Stone

Writer's Blog for Stone WRA+MG ✦ Ramiaell ✦ Shal'dorei Assassin ✧ Bodyguard ✧ Always on Duty -Art by Kyphaz-

[s-culper]

[the-grave-keeper]

Get in the water...

[the-grave-keeper]

𝔇𝔞𝔯𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔤, 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔞𝔯𝔢 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔞𝔱 𝔴𝔞𝔯.

ꜱʟᴏᴡ ᴅᴏᴡɴ, ʙʀᴇᴀᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴇᴘ, ᴅʀᴏᴘ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɢᴜᴀʀᴅ.

ɴᴏ ᴏɴᴇ ɪꜱ ᴄʜᴀꜱɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ʙᴜᴛ ᴍᴇ.

Featuring: @ramiaell

[murder-me-with-ink]

Commission finished for @lukel-sunshadow I really enjoyed this dress attire o3o I love stars themes xDDD

[ramiaell]

Sometimes he smiles, it’s rare but it’s a thing.

[ramiaell]

[the-grave-keeper]

Keltariel | The Siren

Art by Megacuteviper

[robasarel]

[the-grave-keeper]

Look at him, he's so pretty. I love this! Thank you @robasarel !

[s-culper]

[nightquotes]

[ramiaell]

August DWC 2025

Day 4: Direction/Languish

Stone with yet another man, the sight curdled in his stomach like rot. The elf’s hand laying light on Stone’s arm, his voice hushed, coaxing, soft. Stone let it happen. That softness was the problem.

It had begun on the mission to destroy L’Mare. Death pressed in from every side, and then Keltariel had screamed STOP. And all of Booty Bay within earshot had obeyed. Not just obeyed, collapsed. Every man and woman broken open, stripped bare, drunk on him. Undone by a siren’s call, bent like dogs toward a master. Olave had seen it in their eyes, felt it even in himself for the barest instant, an urge to kneel, to serve, to drown in the elf's honeyed voice. Disgust followed, bile and fury choking him cold. Minutes later, everyone else had been freed. Everyone's names spoken, everyone... but Stone''s.

Olave had not known why, only what he saw. Stone, for the last several nights leading up to this had been treating Keltariel like he was the the only thing on this planet that mattered to him. Staying at his side every second he remained injured as he tended to his wounds in ways a healer should have tended to him. Not the Commander himself. Which told him that Stone had been under this Siren's spell since before they'd been called in.

He had tried to cut it clean, to strike the damn siren down before the rot spread. But the others stopped him. And Stone had turned on him, warning, promising death if Olave touched the elf. Promising him in the same tone he'd promised he'd end him if ever spilled the blood of an innocent under his watch.

That moment had festered. The one man who could face him, match him, surpass him choosing softness. Choosing that. So Olave had gone still. Silent. Watching. Waiting. Stone had done this before. Six years ago with that pretty elf of white hair who sang to the masses. It had been the same softness. With his smile, with his hands, with his lies of comfort and forever. Olave had solved that problem. Quiet. Surgical. He made sure he disappeared, and Stone hardened into what he was meant to be once more in his absence. Strong. Unyielding. Clean. He had never learned who had cut away his weakness. That was as it should be.

But now there was another. D’Astra’s brat. A siren swaddled in prettiness and patience by the Lumenstone tailor, whispering poison into Stone’s ear. A sickness. A weakness. And Stone still allowed it. Olave thought in inevitabilities. Weakness was infection. Softness was decay. You did not rage against infection, you cut it out. Keltariel was a wound that would fester if ignored. Olave would not ignore it.

He did not envy. He did not pity. He despised. He catalogued. He planned. Every flaw, every misstep, every opening in the elf’s careful facade. The siren was soft, and softness always cracked. Keltariel could not be permitted to weaken Stone. Could not be allowed to lace his voice with care, to tangle him in affection, to make Stone less. He would not permit it.

When the time came, Olave would strike. Clean. Ruthless. Final.

Stone was the only one who mattered. The only one who understood precision. Who understood the discipline of the predator. He was not meant for softness. He was not meant for warmth. And Olave would ensure he stayed that way.

Keltariel was softness. Softness was rot. And rot would be cut away.

@daily-writing-challenge @the-grave-keeper

[the-grave-keeper]

August DWC 2025

Day 3: Twitterpated/Primal

I'd seen people in love - truly in love. The joy that moved with them, the way things around them softened as if their companionship, their laughter was enough to transform any space into one of warmth. The way their eyes always sought their partners not for approval but to communicate something no one else could hear. That silent language that came with comfort and affection and devotion.  

