When I started putting this site out into the world, I had questions coming my way. One of the biggest came from a close friend who knows how much this means to me. They wanted to know if the content on here would be nothing but the novel and the story of Nymira. And no, it won’t be. It never was going to be.

While I’m fleshing things out in my head and working through the deeper parts like character biographies or the layers behind each location and the events that shaped them, more stories keep pushing through. Not just the main one. Little fragments. Broken memories. Scenes that don’t quite belong anywhere yet but still feel like they have meaning. The stuff that would never make it into the final book but still needs to be written down. And sometimes those fragments grow into something bigger, something that changes the whole shape of the world.

None of this is a clean process. It doesn’t happen in a straight line. I’m not really writing in chapters. I follow the feeling and if that means pausing mid-plot to write something else that has claws in it, then that’s what I do. This site isn’t just an archive for the novel but it’s also part of how I survive the writing of it. It’s where all the extra blood ends up.

Memory Burns Brighter in Autumn

That’s the thing about a creative mind. Or whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t wait for the right time or the right place. It just runs. I was trying to explain the Longfall Vigil (which you have yet to see) to a friend the other day and while I was speaking, the whole thing around it started to grow. Faces, voices and little scraps of story all showing up and none of it was planned. All of it was suddenly just… there. The firelight, the silence between each campdire tale and the way some people come to that fire for reasons that don’t belong in a celebration. It all hit at once.

The Vigil, if you’ve read the Sylvarion lore page, is an Autumnal event. It marks the gathering of the Chroniclers of Bloom, who are keepers of the memory pools and guardians of everything the Eladrin can’t afford to forget. They come with vials of memory water which are pulled from the deepest places, and everyone meets under the open sky. Campfires are lit. Old stories are spoken like prayer. And between each one, there’s Amberthrum. It’s a golden drink served in crystal thimbles, brewed over decades and never touched outside of autumn.

Amberthrum gets poured on two kinds of nights. The first is during court rulings when truth needs a weight behind it. The second is during historical retellings when the past has to be more than just words. During the Vigil, the memory water is warmed by the flames and when that heat touches it, something happens.

Memories wake up. They stir. They rise out of the vials and the past steps forward, wearing old faces and walking with the living just for a while. Not forever. But long enough to feel them walk amongst the leaves.

Stories That Refuse to Stay Quiet

That alone spins out so many stories in my head. Who are the Chroniclers of Bloom, really. They have a role to play in Heart of the Thorn and it’s an important one, but even now I keep coming back to the question — who are they? How are they chosen? What lives did they have before this? What are they trusted with that no one else is?

What good comes from the Longfall Vigil outside of simply witnessing memory? What damage could it do? How many Eladrin have tried to twist it for their own gain? How many believed they were doing something right, only for the aftermath to rot through everything they touched?

Are the living memories solid or are they ghosts? Can you touch them? Can they touch you? Do they know they’re being watched? Do they know they’re not alone? The idea of memory that breathes and moves beside you brings weight and wonder but also fear. Because if memory is that real and if it can stand upright and speak again, then what stops someone from trying to interfere?

Could a single choice made during the Vigil shatter the course of what’s to come? Could you reach into the past, find a place you regret and change it? We already know Nymira touched the Obsidian Seed through a rip in the veil, so the idea of one plane bleeding into another is already rooted? So then the question changes… what happens if you step into a memory like it’s a place you can walk through? And what happens if you change something while you’re inside?

This site was never meant to hold just the spine of one novel. I want to build everything around it. I want the weight of this world to be felt. So that when you read the pages here, it’s not just lore. It’s not just filler. It’s something you can fall into. It all ties back. Every piece has meaning that means even the fragments that seem lost. There are rabbit holes waiting if you want to chase them.

Now I just have to drag it all out of my head and get it on the page.