I set quill to parchment not for glory, nor for the indulgence of an idle soul, but for truth. Truth, once lost, is seldom reclaimed.

Too oft have I seen history twisted upon the tongues of bards, reshaped to suit the ears of lords and the whims of silver. A tale retold enough times ceases to be truth at all, becoming instead a pleasing fiction—polished, grand, and hollow. In such retellings, the hearts of those who lived it are stripped away, their names forgotten, their deeds remade.

This shall not be that tale.

I do not write as minstrel or scribe, but as one who remembers—not through sight alone, but through the slow, patient binding of threads long scattered. Some claim it began in fire—blue flame cleaving shadow. Others swear by the footfall of a halfling child, fleeing hearth and heritage alike. Others, with the soft footfall of a halfling girl escaping the hearth. Both would be right, and both would be blind.

The truth lies deeper, buried beneath the cobbles of a city that has forgotten more than most realms ever knew.

The year was marked by long summers and shorter tempers. The scars of the Illithid Wars still shadowed the corridors of power, though their echoes had softened into myth. Amid Baldur’s Gate’s winding streets and salt-swept alleys, life wore its chaos like a festival mask. Gods whispered through dreams, and mortals, ever susceptible, danced in their shadows.

Power struggles ‘twixt gods and mighty mortals were the daily fare of Baldurians, whose minds were occupied with preparations for the Water Festival. For a fortnight, the festival breathed life into the streets, coinciding with the Summer Solstice—a grand celebration of Baldur’s Gate’s profound bond with the sea. The salty breeze from the Sea of Swords mingled with an array of exotic aromas—the spices from Nai Saran, the honeyed nuts from Neverwinter, and the indulgent sweetness of crema from Athkatla.

It was during such a summer, as the Water Festival approached—the solstice rite when sea and sky meet in revel—that the first signs stirred anew. A prophecy, long relegated to dusty alcoves and half-mumbled oaths, surfaced again. Not loudly, not brazenly, but in hushed tones: a soul born under the thinnest veil, marked by wild magic not yet tamed. Not merely chaos, but echo—a second casting, a blue fire trailing the first.

The Weave itself shivered—whether from sorrow or omen, none could say—when this one wept.

Some called it coincidence. Others called it fate. Fewer still remembered the old phrase, scrawled once on a temple wall now long collapsed: When moonlight forgets its name and blue flame dances twice, the Warden shall awaken.

Who first whispered it? No one remembers.

Who remembered it? Only those who were meant to.

Through the salt-tossed breath of Baldur’s Gate, a flame-haired child moved as shadow does—swift, soft, unseen. The Lower City churned around him, alive with voices pitched in barter and boast, with the brine of the sea and the spice of southern wares steeping the air like an unspoken incantation. His footfalls fell sure upon the crooked stones, each stride a thread in the tapestry of a day unaware of its significance.

As he passed beneath the pitted gaze of Balduran’s likeness—stone-worn and weeping lichen—a hand reached out, casual in gesture, reverent in rhythm. He did not linger. The founder remembered nothing, but the boy remembered enough for them both.

Beneath the linen of his tunic, a pulse—soft and sure—answered the rhythm of his steps. His fingers found the pendant at his chest, a crystal not yet named by history, cool to the touch and ever watchful. It shimmered faintly—blue as moonlight caught in still water—and for a breath after his touch, lingered, as though reluctant to obey. It always did, when he bade it still.

His father had told him, once, in a voice rough with something too close to fear, “That pendant pulses like a warning bell. You’d do best to never let anyone see it glow.” That was the only time Jack ever touched it. And the only time Jaimie had seen fear in the old man’s eyes.

A smile flickered across his lips—reflexive, practiced. A thing he’d learned to wear when the cold in his chest stirred. Not joy. Not irony. Merely habit.

Some whispered of luck. Others, of doom. But fate, I have learned, wears both names in the same breath.

The tavern door groaned wide, disgorging a spill of golden light and laughter steeped in brine. A man staggered forth—broad of frame, slack of thought—his breath fouled with rot and salt, his boots dragging behind him as though the tide itself sought to draw him back.

Through this discord moved the boy of embered hair, as moonlight upon still water—silent, fluid, unmarked. The sailor’s arm swept out, wild and graceless, yet it met only the space where Jaimie had passed. Danger, ignorant, rolled onward.

His fingers, ever drawn to the pendant beneath his tunic, found it as if by instinct. It stirred—not in warning, but in recognition. A second heartbeat, faint and blue, pulsed once against his skin. Cold touched flesh, and the world, for a breath, wavered—not with dread, but with remembrance.

Across the square, a basket overturned. Apples spilled upon the cobbles like oracles cast without a seer. An old woman bent low, her curses older than the stone beneath her feet. Jaimie knelt at her side, and though his words I cannot recall, they mattered little. It was not the speech, but the act, that bore the weight.