I'd never had that kind of connection, I had never asked for it. With all that I had done, with all that I had endured, I was content to just have the silence. The peace that came with the quiet of a solitary life, yet one where I could still be gentle. Where my hands could help to carry the burdens that were too heavy for others - where I did not need to hurt or command anyone. I could just be a silent witness to their grief as I knew it well, I knew how to navigate all the roads though it. I could help others stumble down that path with compassion until they were strong enough to walk on their own. And then I would return to the beginning, to assist the next person who looked at me like their world had been shattered - who was lost on how to move forward. 

Maybe this was my self imposed penance, to witness the aftermath of death, to become its companion and to learn how to help those who had been left behind. 

But when I saw those wintry eyes, the distance they held, the brokenness…I found I couldn't look away. I could not simply set him down the path and let him carry it. I didn't know why it hit me so hard, but that pain on his face was just one I couldn't tolerate. Not after everything he'd once done for me. I owed him my life, the peace I had managed to find, and I knew I wanted to do everything I could to help ease that suffering. Even if it was just ensuring that he ate. Or offering him a quiet place to sit and listen to the breeze over the lake. Or a warm cup of coffee. I would share what I had if it meant he would not…look at the world like that anymore. 

I do not know when him looking at me started to make me feel like he was seeing me and not simply looking for a lifeline. When looking back at him became something I did with a fondness that surpassed simple compassion. When I started wanting to make him smile or when I had to start hiding my own because being with him was starting to make me feel things I had no name for, had no experience with.

It was only after many weeks, after he had come for me when I thought no one would, after I had been run through with that unforgiving steel and was bleeding out on a sandy stretch of beach that I realized…maybe what I felt went beyond friendship. Maybe it was the way those cool eyes had no longer been broken when they looked at me, but fierce, how he had touched my face and told me to stay with him that solidified that feeling. Even if I still certainly wanted to be his friend, maybe I cared more for him than friends did. 

It was how his eyes had found mine, how they stripped all the weight of the world away, how the very act of looking at me touched something deep inside my heart that had been born restless - incomplete and bitter for it, perhaps. They brought something to life that I may never have known was missing but had always expected was not present…until he looked at me like that. 

Until I realized that I might love him more than the silence.

@daily-writing-challenge mentions of @ramiaell

[the-grave-keeper]

August DWC 2025

Day 2: Layer/Wither

When he had touched it before it had been out of pure and unadulterated desperation. The artery in the Captain's neck had been flayed open, Ramiaell had been bleeding on the wooden decks, the Quartermaster had pulled out the explosive that would have sent them all to hell. He hadn't even known what he was doing, only that fear and rage had cut through the layers of him, down to the core where that song lived and had come out in such a way that he had stilled everyone in hearing distance. 

“STOP”. And they had. Everyone. Except him. And Ramiaell. 

He'd told them the night before, as they all stood around that war table, making plans for the next day that he could not do what his mother had been able to. He was not her, he'd very likely never be her and that touch alone was his only conduit to control. He could tell that it had come as somewhat of a surprise to several of them, but they'd hidden it well. It hadn't affected him because…he'd never known her, had never seen her in action like a few of them had. He did not understand the entirety of the shoes that he'd never be able to fill. 

Until it came out. Until he saw with his own eyes why so many had respected her and reserved a healthy dose of fear for Velluria D’Astra. Why Alphonse L’Mare had come for him, what he thought he'd gain with him under his thumb. And maybe he would have found a way to break Keltariel like no one else had before, to shatter him completely. He'd never know, because L’Mare was dead and he was no closer to understanding how to command his gift than he had been before. 

So he started to try, by himself, in the quiet hours in his shop with the spiders and the occasional moth. Simple commands, to be still or to move - nothing to hurt them, nothing impossible or outside the normalities of their existence. Occasionally it would work, but more often than not he would turn in frustration after an hour of staring at a spider and telling it to move, and return to his clay and paints and silence. Things that just were, that did not need command to be. 

He didn't know how he was going to learn to master this because he had no teacher, no understanding of where it came from - nothing. He just knew that it was there, that it was possible, and that he was his mother's son in one sure way: stubbornness.

