These are 2 example Awakenings to the Acanthus path
Ancient souls reborn, Acanthus may tear old burdens away with their Watchtower’s thorns — but new duties beckon, written into Time and Fate made visible in Arcadia’s thorns and monsters. Before Awakening a Witch thought she was powerless, shackled by family, the state, poverty, unconfronted sins, addictions — the iron-plated road of a predictable life, where pain answers any deviation.
Every Sleeper walks in lockstep with karma imposed by the Lie, but before they Awakened, Acanthus felt particularly confined. They yearned to escape the way we all do after the hundredth blow from a bully, or the thousandth day at a desk. We dream of a different way; they jump from predetermined roads, into the unknown.
Witches start by breaking patterns, rebelling against destiny with strange choices. He strays from his usual pub and takes a stranger home; he’s never been with another man. The nameless lover leaves a messy bed and a poem.
Behind glass and steel in another city, a woman’s laptop chimes with another task; her phone trembles reminders. She throws them both out an office window and walks away, obeying an impulse she can’t name. She doesn’t wait to be fired, and discards the box of possessions security hands her in the hallway.
They see the secret rhythms of their lives, and refuse to dance to the beat. When you don’t do what life expects of you, a stranger world reveals itself.
He takes his lover’s poem as a clue, and follows it to an unmapped forest.
She sells her condo to get by and moves back to her dead mother’s house, ramshackle and alone in the industrial barrens.
Nascent Witches find hidden glades and impossible rooms, stone circles and straw dolls.
Strange places, then strangers. The lover doesn’t remember him. He doesn’t remember anything, and carries more poems, in his handwriting, stuffed into the pockets of an expensive coat. She knows squatters share the house, but she only sees a retreating boot or slamming door. Sometimes they leave her presents: money, fine food, and those strange straw dolls. Sometimes they leave bloody footprints.
These Mysteries could spin out for a lifetime, drowning failed Acanthus in the consequences of old lives rejected and new ones never fully lived. Unless they chase the truth they’ll either die alone, live ragged lives of fear and delusion, or penetrate the hidden world just enough to enslave themselves to its monsters.
The Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn only opens to those who freely enter. You can never get to the thorns by running away. If they chase the first Mystery over the threshold — if they catch unseen strangers, or solve the amnesiac lover’s riddle — secret woods flower into endless, bramble-edged paths and the old house sprouts a thousand new dusty rooms.
Ancient mages wrote of a Watchtower dominated by twisted, vine-corrupted woods. Modern Awakened tear through hoarders’ houses and factories filled with rusty, collapsed equipment. Mist and smoke flow across it all. It’s unfinished business and unborn potential; a Witch shoves it aside to confront Arcadia.
Arcadia’s fairy lords are living forces of destiny. Don’t drink or eat what they offer. Don’t fall in love or lash out from hate, because you’ll trade your destiny for theirs. There are no trivial acts in the Watchtower of Fate and Time. His lover was once a fairy’s slave. What will he give up to win his memory back? Her house is a fairy citadel. If she accepts the crown, her invisible squatters reveal themselves as servants.
They’re never simple temptations with straightforward best answers, though some enslave a soul to the Fae, making them a bit worse than the rest. Nevertheless, every decision has consequences. He writes his lost love a poem, but gives him a new name: his own. As one person, they return to the world. She smashes the crown, and when the fairy house collapses, makes enemies of its former residents. She carves a new name on the last wall standing, denying her legacy in full.