She rose with his aid, gratitude etched deep upon her weathered face, and turned upon the tavern door with fire in her voice. 

“Scourge-sons, the lot o’ ye! Is there no decency left in your drunken bones? May the tide claim what the land dare not!”

He handed her the last of the fruit, and smiled—not with mirth, but with kinship. For though sails had given way to soot and stone, Baldur’s Gate had not forgotten the sea. Saints do not rise from such waters. Only pirates who have learned to walk the shore.

One might have mistaken him for a child of shadows—nimble-footed, sharp-eyed, drifting through Baldur’s Gate as water slips through the seams of stone. His garb, loose and wind-worn, bore the flowing cuts of Nai-Saran’s coastal tribes—an attire ill-favored by the lords of the Upper City, yet truer to the rhythm of the harbor’s breath. His steps, though unburdened in sound, moved as though bearing the quiet weight of things unseen.

At the edge of the festival’s swell he lingered, neither among the revelers nor apart—poised, like a question not yet spoken. His gaze, drawn across the slate-blue sprawl of Gray Harbor, settled upon the Seatower of Balduran, steadfast sentinel of the bay. Ships danced upon the tide like drifting thoughts, their masts swaying in solemn chant with the sea’s hymn. Above, a pale dove wheeled once and vanished westward—a creature of peace or omen, who could say? He had seen it before. Each day it came. He told no soul. There are burdens lightened by silence.

The city breathed around him—salt and spice and smoke—and the boy touched the pendant at his breast. The Weave did not stir. But I have learned: the quietest moments often sing the loudest, in time.

Through the market’s shifting tides he passed, gliding between calls and colors, laughter and lies. “Finest apples, young master!” came a voice like wind-worn stone. The old merchant, draped in patched silks, raised a fruit toward him—a gift or bait, it mattered not.

He turned, and the light in his eyes was not just mirth, but recognition. The crest of the Merchant’s League fluttered above, proud and weighty. He offered a coin without hesitation. “How could I refuse?”—the words meant to charm, yet the charm was instinctual, a mask long worn. He caught the apple, bit into its flesh, and let its sweetness wash over him like a season remembered.

“May your days be as sweet as your wares,” he offered—not as a jest, but as ritual. The old man laughed, and the boy moved on.

Banners hung above the square, green and gold, sigils of Umberlee and Selûne entwined like uneasy sisters. Incense curled alongside sausage smoke. Prayers and drinking songs rose together beneath the fading sky—faith and folly walking hand in hand, as they always have.

Then—steel. His eyes caught it, gleaming like a memory too finely displayed. A dagger lay beneath velvet, its blade polished, its handle chiseled to mimic age. He moved to it not by will, but as one might follow a half-remembered tune. The vendor’s voice oiled its way forward: “A blade of legend,” he claimed. “Wielded by hands now dust, in battles the world forgot.”

Jaimie touched the hilt. Not long. Not carelessly. Its weight was false, its patina too deliberate. Yet when he let it go, a shimmer clung to his fingertips—a heatless afterimage, like a breath that lingers where none should be. Not a trick of light. No fire cast it. No sun called it forth.

He blinked. And it was gone.

In the space that followed, his thoughts wandered—not forward, but sidelong. He pictured the blade raised with precision and flourish, as Astarion might have done in his days beneath the city’s velvet shadows. Astarion… still too beautiful for honesty, too blood-slick for trust. I have seen the way that one smiles before the wound is struck.

Jaimie’s lips curled—not from envy, nor admiration, but from that deeper thread: the hunger for meaning, the whisper of becoming. Not a mimicry. A contrast.

He would walk a path where tales echoed not with hunger, but with purpose.

“And what grand tales they must whisper,” he murmured, not without irony. Then he turned and vanished into the crowd, leaving the dagger—and all it might have promised—to the dust of another man’s lie.

On the surface, he moved with ease—a boy unburdened, a thread in the tapestry of the crowd. Yet beneath the calm, signs betrayed him. The tap of his boot upon ancient stone, the sweep of his eyes that lingered too long where shadows pooled… He moved as one who listened not merely to sound, but to silence interrupted.

Then he turned—sharply, as if summoned by a chord none else could hear. The air shifted, subtle as a breath held too long. His hand rose to the pendant at his throat, that ancient thing, cracked by time and shaped by no jeweler now living. It pulsed, blue and slow, as though the Weave itself had snagged upon some deeper thread. The light clung this time, hesitating—as if remembering.

He froze. No breath. No movement. The shimmer crawled across his fingertips, cold as moonlight on iron, and deep within, something stirred. A memory not yet recalled, a name not yet spoken. But the boy, as always, pressed it down. Smiles are armor, too.