@daily-writing-challenge

[ramiaell]

August DWC 2025

Day Two – Wither/Layer

The hills gave him distance enough to see Withermore whole. Dreadmist Peak rose above the province of Redridge, its slopes painted in the soil’s muted crimson, the forests dark as spilled ink beneath the fading light. Mist pooled in the valleys, rising and curling like restless ghosts, just as it always did in morning and evening. Below, the river shone silver as it cut along the mountainside, carving its quiet path toward the world beyond.

The estate itself stood stark against it all, walls sharp and bare, windows dim. The manor was no home in the ordinary sense. Its halls had been as spare as its master: dark colors, dim lights, decorations few and severe. Purple-black plants curling from stone urns had been the only splashes of life. Still, Stone had come to know those walls, to find order and discipline within them, to serve. To endure.

His hand rested against the revolver on his hip, the custom made six-shot Cade Highflare had given him. The weight was familiar now and grounding for him in this moment. The memory stirred sharp and clear. Smoke in the air, the world raw with victory and loss but at last there was calm over Withermore. Cade’s voice steady as he'd come to know it reflected within his memory. "You came here a sellsword, nothing more. But honor guides you more than coin, and in the depths with my father you turned the tide. Without you, we would not have stood triumphant. From this day, you are Stone the Blood Breaker. And this," the revolver pressed into his hand now, "...may it serve you well, just as you serve us."

Stone had said nothing then as the title, the weapon, the weight of it all had been enough. Much like the weight of coming to know each of Vynlorin's Elite. They had each earned a place within Stone's loyalties without asking or trying but simply as comrades in arms despite how estranged they each were. It was nothing like it had been of his life in Suramar with his own Elite forces and in many ways he struggled while here. But he'd learned to adapt and accept them each for who they were and the silences they each carried much like his own.

Now, watching from afar, he let it settle into him again. The layers of armor he had worn during his time in Withermore, the silence he had cultivated, the walls mirrored in Vynlorin and in every servant of the house for that matter. Layers upon layers, as sharp as the mountains themselves. And yet... fondness. For Cade, for Roma, For Sin, Aleron and even Elexie. For those mountain people who had not trusted him, who had looked at him always as an outsider, but who, in the end, had allowed him to protect them. Fondness for the harshness that had made him harder as he was a stranger in a strange land, and for the rare warmth that had softened him too found in Elexie's morning coffee's and gentle talks.

But he had chosen to leave. To trade certainty for potential companionship. To let this chapter wither so another might grow.

Stone drew a slow breath, mist curling low across the slopes. He let his hand fall from the revolver. The revolver was his still. The title was his still. But the estate in Dreadmist peak, the mountains, the barony, they were all no longer his to protect as he'd made the choice to try another life.

He turned from Withermore’s calm quiet silhouette on the peak and walked into the gathering night with the very last of his things, carrying both the weight of its memory and the warmth of what lay ahead.

((A small ode to Stone's time within Withermore and the people he'd come to know there as he sadly parted ways with them after choosing his own path in life. A story I greatly enjoyed writing and rping live in game over the course of this year. Good people and great rp, my thanks to them all for letting Stone's story continue on with them.))

@daily-writing-challenge @shandaumath

[quotefeeling]

“There is still time to change the road you’re on.”

— Led Zeppelin

[ramiaell]

August DWC 2025

Day One – Calculate

Stone read the message twice before sending it. He didn’t waste words or explain more than was necessary. - Keltariel wants answers. His mother’s death. Can you look into it? -

He hesitated only a moment longer, thumb hovering. The truth was he’d wanted to do this for years ever since the details of Velluria’s death had been delivered to him too neatly, too quickly, wrapped in the sort of silence that only money and fear could buy. But there had always been other battles, louder needs with Sivandris at the time that kept him from having the time to look into it.

Now, Keltariel himself had asked. Which meant now it mattered more than anything. The message blinked away, delivered. He leaned back in the comfort of that wooden chair that had somehow become his chair in these passing months, already turning over contingencies. Jacques would know how to move, he always had. In this, he could trust.

The stepfather, Erux Tenall and some lesser lord once upon a time within Suramar. Jacques had started where he always did, with people who once warmed Erux’s bed. Lovers never forgot, and the bitter ones talked more than they realized.

Tonight it was a shal'dorei woman who’d grown out of the gilded haze of her youth but still carried its perfume. She liked attention, needed it really, and Jacques was more than happy to oblige. A crooked smile here, a subtle brush of fingers against the back of her hand as he poured her wine. He let her feel seen, radiant, as though she was the only star in the tavern.

