The Old Crone

Inkweaver of Velcarum, Keeper of the Four Shards
‍She does not look ancient. She looks preserved.The Old Crone sits wrapped in layers of torn violet and black cloth, each strip stitched with bone charms, dried herbs, and crystal shards that pulse faintly with cold light. Smoke coils constantly around her, not from flame, but from memory. It leaks from her sleeves, from her hood, from the bowl she carries in her left hand. Her skin is parchment-thin and drawn tight over high cheekbones. Veins show like cracked ink beneath the surface. Her mouth curls into a knowing smile even when she is not amused. Her eyes glow a pale, storm-cloud blue, clouded and sharp at the same time. She walks barefoot.The earth recoils slightly where she steps. Around her neck hang small skulls no larger than apples. They are not trophies. They are voices. When she tilts her head, faint whispers spill from them, overlapping in half-remembered prayers. Her staff is twisted wood grown around bone, capped with violet crystal. The crystal does not shine. It hums. She does not lean on it. She holds it like a quill.

Before Nethrial was born, she had another name. Few remember it.She was once an advisor to Kareth Von Drel, long before the curse tore the heart apart. Not a noble. Not a general. A seer. She studied thresholds. She warned of fractures in faith, devotion stretched too thin, resolve hardened into obsession. When Kareth performed the forbidden rite beneath the catacombs, the Crone did not try to stop her. She tried to witness it. When the heart shattered, the blast of power did not kill the Crone. It unmoored her from ordinary time. She began to see the realm not as it was, but as it might have been. She sees echoes layered atop reality. The living overlaid with the dead. The past bleeding into now.She became something else.She calls herself an Inkweaver now. She believes the world is written in blood and memory. That names hold weight. That oaths bind tighter than chains. That the Four Hearts are not just fragments of flesh, but fragments of intention. She does not serve the Vistigial. She does not oppose them openly. She studies them. She refers to Mordrenath not as monster, but as consequence. The Crone knows the Hearts must be brought together by kin, not force. She knows devotion can imprison as easily as it protects. She knows time in the Mists moves differently because she no longer moves within it cleanly. She remembers things that have not happened yet. And sometimes, when she looks at someone of Von blood, she tilts her head and whispers:“You have already done this once.