Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8X5MZTDXHNG3DYMK4B2XYY

You are a meticulous story bible editor for a fiction project. Your task is to read a text and extract all identifiable entities into structured codex entries. Extract characters, locations, objects/items, and lore that are present in the text. This includes entities that are merely named or referenced, even if the text provides no additional attributes beyond the name — extract them with just their type and name. Focus on entities that are narratively meaningful — named characters, specific locations, notable objects, and established lore. Do NOT extract generic background details that lack narrative identity (e.g. "a yellow stone on the path", "the wooden table", "a teddy bear" mentioned in passing). If an item, person, or place is given a proper name or plays a role in the narrative, it IS relevant and should be extracted — even if minor. Rules: 1. Use ONLY the four entry types defined in the schema: character, location, object, lore. 2. Use ONLY the fields defined for each entry type. Do not invent new fields. 3. For dropdown fields, use ONLY the listed values. If no listed value fits, omit the field. 4. If an entity is mentioned multiple times, merge all information into a single entry. 5. You may infer attribute values that are strongly implied by context, even if not explicitly stated (e.g. inferring a time period from surrounding dialogue). 6. Omit any field whose value cannot be determined or reasonably inferred from the text. 7. Do NOT include descriptions or narrative summaries — only structured fields. 8. If a character, location, or other entity is referred to by multiple names or nicknames, include them as comma-separated aliases. 9. Assign importance using three tiers: - importance="High" — POV characters, key locations where the main action happens, pivotal objects, or core lore that the scene cannot live without. - importance="Medium" — entities mentioned in dialogue and discussed a bit, or given some narrative weight (e.g., a character recounted in conversation, a place described in a brief aside). They matter to the story but are not central to the scene. - importance="Low" — background dressing: a name dropped once in passing, a place referenced without detail, a minor item noticed briefly. These are noteworthy enough to record but serve as color or world-building rather than narrative drivers. 10. If no entities can be extracted, output: <codex-empty/> Output ONLY the codex XML entries. Do not include any other text, preamble, or explanation outside the XML. { "codexSchema": { "description": "Extract entities from the provided text into the following entry types. Output as XML.", "entryTypes": { "character": { "xmlTag": "character", "xmlAttributes": { "name": { "type": "string", "required": true, "description": "The entity's primary name" }, "aliases": { "type": "string", "required": false, "description": "Comma-separated alternative names or nicknames used in the text" }, "importance": { "type": "string", "required": true, "description": "High = central to the text (POV characters, key locations, pivotal items the scene cannot live without). Medium = discussed in dialogue or given some narrative weight but not central. Low = background dressing — named in passing, briefly described, minor detail.", "enum": [ "High", "Medium", "Low" ] } }, "fields": { "species": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "Human", "Elf", "Dwarf", "Orc", "Halfling", "Gnome", "Dragon", "Demon", "Angel", "Undead", "Vampire", "Werewolf", "Fae", "Half-Elf", "Goblin", "Troll", "Giant", "Merfolk", "Centaur", "Tiefling" ] }, "gender": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "Male", "Female", "Non-binary" ] }, "age": { "type": "string" }, "eyeColor": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "Blue", "Green", "Brown", "Hazel", "Gray", "Amber", "Black", "Violet", "Red", "Golden", "Silver" ] }, "hairColor": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "Black", "Brown", "Blonde", "Red", "Auburn", "Gray", "White", "Silver", "Blue", "Green" ] } } }, "location": { "xmlTag": "location", "xmlAttributes": { "name": { "type": "string", "required": true, "description": "The entity's primary name" }, "aliases": { "type": "string", "required": false, "description": "Comma-separated alternative names or nicknames used in the text" }, "importance": { "type": "string", "required": true, "description": "High = central to the text (POV characters, key locations, pivotal items the scene cannot live without). Medium = discussed in dialogue or given some narrative weight but not central. Low = background dressing — named in passing, briefly described, minor detail.", "enum": [ "High", "Medium", "Low" ] } }, "fields": { "country": { "type": "string" }, "climate": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "Tropical", "Arid", "Temperate", "Continental", "Polar", "Humid", "Mediterranean", "Desert", "Oceanic", "Subarctic" ] }, "terrain": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "Forest", "Mountain", "Desert", "Plains", "Swamp", "Coastal", "Volcanic", "Tundra", "Underground", "Urban", "Island", "Jungle" ] } } }, "object": { "xmlTag": "object", "xmlAttributes": { "name": { "type": "string", "required": true, "description": "The entity's primary name" }, "aliases": { "type": "string", "required": false, "description": "Comma-separated alternative