Then a child appeared: Liri, daughter of a lampmaker and a woman who’d once been Opala’s apprentice. Liri’s laugh was a bell; her hands were deft with glass. She grew up listening to Opala’s stories and to the slow counting of years—watching the gradual paleness at Opala’s temples, the way the lantern-gardens leaned toward her. Liri had no formal claim yet possessed the sort of faith that is stubborn and quiet. One autumn she approached Opala and pressed her small palm to the crescent beneath the sentinel’s shoulder and sang the simple beginning of the chant. The sigil warmed. Opala felt, across years, the possibility of stepping off a threshold.
The ballroom turns to chaos. Not magic, not armies—just a ghost with a carpenter’s splinter and the patience of a broken kingdom.
In v3.26, some versions include a debug room accessible from the start menu (password often “opala” or found in readme). Use only if stuck.