I stood my watch at the Eternal Fortress once before, when I was younger. When it came time to choose our Watcher, the six of us, each having been to the City of the Lost before, decided to draw straws. Luckily, I was given the task of preparing them. I do not know why I did not just tell them that I wished to be the Watcher, but nonetheless I ensured that I would be left with the longest straw.
As the sun rose the next day, we broke bread together for what would be the last time until they returned, and I watched them as they left through the Veil. A part of my soul longed to follow them into the land of our dead, to see the graves of our lost brethren once again, but my heart hungered for something else. In the days that followed, I wandered the deathly-quiet halls and yet, never once, felt as though I was alone. It was as if I could feel the ancestors in that place, keeping to their eternal vigil.
By night, I climbed to the roof and looked up at the stars to marvel at their beauty. They shone so brightly and with such mesmerizing brilliance, that I could not even begin to imagine living in a darkness so deep that the memory of them fades. My heart ached for the lost, and it was then that I made my vow to do what I could to leave the world better than I had found it.
Now I keep my second watch, here only by the kindness of strangers, laying on a sheet of linen wrapped around two saplings as my carers bustle around me. I asked them to take me to the roof, so that I could see the stars as my ancestors saw them once before, and I know that they are watching, and I can only hope that they are proud.— A Life Lived,
Garidë a'Zo-Hanyll
Di'Tatyrë Eýdjeri in
Tretalleri, the Eternal Fortress is an imposing stone structure constructed in the ancient past by the
tretâllë to watch over the entrance to the
City of the Lost. Though fashioned in a way such that it could function as a proper defensive fortification, the Eternal Fortress stands empty for much of the time, serving instead as a memorial to the past that the tretâllë wish never to return to. While the
Faith of the Nine does not have an official eschatology, there are apocryphal eschatological texts which feature the Eternal Fortress, positing that at the end of times, when all is lost, the Eternal Fortress will finally be manned again.
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