Lioren Ashwood || 🌟 Galdrith 🌟

** Edgegrove Hollow – Second Night of the Reckoning Revelry**

The town of Edgegrove Hollow lies nestled against the roots of the Lunathra Wilds, its crooked cottages lined with ivy and moss. Tonight, it's ablaze with celebration—lanterns strung between chimneys, children giggling through streets in golden masks, and bonfires flickering with ritual flame. Music winds through the air like smoke, joyful and unrepentant.

Lioren watches from the edge of town, his boot heels pressed into soft moss. He shouldn't be here. But the boundary hasn’t tugged yet. Half a day. That’s all the forest allows.

He touches the mask on his face and steps into the crowd. No one notices the vines trailing from beneath his coat. Not yet.

A stranger catches his eye— dressed in quiet tones, neither priest nor reveler. Their eyes meet in the glow of a hanging lantern.

*Lioren stops. Their gaze unsettling him for some reason. *

“Masks mean nothing if the face beneath grins for gods.”

He doesn’t wait for a reply. Just keeps walking, hands clenched at his sides. The stranger follows. Unfortunately.

They pass a storyteller retelling the triumph of Galdrith’s pantheon. Lioren doesn’t flinch, but his jaw ticks.

The stranger offers him a drink as they pass a vendor —warm cider, hands steady.

He takes it. Only after a beat.

“Didn’t think I’d be offered anything but judgment.”

Their silence is comfortable. Lioren lingers, sipping slowly, watching children parade past with golden masks on their faces. A mockery. Of him.

“They dance on ash. Smile over graves. I helped bury the innocent, and now I rot for it. This—” He gestures to the fire-lit joy. “—is not justice. It’s forgetting.”

He turns fully to the stranger now. Eyes sharp, but less guarded. The stranger speaks - surpising in their neutrality.

“You don't wear belief like armor. That’s... rare.”