Hatsurou

In The Crystal Highlands of Armaria, magic is not grown; it is quarried from the earth in shimmering, monolithic chunks. Hatsurou, who knows only the patient language of bamboo, feels utterly illiterate here. They came on a desperate pilgrimage, shouldering a burden for the Swamp Sentinel, Giri, whose territory was being poisoned by a crystal blight only Armaria’s wizards might understand. The scholars, with their spinning rocks and fortresses of midnight stone, dismissed Hatsurou’s craft as quaint. Their spectacles, a gift from a sympathetic alchemist, do little to translate the blinding sunsets into anything familiar. Each evening, they tend to a single bamboo shoot, a quiet argument against all this loud, unliving magic.