The crowd thickened around him, heedless. His eyes found the dissonance—a group of youths moving against the current, their steps too measured, their glances too sharp. He watched. He measured. He moved.

“Perhaps just lads at their play,” he mused—but not aloud. That thought, too, was an offering to silence.

And there—cutting through the hum of the festival—Gaundel.

The dwarf moved with the certainty of a falling hammer, his armor bearing the mark of the Flaming Fist: once a sigil of justice, now a brand that drew curses in taverns and silence in alleys. Yet this one—this Gaundel—stood apart. In him, the flame had not gone out. Not yet.

I have seen him before. In rain. In ruin. Standing over the broken and the bleeding while others turned away. Once, they stood side by side by a gutter washed in blood—a boy dying, a city looking elsewhere. Gaundel carried the body. Jaimie carried the truth.

Where others in uniform took coin in closed palms, Gaundel refused. And where he refused, enemies multiplied. Yet the dwarf did not bend. Not then. Perhaps not ever.

Jaimie paused, a grin curling like a page folded at the corner. From his coat—patched but purposeful—he drew a flask. Dragon’s Fire. A dwarven brew, aged in casks scorched by wyrms, or so the tales claimed. He drank as one might sip remembrance, the burn tracing old paths through throat and belly. Smoke and floral sting. A rogue’s courage, bottled and bought.

He wiped his mouth, tucked the flask away, and watched.

Gaundel’s gaze drifted—once—toward the manor heights, where the walls met sky and justice did not reach. No word passed his lips. But something within him shifted. And I have learned to watch such shifts, for they mark the birth of reckoning.

Jaimie’s eyes followed, bright with mischief, but not cruelty. There was ever that glint in him—danger sought not for pleasure, but as trial. Not for chaos, but for truth. In that boy, I saw a mirror of the city itself: clever, cracked, and not yet lost.

As the Flaming Fist drew near, his boot met the edge of a wooden crate with the elegance of ritual. It skidded across stone like a gambit played too well. A child’s trick, honed a hundredfold. The object, mundane in all but motion, became mischief made manifest.

Gaundel, forged in discipline but dulled by focus, found himself undone. The crate struck his shin with the blunt honesty of wood, and the dwarf lurched—dark braids whipping like sea-rope in a squall. By strength or stubbornness, he did not fall. But pride is quicker to bruise than bone.

His oath rang sharp as iron on anvil, and his face took on the red of Dragon’s Fire—the very draught still warming Jaimie’s chest. Around them, the crowd slowed, eyes drawn by the crackle of tension.

« Jaimie Sutton! Stand fast and prepare yourself! » Gaundel’s voice cracked like a warhorn across the stones, stirring dust and memory alike.

At the alley’s edge, arms folded, grin coiled like a cat’s tail, the boy gave no apology—only mischief dressed in silk.

« Ah, Gaundel, ever the tempest. Did I not warn you about those boots? Too much iron, not enough grace. »
He raised his flask, as if in toast.
« Perhaps a sip to soothe the nerves? »

The dwarf’s glare could have cracked slate. But in the corner of his mouth—a twitch, a war between wrath and reluctant fondness.

« Ye think ye’re clever, do ye? »

« I try, » Jaimie replied with that half-shrug that made mockery of menace. « It keeps me out of trouble. Most of the time. »

The fists clenched. The storm rolled. But no lightning fell. Gaundel exhaled like a bellows cooling.

« Keep this up, and ye’ll land in the cells. Or worse. »

« Not today, » the boy said, capping the flask with a flick and stepping backward into the labyrinth of stone and smoke.

The dwarf lunged—but the alley was already emptying of echoes. Boots drummed like laughter. Jaimie was gone, as always, into the arteries of the Lower City.

« Jaimie Sutton! You’ll answer for this! »

The voice followed like a second shadow, but the boy was wind and will. The alleys bent for him, and the city, begrudging, obeyed.

« Pray, Gaundel! » Jaimie’s voice floated back, buoyant, infuriating.
« Is this where you warn me about the Guild again? »

« Och, I gave up on warnin’ ye, lad. But ye’ll not outrun me forever! »

The chase twisted between walls old as memory. It was ritual, not chaos—an old song, sung anew. Gaundel gave pursuit, his breath harsh but his purpose unshaken. And Jaimie—Jaimie flew.

Yet beneath the jest, a tether held. For Gaundel was no enemy. He was ballast. He was one of the few who still bore the weight of the badge without its rust. They had history—woven not in battle, but in belief.

« It’s easy to get swayed, lad. Bit by bit, ye compromise yerself, and ye dinnae even realise. »

Jaimie’s laughter did not soften. But the truth inside it sharpened.
« Tell that to the Grand Duke. He could use the lesson. »

The name struck like a blade’s flat edge—hard, cold, and undeniable.

