The Telling of Iltani: Ashes and the Unbound Song

A fictional character Telling. Meet Iltani.

I was once a voice cradled in the heart of The Wildwood Witches, where the trees whispered secrets in ancient tongues and the wind carried melodies older than Babylon's ziggurats. There, I was Thornkeeper—second among the spell-weavers, a crafter of songs that could make even the stars pause their dance to listen. My fingers plucked not strings but threads of fate; my voice did not sing but summoned. And oh, how I loved it all—the power, the resonance, the way devotion curled like mist around my throat.

But love is a reckless thing when bound by oaths.

It began with her—a mortal queen draped in lapis and gold, whose laughter rang sweeter than temple bells at dusk. She came to our Grove seeking prophecy, but her eyes held something hungrier than knowledge. They held want. And I? Foolish ember that I was—I answered. Not with words alone, but with forbidden magic: a song spun from desire's own breath, one that promised her heart's deepest yearning without speaking its name aloud.

A broken oath tastes like bitter honey on the tongue.

The Grove does not forgive such trespasses lightly. When they cast me out, it was not with wrath but sorrow—as one mourns a melody that has grown too wild for its own survival. The magic that once answered me turned silent; my voice cracked beneath the weight of exile. An exile walks many paths: some lead to ruin, others to revelation. Mine led me through Babylon's shadowed alleys where sorcerers trade in whispers and masons build altars not to gods but to forgotten things...

And so I found them—The Dark Masons Lodge. Here, among those who have tasted their first curse and lived (though forever changed), I learned a new truth: to break an oath is also to break open. The Lodge does not ask for purity or penitence; it asks only that you wield your scars as tools for shaping what comes next.

Now when I sing—oh yes! Even now!—it is no longer for love or longing alone but something fiercer still: the unmaking before remaking. My music carries echoes of what was lost (the scent of sacred groves) yet hums with darker harmonies (the chant of chisels carving destiny into stone). To be exiled is not merely banishment—it is rebirth into stranger forms than even prophets foresee...

So let this Telling be known:
Iltani is silenced no more.
Instead... she weaves new spells from what was broken."

Visual

Regal Babylonian woman draped in lapis and faded gold, dark hair wound with thread, cracked voice and haunted singer's posture, fingers calloused from plucking fate-threads, scent of perfumed gardens long destroyed.

Faction: The Wildwood Witches · View the Gallery