The legends say that Pyra Lazuli, known among the Scribes of Eidenfall as the Knight of Infinity, discovered the secret of immortality within the depths of the Abyss of Endless Night, in the darkest heart of the Void Ocean. Now, their soul burns as an eternal blue ember against the march of Entropy and the ceaseless threat of the Void Beasts.
Unfortunately, even immortality cannot cure loneliness.
Lazuli mysteriously vanished during the War of the Thornless Roses, and the truth behind their disappearance remains fiercely debated among the Scholars of Eidenfall. Some believe that even the Immortal Lazuli ultimately succumbed to Entropic Degeneration, while others insist they fell only after battling a thousand Void Beasts. Some others believe Lazuli has taken a new identity, living on with her eternal sorrow, somewhere in the Void Ocean. More poetic accounts, such as The Ballad of Sartoria, claim that Lazuli’s …spirit was destroyed by a thousand-fold sorrow, after being forced to strike down a beloved ally who had transformed into a Void Beast. The pasage from the Ballad reads:
“Then the blackened hand held my crown, And its touch bore the warmth of an old friend. It beckoned me towards Oblivion, and I did not turn away. As the flames of eternity had consumed my beloved, My own spirit breaks as a thousandfold sorrow.”
The Ballad is one truth out of many. I believe there are a thousand-fold manifold retellings of the truth of Lazuli’s fate. The actual truth is not important, for Lazuli — the eternal flame — had lived many lives in each one.
- 31st Lecture of Kura Zineth, Scholar of Eidenfall, on “A Brief History of a Thousand Nights”