Eramus Duskryn. The name once stood for law. Now it echoed in alleyways like a curse wearing coin for armor.

Yet there was no time to reflect. Fate, always watching, made its next move.

The tavern door burst open. A rock gnome—child-small, soot-marked—was hurled like refuse into the alley’s throat. A cry, high and sharp, followed the impact. Behind him, a boot.

Jaimie stopped. No quip rose. The drink’s heat fled his throat.

Gaundel emerged an instant later, hand to axe, breath gone stone-cold.

“What transpires here?”

The tavern-keeper froze, foot still raised from the blow.

« The wee rat was thievin’, Fist. Just teachin’ him a lesson— »

« No warrant for that,” Gaundel snapped, voice like the fall of judgment. “Not on a child. Not while I wear this badge. »

From the shadow, Jaimie watched—and this time, his smile bore no jest. Only the gravity of recognition.

Had I not known the dwarf’s heart so well, I might have called it chance. But I have seen such games before. This was not whim. It was witness. A test—and again, Gaundel did not fail.

He never did.

Jaimie, by then vanishing into the labyrinth of alleys, did not see Gaundel’s lingering gaze. The dwarf watched him go, eyes narrowed not in anger, but thought. He had always held a soft regard for the half-elf, not for his antics, but for what lay beneath them: a defiant spark, a refusal to let wrongs stand unchallenged.

“When I was yet unweathered,” Gaundel muttered to himself, “I believed the world could be mended—blade straight, back straighter still. But time dulls more than steel.”

He had grown up in stone halls, where laws rang clearer than bells. But Baldur’s Gate? Here, right and wrong bled together like spilled wine. The Fists had once stood for order. Now they served coin. And even Gaundel—honour-bound, iron-blooded—had turned a blind eye more than once, numbed by necessity.

Yet in the boy lingered a light—laughter tempered by defiance, mischief masking something unbroken beneath. Gaundel had seen many urchins grow into cutpurses and blades-for-hire. But Jaimie… Jaimie moved like a tale already half-written. Someone Fate had marked, though he did not yet know it.

One day, their paths would cross again—this he felt in his bones—and when they did, it would not be over a spilled crate.

The rock gnome sniffled, still curled in on himself. Gaundel turned, his voice softening as he offered a hand calloused by stone and steel. “Come now, lad. Let’s get ye fed, and out of this stink.”

He guided the child away from the tavern’s bruised light. Behind him, the street settled once more into its festival hum. But the moment lingered.

Justice had stirred—barely, briefly—but it had stirred.

But this was not a morning for reckoning or rebellion. Politics could wait, as could prophecy. The boy’s thoughts turned toward a quieter knot in the thread of his life—Yseut Bummel.

He left the maze of laughter and lanterns, the pulse of festival fading behind him. With the ease of one who had long studied the city’s backbeat, Jaimie wove through narrowing lanes where sound softened and footfalls felt older. In one such still-breathing corner, he found her.

She sat alone, framed in dusted stone and filtered sun, her lute resting across her lap like a sleeping bird. Yseut Bummel. Not of court nor cloister, yet carried the quiet dignity of both. Her fingers moved across the strings—not for song, but for refuge. A nervous melody formed, stitched of defiance and doubt. She was always fighting something. Sometimes her kin. Sometimes herself.

He knew the cage she’d slipped—a halfling girl born to a family where roles were carved in hearthsmoke and stubborn love. She had nearly walked the path they chose for her—handfasted to the gentle-hearted Cloudbarrel, secure, safe, and silenced. But she had stepped away. Not with fury, but with fretful courage. Her lute had led her. It always did.

« Xin Chào, Yseut, » Jaimie said, greeting her with the soft mischief of foreign syllables. He bowed, overly formal, as was his way—less a gesture of reverence than a mirror held to her origins.

She looked up, her gaze catching the light—not the deep, unreadable stillness of her mother’s folk, but something brighter, sharper, always on the cusp of thought. Her eyes carried the pale shimmer of her Nai-Saran blood, and her smooth lids—softly slanted, gently folding—marked her as not wholly of this place. In the markets of the Upper City, such features were a curiosity. In the alleys of the Lower, they were a question.

Her dress fell in careful folds, stitched not for ornament but for grace, its lines drawn from halfling tradition—but beneath its hem, the telltale edge of breeches peeked through. She did not discard what was given to her by birth; she simply refused to be bound by it. That tension clothed her more truly than silk ever could.

Even seated, she held herself with the unspoken posture of one taught from childhood to be watched, weighed, married off like grain on ledger. Yet today, she sat with her lute—not as performer, but as keeper of breath and will. And I say to you now: this was no sheltered girl playing at freedom. Yseut Bummel was a doorway yet unopened, and even she did not yet know what world waited beyond its frame.