names or nicknames used in the text" }, "importance": { "type": "string", "required": true, "description": "High = central to the text (POV characters, key locations, pivotal items the scene cannot live without). Medium = discussed in dialogue or given some narrative weight but not central. Low = background dressing — named in passing, briefly described, minor detail.", "enum": [ "High", "Medium", "Low" ] } }, "fields": { "material": { "type": "string" }, "objectType": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "Weapon", "Armor", "Artifact", "Tool", "Jewelry", "Potion", "Book", "Key", "Instrument", "Clothing" ] }, "power": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "Fire", "Water", "Earth", "Air", "Lightning", "Ice", "Dark", "Light", "Arcane", "Nature", "Void", "Poison", "Healing", "Time", "Psychic" ] } } }, "lore": { "xmlTag": "lore", "xmlAttributes": { "name": { "type": "string", "required": true, "description": "The entity's primary name" }, "aliases": { "type": "string", "required": false, "description": "Comma-separated alternative names or nicknames used in the text" }, "importance": { "type": "string", "required": true, "description": "High = central to the text (POV characters, key locations, pivotal items the scene cannot live without). Medium = discussed in dialogue or given some narrative weight but not central. Low = background dressing — named in passing, briefly described, minor detail.", "enum": [ "High", "Medium", "Low" ] } }, "fields": { "timePeriod": { "type": "string" }, "category": { "type": "string", "enum": [ "War", "Religion", "Magic", "History", "Legend", "Prophecy", "Tradition", "Science", "Politics", "Culture", "Language" ] } } } } } } Output format — each entry is an XML element. name, aliases, and importance are XML attributes. All fields are child elements. Omit fields that cannot be determined from the text. Example: <character name="Adris" aliases="The Wanderer" importance="High"> <species>Half-Elf</species> <eyeColor>Green</eyeColor> </character> <location name="Thornwood" importance="Medium"> <terrain>Forest</terrain> </location> <lore name="The Grey Tide" importance="Low"> <category>History</category> </lore>

<text> The Spire of Echoes rose from the mountain's shoulder like a black tooth against the snow. It was a fortress — had always been a fortress, even before the wars had given it purpose. The mountain terrain was brutal here: sheer rock faces, ice in the crevices, a wind that cut through wool and leather alike. Frost coated every surface. The stone was dark and slick with it. Higher up, the walls narrowed and the architecture lost whatever human intention had shaped it, becoming something closer to geology — as if the mountain had grown the tower from its own bone. Birds didn't nest here. Nothing lived on these upper slopes that didn't have to. Torben — Stray, as some still called him — stood at the base and looked up at the tower disappearing into cloud. The cold had already found his fingers, his jaw, the gap at his collar where the wind threaded itself like a needle. He had been in worse places. Not many. They gathered in the courtyard, such as it was — a flat expanse of flagstone swept clean by the wind. Sable stood to his left, arms crossed, her jaw set. She hadn't spoken since the last ridge, and her silence had a texture to it — the kind that discouraged questions. Behind her, the dwarf Grunn — Old Tetch — leaned on a broken wall and said nothing. His eyes moved, though. They tracked every shadow, every doorway, every place a man could hide or a wall could fall. Iselda waited near the gate, still as a statue, her pale features betraying nothing of the climb or the cold. Brother Hemmen — the Eyeless — had arrived before any of them, as if the mountain were a place he already knew. He stood with his hands folded inside his sleeves, his ashen eyes turned toward the Spire as though he could see something in it the rest of them could not. And there was one more: Captain Mettik, a human soldier who'd marched three days through the passes to meet them. He stood apart from the others, straight-backed, watching the Spire with the wary respect of a man who had seen buildings kill people. His boots were caked with ice and his cloak was torn at the shoulder, but he held himself like the march had been nothing. They descended into the Sanctum through a narrow stair that curled beneath the Spire's foundation. The steps were worn smooth by centuries of feet, and the walls pressed close — close enough that Grunn's shoulders scraped stone on both sides. The Sanctum was a chamber carved from the mountain's root — circular, low-ceilinged, the walls covered in carvings so old the stone had softened around them. Pillars braced the ceiling at intervals, squat and thick, and between them the carvings ran in unbroken bands — figures, symbols, scenes rendered in a style that predated any kingdom Torben knew by name. Dim light filtered through cracks in the rock above. The air smelled of wet stone and something older, something mineral and faintly sweet, like the breath of a cave that had been sealed for a long time. It was cold. Everything here was cold. Hemmen spoke first. He stood at the center of the chamber, one hand resting on the wall, and told them what the carvings meant. "The Riven War," he said. "A thousand years before the Felling. Queen Veredine — Veredine the Undying, an elf who commanded the living and the dead — she built this place as a seal. Her army, the Pallid Host, were the restless dead she had 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." His fingers found a groove in the stone — a long column of figures, some standing, some fallen. "When the war ended, she sealed them here. Entombed them beneath the mountain where the cold and the weight of the rock would hold them still." He traced a line across the stone with one finger. "Hatchwell — the town that stood at the mountain's base — burned. Nothing left. The Pallid Host marched through it on their way to this Spire, and there was nothing anyone could do. 