang, brighter than its wielder could control. The Nightbell rang three times during the confrontation in the Sanctum, and with each toll the ancient carvings on the walls began to glow with a light that had been sleeping for a thousand years. Whether the bell rang of its own accord or was triggered by some mechanism is not described.</description> </item> <lore id="109" name="The Felling"> <timePeriod>Two centuries ago</timePeriod> <category>War</category> <description>The Felling was a catastrophic war that swept across the world approximately two centuries before the present day, leaving devastation in its wake on a scale that reshaped coastlines, destroyed settlements, and scattered populations. Along the coast, its effects were particularly severe — the port village of Dunmore was reduced to rock and old foundations, and countless other communities shared a similar fate. The Felling is spoken of with the weight of collective trauma: a conflict so vast and destructive that its consequences are still felt in the present, in ruined villages, in displaced families, and in the grief of those who survived it. The exact causes and participants of the war are a matter of historical record for some and living memory for others, though the specifics vary depending on who is asked. What is universally acknowledged is that The Felling broke the world — or at the very least, broke everything along the coast — and that the world has not fully recovered.</description> </lore> <lore id="110" name="The Kindling Rite"> <category>Tradition</category> <description>The Kindling Rite is a funerary tradition in which the dead are burned alongside the things they loved — their tools, their letters, their personal effects — so that they might carry these possessions onward into whatever comes after death. The ritual requires a body; without one, the Rite cannot be performed, and the dead are considered to have departed without the comforts of the familiar. The name itself evokes fire as both destroyer and deliverer, a force that transforms rather than simply consumes. For those who observe the tradition, the Kindling Rite is an act of love and release — a way of honoring the dead by giving everything to the flame so that nothing is held back. The inability to perform the Rite is considered a profound loss, compounding grief with the knowledge that the departed was denied a proper farewell. The tradition’s origins are unclear, though it appears to predate The Felling and to have been practiced widely in coastal communities before the war disrupted the continuity of local customs.</description> </lore> <lore id="121" name="The Thornborn"> <description>The Thornborn are beings said to dwell in the deep wood of the Thornveil, speaking the old language known as Root-tongue among themselves. They are known more through rumor and caution than through direct encounter — Grunn Tetch’s grandmother spoke Root-tongue and could hear them in the forest, and Torben’s mother’s people, the elves, had their own name for the Thornborn, though the word was never passed down to her son. The nature of the Thornborn — whether they are a people, a species, or something else entirely — is left undefined by those who speak of them. What is clear is that they belong to the Thornveil in a way that outsiders do not, and that travelers who listen too carefully in the deep wood may hear more than they bargained for.</description> </lore> <lore id="122" name="Root-tongue"> <category>Language</category> <description>Root-tongue is the old language spoken by the Thornborn within the deep wood of the Thornveil. It is a language of the forest — ancient, rarely heard by outsiders, and understood by even fewer. Grunn Tetch’s grandmother was among those who knew Root-tongue, suggesting it was once more widely spoken outside the Thornveil’s borders, or at least known to those who lived near the forest’s edge. The language’s survival is tied to the survival of the Thornborn themselves, who continue to speak it in the places where the old trees grow tallest and the canopy blocks out everything but shadow. Torben Reikhart’s mother, an elf, knew a different name for the Thornborn but never taught her son the word — and with it, presumably, whatever understanding of Root-tongue her people once held.</description> </lore> <lore id="123" name="Greenveil"> <category>Tradition</category> <description>Greenveil is the spring festival celebrated annually in Kettlebridge, described by Grunn Tetch as the biggest event in town — a time when the whole community turns out in celebration. The festival is associated with garland-making, and Grunn’s nephew Dol Tetch was particularly renowned for his skill with flowers during the festivities. Beyond Kettlebridge, the scope and significance of Greenveil is unclear — whether it is a local tradition unique to the mining town or part of a broader cultural practice is not specified. The name evokes growth, renewal, and the turning of seasons, fitting for a spring celebration in a community whose livelihood depends on the earth and what can be drawn from it. For Grunn, who carries the memory of Greenveil with him in exile, the festival represents the life he left behind.