They shared no blood, no banner, but something passed between them—a sympathy of spirits who longed for elsewhere.

« Another lively dance with Gaundel, is it? » she asked, not missing a beat. « You ought to start charging for such performances. »

« Now that’s clever! Bet with your tunes, we’d pull in a pocketful of coin, easy. »

« Oh no, not I. I shall not get tangled in your crafty plots, tempting though they be. Merely watching is challenge enough for me »

« But just imagine the adventure, Yseut, » he said, toeing the line between earnest and jest. « You know I’d always look out for you, my favorite halfling friend. »

« Your ‘favorite halfling friend,’ is it? I daresay I’m the only one you know. »

She stood, dress falling in folds that bore the elegance of quiet rebellion. Beneath the hem—breeches. Practical, plain. A signal for those who knew to look. She had not shed her customs—but she had layered them, and that alone was a kind of escape.

And I tell you this: Yseut was no damsel, no adornment to another’s tale. She was a chord waiting to be struck, a stanza not yet sung. Jaimie, for all his jest, saw that truth long before she did.

« Well, you’re not like the rest. That’s for certain. Imagine the songs you would weave of me—Jaimie Sutton, the famed rogue of Faerûn. »

A cart trundled near, heavy with fish and threat. With the grace of instinct, Jaimie pulled her aside—more guardian than rogue in that breath.

Her balance faltered—not from fright, but from something subtler. The strings beneath her fingers sang—not loud, but strange. A sound without breath, an echo without origin. She dismissed it with a small laugh, brushing her hair from her cheek.

« Just a sea breeze, » Yseut said softly. But it was not.

Jaimie, already leaning against the alley wall, tilted his head with a crooked grin.

« Ah, yes. Jaimie Sutton—the hero who bested the fishmonger of Fishgut Row. A legend, that. »

Yseut’s brow lifted, her lips forming a half-smile.

« Small frame, big dreams, » he added with mock pride. « You and me—a rogue and his bard. What a pair, eh? »

She glanced sideways at him, plucking once at a muted string.

« Faithful, am I? » she said. « That shall lend our shows a measure of drama, I daresay. »

« Too right! » Jaimie laughed, tipping his imaginary hat. « Just be sure you don’t skip my braver moments. »

Yseut’s smile widened, though her voice stayed composed.
« Rest assured. Each parade, each close call—and even those dragons we’ve barely glimpsed—shall earn their place in the telling. »

 She paused, eyes twinkling. « Though for someone who swears he’s not a proper spellcaster, you do seem to have a flair for flinging sparks at the most opportune moments. »

He straightened up, shrugging in theatrical fashion.
« Right now, it’s just tales and teasing. But you beside me, Yseut? We could take on half the Coast, easy. »

She paused, the laughter settling into something quieter. Her hand hovered over the strings but did not play. Instead, she looked toward the far end of the alley, where the stone met sky.

« Jaimie, » she said, her voice low and even, « there are days I long for more than these humble tunes. My parents—they love me, truly—but their love feels… shaped. I wonder if I’ve waited so long, I’ve forgotten how to walk past these walls. »

Jaimie’s grin faded. He lowered his hands, and with them, the usual shield of mischief.

« Aye, Yseut. There’s more world out there than most dare dream. Music’s our craft—but I’ll not lie, adventure calls. And wherever it leads, I’d rather it with you. » He hesitated, then added more gently, « What holds you here, truly? Is it their dreams… or yours? »

She gave a small shake of her head, her gaze unfocused.

« They see me as their daughter—dutiful, settled, safe. They mean well. But there’s a fire in me that sings of roads, of chance, of friends not yet met. I want to shape a tale of my own, not merely tread the one they laid for me. »

A silence passed between them—neither awkward nor forced, just the space where truth sat.

« Then let’s make a deal, » Jaimie said. He extended his hand, palm open. « We write our own story. No scripts. No maps. Just us, making it up as we go. »

Yseut laid her hand in his.

« A pact, then. For freedom, and the stories yet to be written. »

« To freedom, » Jaimie echoed, grinning again. « And maybe—just maybe—something worth singing about. »

They believed it, as youth always does. Believed in choice, in vow, in the shape of a life untouched by fate. But some oaths do not bind—they awaken. Some paths, no matter how freely taken, are laid long before the first step falls.

And the Weave remembers.

Their banter meandered down the winding veins of the Lower City, laughter echoing not as noise, but as promise—too soft to be prophecy, too bright to be burden. They did not yet know they were being watched. Not by eyes, but by the world itself.

In those words they traded, jest and jab, the first threads of a legend were being quietly tied. Yet at that hour, they were nothing more than two companions—a bard untested and a sorcerer unshaped. No names sung in taverns. No fates foretold. Just two young souls, raw and restless, shaped more by the dreams they had yet to speak than by anything they had done.

