The demeanour of the Jade Empress was self-evident as She gazed upon the scurrying mortality of Achaea.

Legacy.

She spat the word with the cold disdain of one Who had seen legacy's remit and result.

Bestriding the Mnemosyne's fluvial blessing, by the hand of the Empress did its waters surge. By the will of the Empress did its course shudder. And by the command of the Empress did the river yield, peeling away the jungle in herald to the blighted curse yet within.

And though the Jade Empress disappeared behind Her veil of lucent crystal, what She exposed to the world for the first time in a thousand years remained.

The smallest glimpse into shattered ruins of what was once Imperial glory.

Seleucar.

Ghosts walked its streets in pale echoes of what once was considered civilisation's pinnacle. Spectres haunted its roads. Memories, stirred by the Eldest's invocation, bubbled into existence and unveiled lost histories to adventurers with eyes wide open.

A month passed and Lorielan returned, scornful of the enthusiasm with which mortality clamoured to walk a fallen empire's streets.

Clasping the purloined shards of a spiral relic in Her hands, the Jade Empress once more bid the waters to obey, and while Mnemosyne churned into a vortex of spectral recollection at Her command, She simply called: "Well?"

Elders were Her answer: Vastar and Gaia first, then Aegis and Phaestus. Prospero was joined by Valnurana and Scarlatti. Last to come was Twilight, Others conspicuous by Their absence.

And as Lorielan moulded the now-torrential vortex into something She called an object lesson, Her Siblings simply observed, offering neither assistance nor opinion.

"Well?" came Her voice again.

Reticence was Her answer. The Elders bid the Eldest ask Them to help, Their coy reluctance driving Lorielan to a cold, terrible fury. Tension threatened to carve the air asunder until She slowly, painfully, agonisingly, asked of Them to lend Her aid.

Together, They wove water and memory into one. Shapes and faces converged, memories rose and fell, and spectres of the ancient past shimmered in and out of focus under an outpouring of Divine might scarcely seen by mortal eyes. The vortex churned and revolved, threatening to collapse on itself and implode, but the Gods persisted, until an explosion of light revealed the fruit of Their labour.

And as the Elder Gods receded beyond the Veil, Their work remained.

The circular archway stood amidst Seleucar's unveiled ruin in silent revolution, pale-white radiance spiralling within its impossible frame while the firmament above slowly relinquished the scars of Divine intervention. Across Uphimmin, fragments of distant memory yet lingered in the heavens: glimmering motes of celestial light drifting like fallen stars through jungle canopy and forgotten stone alike. Some claimed to hear song within them still. Others whispered that the air itself had changed, touched by something older than mortal recollection.

For those who wandered Seleucar's haunted avenues in the aftermath, the revelation was no longer merely the empire that had once been, but the truth hidden within its destruction. Sarapis had dreamt of permanence. His vision was one of civilisation eternal. Of a legacy immune to decline.

The mortal condition believed such providence to be inevitable. It was not. And Lorielan, the Jade Empress, Eldest of the Gods yet living, had not exhumed Seleucar to inspire reverence.

She had unveiled its corpse as warning: an object lesson of the price paid by complacency and entitlement.

Then, from beyond Creation's furthest edge, where Memory endured untouched by time's erosion, came Proteus, not in flesh, but in possibility. In the echo of a path yet untaken.

The question left in the wake of the Gods' departure lingered still over ruined streets and spectral avenues alike:

Whether mortality, given the remnants of Divinity and the inheritance of history, would create something greater, or merely repeat the follies of every age before. And so they were tasked with acts of remembrance. A whirlpool of whispers beckoned to them all, to be fed with recollections of sight, sound, and slaughter, its purpose yet to be determined.

~ ~ ~

Summary: Lorielan revealed more of ancient Seleucar and, alongside several Elder Gods, forged a massive Divine gateway using the Mnemosyne and shards of Divinity's Sceptre. From beyond Creation emerged the memory of Proteus, a preserved remnant tied to Scarlatti's greater vision, while the Jade Empress warned that mortals now stand at the precipice of either forging a better legacy or repeating the catastrophic failures of the past. Tasked with offering a whirlpool of whispers recollections, adventurers scurry to feed its insatiable appetite. But to what end?

Penned by My hand on the 17th of Chronos, in the year 1004 AF.