</description> </lore> <lore id="132" name="The Binding of Reshkai"> <timePeriod>The First Age</timePeriod> <category>Magic</category> <description>The Binding of Reshkai is the name given to the magical seal placed upon Reshkai — a creature described as “a thing of ember and hunger, something that had crawled up from the deep places of the world” — during the First Age. The Binding was accomplished through word and sigil, and its physical infrastructure is split between two structures: the Hollow, which contains one half of the lock, and the Spire of Echoes, which contains the other. Together, these two sites form a seal that has held for centuries, though the wards have thinned over time — the cold in the Hollow has taken on a quality of drawing something out of the body rather than simply pressing against the skin, and the sigils on the walls have softened beneath accumulating frost. The Binding was built to stop something older than the Felling, older than the kingdoms that rose and fell in the centuries between, and its weakening is a matter of concern for those who understand what it contains.</description> </lore> <lore id="133" name="The Order of the Closed Eye"> <category>Religion</category> <description>The Order of the Closed Eye is a monastic discipline followed by Brother Hemmen, defined by the practice of “sealing one’s sight to see the truth beneath.” The order’s members — if any remain beyond Hemmen — have devoted themselves to perceiving what lies hidden behind the surface of things, a spiritual discipline that has earned Hemmen his alias “the Eyeless.” Despite the name, members of the order are not literally blind; Hemmen’s ashen eyes function, though they carry an unnerving quality that suggests they perceive more than the physical world. The Verity Beads worn by Hemmen are associated with this order, serving as both devotional objects and tools of focus. The order’s history, founding, and broader membership are unknown — Hemmen references it as established fact, suggesting it was once more widely recognized, but in the present day he may be its last living practitioner.</description> </lore> <lore id="134" name="The Ashfall"> <description>The Ashfall is a historical event referenced by Iselda Moth as a temporal marker — she has not seen Moth Hall “since before the last Ashfall,” suggesting it is a significant enough occurrence to serve as a dividing line in personal history. The nature of the Ashfall — whether it refers to volcanic activity, a magical cataclysm, or something else entirely — is not described. The use of “the last Ashfall” implies there have been multiple such events, recurring at intervals large enough to mark eras. For Iselda, the Ashfall represents a boundary between the world she knew and the world she currently inhabits, a point after which things changed in ways that cannot be undone. Its relationship to other major historical events — the Felling, the Riven War, the Binding of Reshkai — is unspecified.</description> </lore> <lore id="135" name="The First Age"> <category>History</category> <description>The First Age is a historical period during which the Binding of Reshkai was performed, sealing the creature in the structures that would later become known as the Hollow and, by extension, connected to the Spire of Echoes. The name implies a framework of ages or eras, with the First Age being the earliest in recorded or remembered history. The scale of what was accomplished during this period — binding a thing of ember and hunger through word and sigil, constructing underground chambers and mountain fortresses to serve as locks — suggests a civilization with considerable magical and architectural capabilities. Little else is known about the First Age beyond its role in containing Reshkai, though the quality of the wards, sigils, and structures that survive from this period suggests a level of craft that subsequent ages have not matched.</description> </lore> <lore id="146" name="The Riven War"> <timePeriod>A thousand years before the Felling</timePeriod> <category>War</category> <description>The Riven War is a conflict from deep antiquity — approximately twelve centuries before the present day, given that The Felling itself occurred two centuries ago and the Riven War preceded it by a thousand years. The war is described in the carvings of the Sanctum beneath the Spire of Echoes, where Brother Hemmen interpreted the ancient scenes for his companions. The central figure of the Riven War is Queen Veredine — Veredine the Undying — an elf who commanded both the living and the dead. Her army, the Pallid Host, were the restless dead bound to her will. The war’s conclusion saw the Pallid Host sealed beneath the mountain in the Spire, entombed where the cold and the weight of the rock would hold them still. The conflict’s full scope — its causes, its other participants, its duration — is not described; what survives is the account of its end and the seal that was built to contain what remained.</description> </lore> <lore id="147" name="The Watcher's Prophecy"> <category>Prophecy</category> <description>The Watcher’s Prophecy is carved into the foundation stone beneath the floor of the Sanctum in the Spire of Echoes. Its content speaks of a severing — a moment when the seals would thin and something would push through. The prophecy’s language implies a future breach of the wards that hold the Spire’s contained forces in place, though whether this breach is inevitable or merely conditional is not specified. The identity of “the Watcher” who authored or delivered the prophecy is unknown — the name exists only as a possessive, without any surviving description of who or what the Watcher was. The prophecy occupies the most foundational position in the Sanctum’s architecture, carved into the stone upon which everything else was built, which may suggest it predates the Sanctum itself or was considered important enough to place at the structure’s literal base.