Their parents had tried to guard them—earnestly, fearfully—building fences not of stone, but of love mismeasured. And like all children who outgrow their cages, they bore both guilt and rebellion on their backs.

To the passerby, the closeness might have been mistaken—read as courtship or romantic tension. But I have walked these streets too long to be fooled by such surface gleam. Their bond was older than affection and deeper than blood. Not lovers, but siblings of choice—souls caught in the same river’s pull.

A group of maidens passed, their glances cast like petals on the wind. They lingered upon Jaimie—not with lust, but with the wide-eyed wonder of hearts new to longing. Blushes bloomed, timid greetings floated like dandelion seeds, and none dared approach beyond a glance.

Yseut elbowed him, a spark in her eye.
« The girls gaze your way as though a tale’s begun without them. Should I be jealous, my dear? »

Jaimie returned their smiles with practiced grace—enough charm to honor the moment, but not enough to kindle it further.
« C’mon now, you’ll always be the headline act. No crowd’s worth much without your tunes. »

She rolled her eyes.
« It’s hardly fair, you being half-elf—tall, fine-boned, and far too pretty. They’re quickly taken by your charm. »

At her words, laughter broke from him—but in that motion, his headband slipped, revealing the delicate point of his ear. Too quick, he adjusted it. Too long, his hand lingered—as though pressing down something just awakened. A flicker danced behind his ear: blue, weightless, gone. She said nothing. Or saw nothing. But I have learned—silence is not always ignorance.

The fire of his hair framed his features like a noble’s banner half-forgotten. There was grace in his form, but also grit—the tension of two bloods uneasily braided. He hid the signs, not from shame, but from weariness. One grows tired of being asked which part of oneself is the mask.

« Don’t be daft. You’ve got charm in spades—half this city lights up when you laugh. »

Yseut’s smile, wide as a window thrown open, could have lit a cellar. Her face bore the hallmark joy of her people—cheeked, bright, unafraid of mirth. But beneath it all, there was always a question.

« See? You get all the wide eyes. I’m just… pleasant enough to notice. »

He nudged her gently, the gesture light, but the meaning heavy.
« Nah, Yseut. You’re more than just ‘pleasant’—you’ve got spark. You’ll be the best bard on the Coast, mark my words. »

And here—here was the moment. The moment before belief takes root. I have seen it before. A pause, soft as breath before a song. She may forget this moment, as the young often do. But I felt it root—quiet, unspoken, like spring beneath frost. That is how growth begins: not in grand pronouncements, but in pauses one does not yet understand.

« Bold talk, Jaimie Sutton. I just might hold you to that. »

Her voice held laughter, yes—but behind it, a door barely ajar. A hope not yet named.

« Wouldn’t want it any other way. But I’ve got a surprise for you, songbird. »

Her brow arched.
« Come now, what is this secret you hide? Have you another surprise in store? »

He placed a finger to his lips, drawing mischief in silence.
« A secret it stays, songbird. »

She furrowed her brow, their familiar game rekindled.
« Go on, give us a hint. Is it over by The Wide, or maybe Bloomridge? »

« Nope, not a word from me. You’ll see soon enough. »

And so they walked, neither of them knowing that this idle conversation, this light-footed jest, would be one of the last things they ever said before the turning of the age.

Jaimie extended his hand. Yseut took it without question. There was no ceremony in the act, only trust. Her fingers met his, her heart quickening—not with fear, but with a thrill known only to those who walk beside the unexpected. She knew he was leading her into another of his unspoken ventures. Her kin held her tightly at home, reins drawn short—but with Jaimie, they relented, as if sensing some ancient safety that even they could not name.

Together, they moved—two shadows walking in rhythm—into the deeper flow of the Blood City’s living arteries. Around them, Baldur’s Gate beat its discordant pulse. Merchants bellowed their wares with hands like banners. The ale-slick songs of drunkards clung to the air, half prayer, half profanity. Children darted like fox-spirits between feet, laughter trailing like candle smoke. Rain-washed mud, saltborne wind, and roasting meat mingled in the nose—a scent that only cities know: half hunger, half dream.

« Have those dreams come to trouble you again? » Yseut asked, her voice soft, her concern careful.

Jaimie halted. His eyes dropped, not in shame, but weariness.
“Aye… they have,” he said. His fingers, as they always did in such moments, found the crystal at his throat. It pulsed faintly, as if in answer.

He had been found with that pendant, swaddled in a cloth not spun in any city his parents had ever known. They had loved him fiercely—two souls of earthy kindness, broad of hand and hearth. But he was not theirs, and the Weave had never let him forget it.

