Deep in the Green Wilds, where the Byzkus River curves around an ancient hill, stand the ruins of Melera Skeyad, "Melera's Rest" in the old tongue.
The city is old. Older than the Dwelyn, older than the Naruaghin, older than anyone living can say. Its stones are wrong, too smooth, too precisely fitted, made of materials that don't exist in the surrounding jungle. Vines have consumed most of the structures, but enough remains visible to show that this was once a place of importance: temples, plazas, towers that must have risen higher than the canopy.
The Faesong runs strong here. Melera's imprisoned song pools in Melera Skeyad like water in a depression, resonating through the ruins with an intensity that's audible even to those with no magical sensitivity. The air hums. The stones vibrate at frequencies felt in the teeth. Those who stay too long report hearing voices in languages they don't recognize.
Or that's how it was.
Since Surrey Mahaila's sickness began, the song has changed. The harmony that once filled the ruins now carries a discordant note, subtle at first, then impossible to ignore. The vibrations feel wrong. The voices sound hungry. Visitors report headaches, nausea, and a persistent sense that something is watching from the empty doorways.
The Dwelyn believe Melera Skeyad is the epicenter of whatever poisoned the local Faesong. Queen Teyara has sent shamans to investigate. None have returned with answers. Some haven't returned at all. The ruins seem to resist examination: paths loop back on themselves, distances change between measurements, and those who push too deep find themselves expelled at the forest's edge with no memory of how they escaped.
Whatever is happening at Melera Skeyad, it's getting worse. The corruption spreads outward, following the rivers, seeping through the soil. If it isn't stopped, it may eventually reach Lise, and the Dragon's Roost.
But the wrongness carries further than the poison. All Faesong is one current, and a soured pool does not stay a local matter: anything old enough or deep enough in the song feels the discord at a distance, the way a held chord feels a single string pulled flat. None of them can yet say what they are hearing. They know only that one of the song's deep reservoirs has begun to lie—and a reservoir that lies is worse than one cut silent, because a silenced grove is merely dead, while Melera Skeyad still sings, and the song is wrong.
<!-- author-notes GM-true (settled fae/faesong canon): the souring here is the corruption thread, and its origin is the Surrey Mahaila sickness, NOT the Queen of the Forest. The Dwelyn belief that Melera Skeyad is the epicenter is only half-right—it is the densest Faesong reservoir within reach, so the place the discord is felt most strongly, but it soured as the corruption spread to it; it did not start it. The Queen (the apex Faesong-condensation, seated deep in [Amholia Greras](/codex/3484)) SENSES the discord from far off because all Faesong is one current—she does not and cannot cause it; never link her to it causally. The ultimate first cause of the Surrey Mahaila sickness is a deliberate open campaign hook (see creature-surrey-mahaila, which keeps it unresolved). Canon weighting: a soured reservoir is worse than a cut one—a silenced grove is merely dead, but a soured pool still sings, and the song lies. -->