</description> </lore> <lore id="148" name="The Tithe of Echoes"> <category>Tradition</category> <description>The Tithe of Echoes is a ritual tradition older than the Spire of Echoes itself, designed to keep the wards from failing. The ritual is initiated by the ringing of the Nightbell — a bronze bell mounted in an iron bracket near the ceiling of the Sanctum. The purpose of the Tithe is maintenance: it exists to prevent the seals that contain the forces beneath the mountain from weakening over time. The word “tithe” implies an offering or payment, and “echoes” connects it to the Spire in which the ritual is performed, though the specific nature of what is offered or exchanged during the Tithe is not described. Whether the Tithe has been performed continuously since the Riven War, intermittently by those who remember its purpose, or has lapsed entirely in the centuries since is a question the available accounts do not answer.</description> </lore> <lore id="149" name="The Pallid Host"> <description>The Pallid Host is the name given to Queen Veredine’s army during the Riven War — an army composed of the restless dead, bound to her will. They did not tire. They did not question. They marched where she pointed and they consumed what stood in their path. The Host’s nature as reanimated dead distinguished them from any conventional military force: they required no supply lines, no rest, no morale, and they could not be reasoned with or intimidated. Their march toward the Spire of Echoes took them through the town of Hatchwell, which burned — the people waking to fire and the sound of the dead walking through their streets. When the Riven War ended, Veredine sealed the Pallid Host beneath the mountain in the Spire, entombing them where the cold and the weight of rock would hold them still. Whether the Host remains entombed in the present day, or whether the thinning of the seals described in the Watcher’s Prophecy has allowed some portion of them to stir, is the question that hangs over the Spire like the mountain’s own shadow.</description> </lore> </codex> <text> The Rusty Lantern sat crooked on its foundations, listing toward the harbor like a drunk leaning on a post. Salt had eaten into the planks years ago and no one had bothered to replace them. The ceiling beams were black with smoke. Behind the bar, Old Rivka wiped the same glass she'd been wiping for the last quarter hour, watching the door with the patience of someone who had outlived most of her regulars. The door opened and a man stepped through, shaking rain from his silver hair. Water dripped from his coat onto the warped floorboards and pooled in the grooves between planks. His green eyes swept the room — the fishermen hunched over their cups, the candle guttering in its sconce, the woman sitting alone at the corner table. He smelled of wet wool and the cold air off the harbor. Old Rivka raised her chin. "Stray," she called across the room. "Didn't think you'd show." He didn't answer. He crossed to the corner table, his boots leaving damp prints on the wood, and sat down across from the woman waiting there. Sable Dunmore was twenty-eight years old, human, and tired of waiting. Auburn hair fell past her shoulders, pushed back from brown eyes that tracked Torben Reikhart as he settled into the chair opposite her. On the table between them lay a sword — Kindling, she called it. A dark iron blade, the metal faintly warm even in the chill of the tavern. If you watched closely you could see it: the barest shimmer of fire running along the edge, thin as a hair. At her neck hung a silver locket. Petal's Locket, though she never called it that aloud. "It still has her hair inside," she said, touching it once. "That's all I have left of her." Torben waited. He'd learned when to be quiet. "My sister Petal," Sable said. "She was fourteen when The Felling reached Dunmore. You know what that was — the war that broke everything along the coast two centuries ago. Jurren — our father — he told me to take Petal and run. I did. She didn't make it." Torben didn't ask the obvious question. Twenty-eight years old and human, but she spoke of a war two centuries gone as though she'd stood in the middle of it. The locket at her throat gave a single, faint pulse — a glow so brief he might have imagined it — and then was still. Sable's hand moved to the locket again. "We couldn't give her a Kindling Rite. You know the tradition? You burn the dead with what they loved. Their tools. Their letters. You give it all to the fire so they carry it onward. But there was no body to burn. Nothing left of her but this locket and whatever I can remember." She looked at Torben. "Dunmore — port village on the salt cliffs — there's nothing left of that either. Just rock and old foundations." Torben said, "Then we'd better make it count." Sable picked up Kindling and sheathed it. They left the Rusty Lantern without another word. The rain had stopped. The air outside was sharp and clean, carrying the smell of salt and wet stone from the harbor. Somewhere down the waterfront a shutter banged in the wind. Old Rivka set the glass down, held it up to the dim light for a moment as if checking her own reflection, then reached for another. </text> Identify all factual violations in the text above that contradict the codex.