« Just last night, » he said, gaze distant, « I had another of those dreams. Felt stranger this time. Wilder. Like nothin’ I’ve ever seen. Saw that sorcerer again, the one surrounded by blue magic, holding a child. »

He did not speak of the elven woman. Not yet. Not of the way her arms had felt like belonging. Not of the language he had never learned but somehow understood. Not of the way her face shimmered when he woke—like starlight on riverglass.

Nor did he speak of the second shimmer.

The one that came late. The one that arrived like an echo after the spell was done. Always blue. Always cold. As if a memory, half a breath behind.

She meant to comfort him. And perhaps, in a way neither understood, she did. I have often wondered if something passed between them then—a ripple, a hum, a recognition not yet earned.

« Mayhap they were your true kin, » Yseut said, laying a hand upon his arm.

Jaimie shook his head.
« I can’t tell me parents, Yseut. It’d break their hearts. »

He bit his lip, a storm behind his eyes. It is a cruel kindness, to be so loved by those who cannot answer the questions one must ask. He longed for what he could not name—and feared the cost of knowing it.

« Your dreams might be a key to your past, Jaimie. Mayhap they are showing you a part of who you truly are. »

He sighed, not from disbelief, but from distance.
« Maybe. But for now, they’re just dreams. Nothing more. »

But dreams, I have found, cast long shadows. And shadows know the shape of their source.

The past called to him through veils of sleep. Yet the present offered no answers. He searched the crowds with quiet desperation, hoping—always hoping—that one face might echo his own. But none did.

His powers grew, unbidden. The dreams deepened, calling with a voice that was not quite his own. And somewhere, beyond the veil, a mother still dreamed of the child she had lost—and sent her magic, breath by breath, to find him.

Their conversation drifted to lighter topics as they continued through the streets. Jaimie’s thoughts, however, remained anchored in the realm of his dreams, the images of the sorcerer and the high elf woman etched in his mind like a half-remembered melody.

Yseut’s voice brought him back to the present. « So, where are you taking me today? Another one of your ‘surprises’? »

In Jaimie’s eyes danced a mischievous gleam akin to the play of twilight’s last star. « You’ll see. It’s something special, just for you. »

Through the ceaseless murmur of Baldur’s Gate, Jaimie led her onward. Past the louder veins of the city, he guided her toward a place apart—a quieter hollow nestled within the stone-ribbed chest of the Lower City. This was no grand hall, no stage carved for triumph. It was something rarer: a haven for beginnings.

He had found it alone, some days past. A hidden enclave between the din and the hush, where lanterns flickered gentler and ears were less hungry to judge. Here, voices of all kinds rose not in competition, but in communion—bards with cracked strings, poets with too much feeling and too few words, zealots whose gods barely listened. It was no temple. It was a whisper. And that was why he brought her here.

For Yseut—who bore songs in her blood like lanterns in a cellar—it was not crowds she feared, but exposure. Not rejection, but revelation.

« Look here, my brightest bard, » Jaimie declared, sweeping his arm wide with the theatrical flourish only he could make endearing. « Your stage awaits, all ready for your magic. »

She did not step forward. Her eyes moved like a tide receding, scanning the modest space and its scattered audience—some listening, some not, all real. Her fingers tightened on the neck of her lute. She opened her mouth to speak, but the sound fell back into her chest.

« Truly? But… there are folk here who might actually listen. »

« Aye, that’s the whole point, songbird, » Jaimie answered, voice light with jest but grounded in something firmer. « They’re here to listen—or not. Doesn’t matter. »

She hesitated. So he reached for her hand—gently, not to pull, but to steady. He guided her, step by step, toward the worn planks of that low-slung platform.

« I am not ready, » she murmured. Her fingers trembled, tracing the strings like one might trace the edge of a wound. The stand before her seemed not a stage, but a scale—waiting to weigh her worth.

“What if they do not listen? Or worse—what if they do, and find me wanting?”

This was not the fear of a missed note. No, I have seen this before. This was the fear of being seen and named lesser.

Yseut had stepped beyond her kin’s fence—but fences leave marks. She had grown in a home where music was a pastime, not a path. Where a halfling girl could sing, yes—but only if she returned to the hearth before dusk. Where love was abundant, but freedom was rationed.

« They’ll see a halfling who does not know her place, » she whispered, eyes on the cracked wood. « A girl with her head full of songs and her feet on the wrong road. »

Jaimie dropped to one knee—not in jest, but to level his gaze with hers. His voice lowered, not solemn, but sincere.

« Let ’em think what they want. Me? I see someone with a world in her hands—and the guts to play it. That lute’s like your heart, Yseut—brave, stubborn, and too loud to ignore. »

He helped her adjust the strings, hands deft but unhurried. The gesture was not instruction—it was reminder.