“You know,” Jacques murmured, leaning close enough that his breath ghosted her ear, “I’ve always admired your taste. But him? Lord Tenall? You can’t tell me that was anything but boredom.”

She laughed, bright and pleased, covering her lips with her hand. “Boredom pays well,” she teased, eyes flashing.

Hook, line and sinker Jacques thought keeping his smile lazy. “Ah'yeah, but men like him don’t just pay with coin, do they? They pay with words. Complaints. Little truths they can’t keep down when the wine is warm and the bed warmer.”

Her expression flickered. For a moment, Jacques thought she might shut down, but she tilted her chin instead as pride won out. “He did complain now and then a long while back,” she said, almost coyly. “About that boy… Always sneering. Couldn’t stand the sight of him. Said he was a reminder of what was owed to him and denied.”

Jacques feigned ignorance, widening his eyes just enough. “Denied? Surely a man like Erux never lacked anything.”

“He lacked an heir,” she corrected, voice dropping as if the shadows were listening. “He said as much more than once. That Velluria made a fool of him. That her boy was no blood of his, and she would pay for that insult.” Her words were bitter, spite tangled with memory. Jacques didn’t need to push further. He only tipped his glass to her, eyes half-lidded in admiration. “See? I knew you had better taste than him mon chérie. You remember the details.” She blushed at that, laughter spilling, the truth already his.

The second source was less glamorous. A former servant from Erux’s household, now a bitter man with dirt under his nails and a chip on his shoulder. He was easier and Jacques knew greed when he saw it, and the jingle of coin loosened his tongue far faster than flirtation.

“You didn’t hear it from me,” the shal'dorei muttered, eyes darting around the darkened alley where Jacques had cornered him. “But he was always raging before she died. Even after she died I heard talk of getting what they deserved. And he poured money into the Queen’s schemes too once she passed, kept her fat with gold even when she starved the rest of us.” Jacques tilted his head, studying him like a cat might study a mouse. “And now?”

“Now?” The shal'dorei spat. “He rots in his manor. Doesn’t leave, not once. Hires mercs, good ones too, pays ‘em enough to keep their mouths shut and their blades sharp. Even if Suramar's free and changed he knows he’s got enemies and debts waiting to be called. That's why I left as soon as I could.”

Jacques smiled faintly. “Debts have a way of catching up, don’t they?”

The servant paled at the tone, clearly eager to be dismissed. Jacques pressed a coin into his palm and sent him scurrying.

Later, when the city quieted and the moon hung high, Jacques left the taverns and alleys behind. The Tenall estate loomed on the distant edge of Suramar, half-buried in shadow. He didn’t go near the gates though as he wasn’t that foolish. Instead, he climbed to the rocky rise overlooking the valley, settled in the grass, and let his rifle rest steady against his shoulder.

Through the scope, the picture sharpened. Lanterns patrolling the walls. Men armored, armed, and far too disciplined to be local guard rabble. A rotation every twenty minutes. The gates themselves fortified with reinforced metal keeping eyes from peering inside.

Jacques hummed softly under his breath, the sound lost to the wind. Mercenaries indeed, good ones too. Bought loyalty was always temporary, but temporary could last a very long time with enough coin. Erux had planned well, he’d give him that. The man wasn’t just hiding, he was digging in. Jacques lowered the scope, stretching his shoulders before he packed the rifle away again. His smirk was small but certain. Safe behind your walls, hm? Safe for now.

The next day, Jacques leaned back in the chair of a low tavern, the weight of his findings circling like hawks. He twirled his glass idly between his fingers, lips curved with a cigarette low hanging from the corner of them. Erux, bitter and holed up, wrapped in mercenaries no innocent man or elf would keep on payroll. An elf who thought coin could still buy him safety. But Jacques had heard enough. The puzzle wasn’t complete, but the outline was clear. Clear enough to bleed him when the time came. If they wanted answers they'd have to get to the source. Damn Velluria for keeping her secrets so close to her heart.

He flicked open his communicator, thumbs gliding over the surface with practiced ease. -I’ve got something. Best if we meet.-

The glass clinked softly against wood as he set it down. No wall, no mercenary, no coin purse would hold forever. And Jacques knew just where to start tugging to get them inside.

@daily-writing-challenge @the-grave-keeper

[the-grave-keeper]

Doodles ft. @ramiaell.

Stone is too tall. Arrest that man.

[the-grave-keeper]

He really didn't mean to fall asleep...

(Ft. @ramiaell )