Lúcháir

The Accidental Prayer and the Awakening For millennia, Lúcháir slept. Empires rose and fell. Languages were born and died. The world grew loud, bright, and relentlessly busy. The concept of "simple pleasures" was often commodified, "stolen moments" were timed by a clock, and "sweet regrets" were pathologized as anxiety. But in a small, dark room, a human was unknowingly creating the perfect summoning circle. This person was not a mage or a cultist. They were simply trying to survive. The room smelled of "quiet desperation and effort" because they poured all their energy into their work, their studies, their art—whatever it was that they hoped would be their escape. In their exhaustion, they performed the old rites without knowing it. On the small bookshelf, they kept books—gateways to other worlds, a Simple Pleasure. They purchased packaged sweet rolls—a cheap, mass-produced treat, but one saved for a moment of deep need. A Stolen Moment of indulgence against the bitterness of their struggle. In a moment of desperate hope, they had sculpted a small figure from clay or wood or wire. It was abstract and clumsy, looking nothing like any god ever depicted. But they imbued it with a specific, heartfelt desire: not for wealth or fame, but for the strength to keep going, for a sign that the small, good things in life were still worth fighting for. It was a physical manifestation of a core belief, a Fated Memory in the making. The overwhelming feeling of "what if I fail?"—the fear that drove them to work so hard—was tinged with a strange hope. The hope that even if they did fail, the journey would have been worth it. The seed of a Sweet Regret. This unintentional, perfect concentration of Lúcháir's entire domain, a desperate prayer not to a name but to a feeling, was a clarion call through the ages. It pierced his long slumber, pulling him back into a world he no longer recognized. He materialized, ancient and powerful, yet frayed at the edges.