A bell beneath the earth
Edda hears a bell beneath Payon. Its dead cannot rest: someone has sold their final names. Your companion remembers the buyer's voice.
You wake among the roots of the old roped tree in Payon, where Edda laid you after finding you in the rain, and your companion speaks to you for the first time. Edda, Keeper of the Last Lantern, offers a covenant: carry a soul into the world, uncover the debts left among the dead, and return with the truth.
This is an original campaign inside Asterveil's Ragnarok world. Familiar places become chapters in a journey about borrowed time and the names that survive it.
A witness, not an extra weapon
Each character receives a persistent, named Hearthling soul companion. Other players can see it following you, and its identity stays with your character.
Its roles are rescue, possession, soul aspects, and the campaign's story. It is not a commandable battle pet. Summoner pact spirits and Alchemist homunculi are separate companions with separate roles.
Your companion also speaks: a short remark in a speech bubble over it, never a window you have to close. It comments on each chapter's places, towns it remembers, the night, graves, a rescue and the days of possession. Its epithet gives it one of four temperaments, so no two companions sound quite alike.
Choose how your companion appears
Open the Covenant Journal's companion page to choose an appearance: Spirit, Orb, or Hidden. The choice applies across your account. Its gifts remain in every form: a hidden companion still rescues you and keeps your aspect.
The same page lets you hide other players' companions on your own screen. That setting changes only what you see; it does not affect anyone else.
The keeper's work
Speak to a lantern keeper for chapter turn-ins, soul aspects, supply purchases, and eligible job changes. Progress is not just a number going up: seals ask you to visit their places and overcome their guardians.
The Covenant Journal keeps your current objectives and previous chapter entries together. Completed chapters remain readable.
Read at your own pace
The story leads from Payon's opening into a caravan investigation toward Morroc, and every seal after the first begins with an investigation of its own: people to meet, places to search and records to compare before the guardian will answer. Follow the current objective rather than skipping straight to a distant dungeon.
When a seal opens, the keeper, your companion and you share a short scene. You can skip it, and any lantern keeper's Camp services can replay the seals you have opened under Remember an opened seal. Remembering gives no rewards.
After Iona's introduction, level-10 travelers can also discover Hollowbrook's first investigation, A Place at the Table. Speak to its people, inspect the physical clues, and return to finish the quest.
The Lantern Wall
In Payon's main square, by the Kafra and the bulletin board, stands the Lantern Wall. It names every character on the server who has fallen for the last time, with their class, level and the seal they fell on.
Names are written by default. At the wall you can choose to keep your current character's name off it if it ever falls, and you can unname your account's characters who have already fallen. A lantern still burns for every traveler either way.
Regional lanterns
From Base Level 60, a keeper waits in each of the newer regions: Umbala, Louyang, Ayothaya, Einbech, Kiel Hyre's mansion in Lighthalzen, Rachel and Moscovia. Each has a short local story: start it with the keeper, find a person and a place in town, and return. The keeper thanks you once with soul embers.
Regional chapters are optional, have no fights, and never block a seal. Several can be in progress at once, each with its own journal entry.