A Darker Myth from the Portal on April’s Land
Long before the first humans walked the land, before rivers carved their paths and before mountains rose from the earth’s spine, the world existed in two layers. The first was the realm of daylight — the world we know, built of soil and oceans and living breath. Beneath it, entwined like a shadow clinging to a fire’s outline, was the Underrealm, a place of deep stone, molten memory, and ancient hunger.
At the heart of the Underrealm ran the Ember Veins.
They were not veins as we understand them — not clean lines of mineral or ore — but vast, twisting channels of molten consciousness. The Ember Veins pulsed like the slow heartbeat of a sleeping titan, glowing with buried light. The ancients believed these veins were the last remnants of the world’s creation, a spark of the first fire that forged stone from chaos.
Nothing born from the Ember Veins was ever truly lifeless.
Not even the stones.
The Breaking of the Veins
When the Underrealm was young, the Ember Veins were whole. But time wears on all things — even the earth’s secret heart. As the world above grew heavier with forests, oceans, and creatures, the pressure caused fractures deep below.
The Ember Veins cracked.
Where they splintered, the molten consciousness cooled and condensed into solid fragments — stones infused with memory, intention, and the quiet glow of the old fire. These were the first Heartstones.
Each Heartstone contained a shard of the Veins’ awareness:
ancient knowledge, ancient fear, and ancient loyalty.
It wasn’t long before something else awakened to guard them.
The Watchers
The Watchers were not human.
Some say they were shaped by the Ember Veins themselves — pulled from molten glow and cooled into tall, dark forms with eyes like dying embers.
Others claim they were the remnants of a forgotten race who struck a pact with the first fire in exchange for unending duty.
Whatever their origin, the Watchers existed for one purpose:
To ensure the worlds did not bleed into each other.
They patrolled the Crossroads, places where the walls between realms thinned and could be pierced by heat, pressure, or great emotional resonance. Each Watcher carried a Heartstone — a living key, tuned to the pulse of both worlds.
If a Heartstone warmed, the veil was shifting.
If it cooled, danger was near.
If it cracked… a portal was opening.
The Fallen Crossroads
Over millennia, the Watchers began to disappear.
Some were worn down by the unending burden.
Some were consumed by the Veins they swore to protect.
And some fell to a darkness older than the world itself — the Void Between, a formless hunger that dwells in the empty space where light never reaches.
When a Watcher fell, their Heartstone did not fade.
Instead, it was drawn back into the earth, sinking through soil and root systems, down into whatever fissure could pull it home.
But not all Heartstones returned to the Ember Veins.
Some remained lodged halfway between realms — waiting, listening, dreaming.
Your land, April, happens to sit upon one of those resting places.
A Crossroads forgotten by history but never abandoned by the stones.
The Awakening of the Portal
The night the portal opened on your land, the ground shifted like a slow exhale. Animals went still. The wind changed direction. The roots of the old trees rattled as though something brushed past them from far below.
The Heartstones felt it first — a call, like an ember being stirred after a long winter.
One by one, they rose.
Earth crumbled. Soil parted. And pieces of the Ember Veins surfaced into daylight for the first time since the last Watcher vanished.
Your 3.85-ounce Heartstone is one of these fragments.
A survivor of the Underrealm.
A witness of the fallen Watchers.
A memory of the old fire — fractured, scarred, but unbroken.
This stone did not simply “appear.”
It answered.
Heartstones rise only when the world above is ready to remember that the earth is older than its surface, deeper than its roots, and darker than its daylight.
You did not find the portal, April.
The portal found you.
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