That Anirock Spirit Playlist
Game 45 Pictures
I write what I can remember, though the edges of the night are fraying, and already some of it slips like water through my grasp.
The Graceland Freehold was alive with impossible color, green, red, and black banners twisting above marble floors like serpents in a dance. Candles flickered with anxious delight. The Balefire glowed low and watchful in its hearth, as though it sensed what stalked the horizon.
Never had the Freehold looked more celebratory, and yet, this is the way of beauty among the Kithain, its brilliance carried a tremble of unease.
Poe was radiant, for it was his wedding night, and his joy seemed to lift even the trembling air. Prin held the rings with shaking hands; House Daireann stood proud behind them, hope thrumming like a heartbeat through the hall. Guests drifted through corridors and courtyards, laughing, sharing whispered stories, tasting a fragile peace, unaware that reality itself was already beginning to unravel.
But the unraveling arrived swiftly.
The wedding, once a festival of bright promise, shattered in a single breath. Poe stood at the altar, joy turning to rigid, frozen horror as Countess Saoirse stepped away from him.
Her face was a mask of confusion, eyes searching his features like those of a child waking from the wrong dream. There was no recognition in them. No love. No memory of him at all.
Prin clutched the rings helplessly. House Daireann gathered close, unable to shield their Liege from heartbreak. Gasps spiraled through the Freehold. Whispers darted between guests like frightened birds. The Balefire dimmed to a hurt, ember-red glow, and even the banners sagged as if mourning.
The ceremony did not end with triumph, but with the heavy, aching silence of love unfulfilled.
It was then that Bobbish arrived, our loyal Boggan, breathless and scuttling, urgency radiating from every step. He bore a list of names he feared the Memory Eater would claim, his handwriting frantic but determined. His small voice trembled as he warned all who would listen: mortals, changelings, dreamers, cling to what you love.
Hold tight to what you are.
He moved quickly, desperately, but even he could not save everyone. He could only prepare us for the storm.
And then the storm came.
The Memory Eater seeped into the Freehold like a crack in the world. Its presence twisted the air, hissing, prowling, warping space around those who remained. Reality recoiled.
Velora was taken first, stoic to the last, unafraid. Before the void swallowed her, she asked each of us a single question:
“What shall I remember of you?”
One by one, we answered. And she promised, calm, ancient, steady, that she would hold those memories safe. In return, she gifted each of us a small trinket, a token of remembrance, shining faintly in the warped light.
Then she vanished.
MK was next, yet not with fear. With a wild, laughing defiance, she danced into the darkness with the Memory Eater itself, declaring at last, “It finally came for me!”
Callisto followed, pulled into the void, but she would not stay lost. She returned later not as the Sidhe Callisto, but as her mortal self, Jessica, fragile, frightened, and trying desperately to befriend the changelings whose faces her soul remembered even when her mind could not. Callisto, now Jessica, tried awkwardly, sweetly, heartbreakingly to make friends with the Kithain, clinging to sentiments her human self could barely understand.
All the while, each Kithain of the court took their stand.
Every single one fought the Memory Eater.
Every blade raised, every spell cast, every act of courage burned bright in the Fraying. They fought for the Gracelands, for each other, for what memories might yet survive.
But the Court could not remain whole.
The Memory Eater scattered us across timelines, half-remembered, half-formed lives drifting like leaves on a storm wind. Rhudarian’s voice echoed through the torn spaces between worlds:
“Where is everyone?!”
Courage and chaos mingled with tragedy.
Glossary unleashed power so overwhelming that even the bravest among us trembled.
As the last remnants of our timeline burned, a final Court gathered, exhausted, shaken, half ghosts of themselves. Hands that once held blades now clutched memories as if they were the only weapons left. Eyes that had witnessed horrors flickered with desperate hope.
Rhudarian signed frantically to Rudy across the fractured chamber. Clippy and Velora’s echoes moved through the room, grounding and soothing. House Daireann carried the battered spine of their Liege onward. But an ending had wrapped its fingers around all our throats.
And then came the last scene.
In another timeline entirely, the Spirit of Rock & Roll, cosplaying as an anime fan at a convention, stood alone before what remained of the Memory Eater after all others had fought it. The creature crawled toward them, broken, hungry, dying.
The Spirit leaned close and whispered something only the darkness could hear.
The Memory Eater reached out, touched the Spirit…
and the lights went out.
I remember the colors, the laughter, the chaos. The unbearable beauty of fleeting moments. I remember the Balefire’s low glow, the green, red, and black banners, the tragedy in Poe’s eyes. But the edges are fraying. The letters twist on the page.
And now… From the corner of my memory, I see it: a shadow stretching long, the shape of hunger.
The Memory Eater has come for me.
I cannot hold these words much longer.
The last lines slip through my fingers as surely as the night itself.
I…