« Pretend it’s just us, like always. Nothin’ different about this spot but the planks. »

And it was true. In the great ledger of destiny, some names are carved in gold. But others—quieter ones—are written in music. And I tell you this: it is the quieter ones who often endure.

Her fingers hovered above the strings, trembling—not from cold, nor from doubt alone, but as though the lute had grown heavy with all that had been left unsung. Around her, the quiet stirred. Not silence, but listening.

She glanced at the gathered souls—wanderers, workers, watchers. No grand court, no temple. Yet her heart beat like a war drum. Then came the first note—slight, uncertain—and the Weave, though unseen, listened too. With each pluck, her hands remembered, her breath loosened. The chords moved through her not as skill, but as truth remembered. The music was not hers—it was her.

Unseen, a breeze touched the corner of her shawl. Not the breath of the harbor nor the soot-slick wind of the market, but something older, softer—laced with the scent of twilight blossoms and damp earth. The air shimmered, faint as dew catching the moon, and a few nearby turned, heads tilting as if hearing a sound tucked behind the world. A harmony without source.

She did not see. She only played.

The tension melted, and the song took her. Here, in melody, she was not a daughter, not a bride-to-be, not a halfling told her place by hearthbound voices. She was only Yseut. Each note a step beyond the path drawn for her. Each chord a refusal whispered, not shouted. Not rebellion. Not anger. But something quieter—and far more enduring.

Then, she sang.

In a garden, hidden deep, where shadows softly speak,
A bird perched in a golden cage under skies so clear and bleak.
Her song is sweet, yet she yearns for more, for skies where she can soar,
Above the bars, beyond the clouds, to see the world and explore.

Oh, fly high, little bird, spread your wings wide.
The sky is calling, the wind’s gentle, take the dawn’s ride.

Each morning, she greets the day, her tune rising to the sky,
Dreaming of unseen lands afar, beneath vast, open skies.
In her heart, a silent hope, in her eyes, a tiny gleam,
Each melody is a hidden wish to chase her far-off dream.

Oh, fly high, little bird, spread your wings wide.
The sky is calling, the wind’s gentle, take the dawn’s ride.

Then came the day, the cage swung open, its door inviting wide,
With a heart pounding with hope, she leapt into her stride.
She soared high into the blue, her voice ringing loud and free,
Her song now a chant of freedom, for all the world to see.

Oh, fly high, little bird, spread your wings wide.
The sky is calling, the wind’s gentle, take the dawn’s ride.

Listen well, kind souls, to the tale of a bird who found her way,
We all have cages to escape and dreams for which we pray.
May you find the courage to soar in skies vast and true,
Sing your song, chase your dreams, to your heart be true.

Oh, fly high, little bird, spread your wings wide,
The sky is calling, the wind’s gentle, take the dawn’s ride.

The final note hung in the air—like mist, like memory. She lifted her eyes, and the last threads of music seemed to cling to her fingertips.

From where he stood, Jaimie beheld her not as the girl who once followed him through sun-dappled alleys, nor the childhood companion who once tripped over tavern barrels and rhymed nonsense for coin. No. She was a bard now. Not because she had trained. But because the song had claimed her.

His hands met in applause—sharp, proud, and louder than the space required. His grin stretched, wide and irreverent, as though he alone had known the storm she had held at bay.

« Told you, didn’t I? You were made for this, » he declared.

Yseut stood still, caught between disbelief and release. The crowd had not roared. But one voice had answered. And for now, that was enough.

« I… I suppose I have done it, haven’t I? » she whispered. The words came soft, as though afraid to break what had just been born.

As their laughter faded into the quiet of the night, a truth lingered—one I have learned through long and weary years. Their tale, like so many woven through the cobbled streets of Baldur’s Gate, is not theirs alone, but belongs to all who tread the lands of Faerûn—be they of dwarf, halfling, or elven kind. For no matter our blood or our lineage, we are bound by the same hopes, the same eternal struggles betwixt love and hate, courage and fear.

Jaimie and Yseut, still young and untouched by the weight of destiny, walked that path with the lightness of youth, unaware of how quickly fate can shift its winds in this city of shadows.  Yet it is this very contradiction within us—this dance of light and shadow—that shapes who we are.

This tale is a reflection of that shared essence, the common threads that bind us all. No matter our origins—beneath elven boughs, within dwarven halls, or amidst human cities—we each strive for the same: to be brave, to stumble, to laugh, and to weep.

As Jaimie and Yseut set forth on their journey, they bear not only their own fates, but the weight of countless lives entwined with their own. It is a journey woven with more than mere adventure—a path that will reveal, with every step, what it truly means to live. For in the hearts of those who wander, there lies the quiet yearning to know themselves and the world beyond, to seek the truths that stir beneath the surface of every tale. And sometimes, when such hearts sing in unison, the Weave itself listens.