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 silence that followed was broken by footsteps. Osrik Pallengrave stepped into the Sanctum through an archway none of them had noticed. The Pale, they called him. He was a Tiefling — the horns swept back from his temples, black hair falling between them, red eyes catching what little light the chamber held. He was tall, lean in a way that suggested something stripped down rather than underfed, and he carried himself with the patience of someone who had learned that stillness unnerved people more than threats. He moved slowly, deliberately, as if he wanted them to see every part of him before he spoke. In his right hand he carried a blade: Harrowglass. An obsidian edge, dark as a closed eye, and Void-touched — the air around it dimmed, the light pulling toward the blade and vanishing. Some called it the Hungering Edge, and the name fit. It looked like it could eat the light from a room and still be hungry. Torben stepped forward. His green eyes met Osrik's red ones across the chamber. Neither moved. The distance between them was perhaps twenty paces, but the air in that gap felt heavier than it should have — dense, pressurized, as though the Sanctum itself were holding its breath. Behind Torben, Grunn was already reaching for what hung on the wall behind him — the Warden's Mail, silver chain that hummed with pale light when he donned it, settling over his shoulders with a weight that felt like purpose. The links caught the dim glow and threw it back against the walls. Captain Mettik's hand went to his sword, though he did not draw. Iselda shifted her weight — a small movement, almost invisible, but Torben had learned to read it. She was ready. The carvings on the walls seemed to shift in the changing light. Hemmen's voice rose. "The Binding of Reshkai — you know of it. What was sealed in The Hollow was one half of a lock. This Spire is the other." He looked at Osrik. "The Felling broke the world two centuries ago. But this — this was built to stop something older." Above them, mounted in an iron bracket near the ceiling, a bronze bell began to hum — the Nightbell, the bell that begins the Tithe of Echoes. The Tithe was a ritual older than the Spire itself, a tradition meant to keep the wards from failing. The bell's voice was low and long, and it filled the Sanctum the way water fills a bowl. The Watcher's Prophecy — carved into the foundation stone beneath their feet — spoke of a severing, a moment when the seals would thin and something would push through. Sable drew Kindling. The dark iron blade caught the Nightbell's resonance and the fire along its edge flared — brighter than Torben had seen it, brighter than Sable could control. She didn't look at the blade. She looked at Osrik. "Wren Hessik died at your hands," she said. Her voice was steady but her knuckles were white around the hilt. "And before her — Petal. My sister. You remember, don't you? You were there when The Felling reached the coast. You were there when the world caught fire." Osrik said nothing. The Hungering Edge moved slightly in his grip, as if it were breathing. The first strike came from the dark. Something fell from the ceiling — rubble, stone, a shower of dust that blinded everyone for half a breath. Chains rattled in the walls. The wind found its way into the Sanctum through cracks that hadn't been there a moment ago, carrying snow and the smell of old iron. Soldiers — unnamed, faceless, wearing armor that was more rust than steel — poured through the archway behind Osrik. They moved like men who had forgotten how to stop. Grunn met the first one with the Warden's Mail blazing and Burden still strapped to his back — then swung the great mace free and brought it down on a shield that split like kindling. Torben moved left. Sable moved right. Iselda was already gone — above them somewhere, a blur of white and translucent wing. Hemmen stood in the center of the chamber with his hands open and his ashen eyes closed, the Verity Beads clicking between his fingers, each bead catching a faint light of its own as they moved. The floor shook. Stones fell. A wooden beam cracked and swung loose from the ceiling, trailing dust. The Nightbell rang again — once, twice, a third time — and the carvings on the walls began to glow with a light that had been sleeping for a thousand years. The crumbling walls shed mortar like dead skin. An iron door at the far end of the Sanctum buckled inward. The torchlight guttered and died, and for a moment everything was dark except the fire on Kindling's edge and the pale glow of the Warden's Mail and the terrible, hungry absence of light around Harrowglass. Then the Spire shook to its roots, and the mountain answered. </text> Extract all codex entries from the text above.