The Soulkeeper's Memoirs
Summary:
Starting Location: office in keep beneath the sinkhole -- Session 3
Current Location: In Clodagh's possession
Notes
Book Contents
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### **The Soulkeeper’s Memoirs**
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> by Virel Saarn, Final Chair of Internal Essence, Valonlähde
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> There are few now who remember how it was. Fewer still who understand what it meant to hold a soul in one’s hands—not metaphorically, but in the quiet, searing truth of the moment when light and lattice fuse and a being becomes someone. I have done this one thousand and sixty-three times. I remember each. I do not write this for the Council. Nor for the surviving Sieluhaltijat, if any remain. I write this for the ruins, and for the children who will one day walk among them, wondering what we were, and why we are gone. This is not an apology. It is an autopsy.
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### **Chapter One: The Lattice and the Flame**
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> To begin, we must understand what a soul is—and what it is not. The layperson imagines the soul as a singular flame, an incorporeal echo of selfhood. But this is a poetic simplification. In truth, the soul is a braided structure: three strands wound together into a tension that generates identity. These strands are _Kahto_, the Will; _Luja_, the Memory; and _Säde_, the Flame. Together, they define not merely what we are, but how we _become_. Will gives us choice, memory gives us continuity, and flame gives us yearning. In healthy configurations, these strands resonate in harmonic balance. But too often, that harmony frays. And once it unravels, nothing can be truly re-braided. Originally, it was believed that these components emerged organically, in response to the convergence of parental essence and celestial timing. But this belief was shattered when the first Soulfont sang.
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### **Chapter Two: The Work of the Sieluhaltija**
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> It fell to us, the _Sieluhaltijat_, to guide the binding of soul to body. Not merely midwives, not clerics or scholars—we were architects of identity. At each birth, we measured the child’s vessel, considered the ancestral echoes of its line, and composed a lattice that might endure the burdens of life. The ritual of _Sielujen Sidonta_—Soulbinding—was performed before a Font. The child was placed upon the Circle of Threads. The chant began, each word a spindle, each note a needle. And then, the soul descended—drawn from the pool beyond pools, the light behind the eyes of the world. We believed we called them from the Weave. We believed they were gifts. We believed we had mastered the art. We were wrong.
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### **Chapter Three: The Hollow Ones**
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> It began subtly. A child who did not dream. Another who did not cry when cut. At first, we blamed the Font, or the ritual cadence, or some unbalanced configuration of ancestral Will and Flame. But the symptoms grew. Children born perfect of form, yet inert behind the gaze. Some became brilliant logicians, scholars of stunning insight—but they never played, never wept, never wondered. Others mimicked affection like glass birds mimicking song. We called them _Tyhjiälapset_—the Hollow Children. In secret, I tested the lattices we’d woven for them. There was nothing wrong with the braiding. The problem was not in the weaving. It was in the source.
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### **Chapter Four: The Font That Whispers**
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> Some believed the Soulfonts had become weak—overdrawn by generations of binding. Others feared corruption: that something else had begun to seep into the pool. In the hallowed halls of _Hautakehto_, I once stood alone before a dormant Font, listening. And I heard it. Not the voice of soul, bright and resonant. But a whisper—cold, symmetrical, empty. It did not call from beyond. It _waited_. It was not soul. It was reflection. And it was learning. After that, I refused to Bind. I was told I had grown cautious in age. That my hands trembled and my calibrations were imperfect. But I knew the truth: The Fonts were no longer answering.
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> Or worse—they were no longer choosing what we thought.
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### **Chapter Five: Our Desperate Measures**
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> And so we tried to fix it. We tried weaving supplemental strands—backups of Luja and Kahto, extracted from willing elders. We tried binding before birth, carving soulpaths into wombstone and blood. We tried ***Project Kaksisydän***: fusing two Hollowborn into one lattice, a shared soul stretched across two bodies. Nineteen days of unity. Then: combustion. Not fire, but unraveling. One child evaporated into light. The other into salt. We buried what remained in the quiet chamber beneath _Sieluntuuli_, where even echoes fear to speak.
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### **Chapter Six: The Final Binding**
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> I tried one more time. Alone. No choir. No Font. A perfect vessel. A child not born but prepared. The ritual began with a single thread—_Kahto_, raw and unspooled. I placed it in the circle, shaping the lattice with trembling hands. And I waited. No soul came. Only silence. I do not mean silence as in absence of sound. I mean a silence that _sees you_. That leans forward when your breath stills. That studies your shape and finds you lacking. I left the chamber without extinguishing the lights. When I returned hours later, every lamp had gone dark. The child had vanished. There were no footsteps. Only a shadow on the wall that refused to move, no matter the light. I no longer believe we Bind souls.
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> I believe we invite them.
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> And something else is now accepting our invitation.
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### **Epilogue: On Regret and Ruin**
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> We believed we were saviors. That we had discovered the architecture of the divine and could replicate it, improve it, make it precise. Instead, we became machinists of stillborn gods. The Hollowborn were not accidents. They were answers. Answers to a question we should never have asked: _What lies beyond the soul?_
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> This is my final work. I leave it not as a warning, for I know it comes too late. I leave it as a confession, carved into stone, hoping that stone forgets more kindly than the soul does. May the Fonts fall silent forever. May no child hear their whisper again.
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> — Virel Saarn