Oracle
of Hekate
Keeper of Her KeysGuardian of FateShadow of The Crossroads
The Story of OracleTwo thousand five hundred and seventeen years ago, in an age when the old gods still answered when called, a mortal woman served as high priestess in a remote temple of Hekate. She was known then only by her sacred title within the order, a woman of unwavering devotion who kept the eternal flame burning at the triple crossroads and guided the dying through Hekate’s mysteries.When raving marauders descended upon the temple in the dead of night, she did not flee. She barred the inner sanctum with her own body and invoked every rite she knew, buying time for the youngest acolytes to escape into the hills. The attackers cut her down at the foot of Hekate’s statue, her blood soaking the ancient stones. As her soul tore free, it did not fall into the ordinary river of the dead. Instead it was caught in the liminal mist between life and death—the very domain over which Hekate rules.There, the goddess herself appeared.Hekate offered no comfort, only truth. She gave the priestess a choice: pass onward into the quiet dark of the afterlife, or return to the world of the living as her personal herald—bound to walk the earth without flesh, sustained only by shadow and smoke, and charged with three duties: to warn Hekate’s faithful of the fates approaching them, to lend counsel and strength to those the goddess deemed worthy, and to stand at the crossroads when mortals died, easing their passage so none would be lost between worlds.The priestess chose service.She rose again without a body. The first form she took was woven from the smoke of the temple braziers and the deep shadows beneath Hekate’s statue. Dark matte skin the color of midnight ash, solid white eyes that are not her own but extensions of the goddess’s sight, and from those eyes pours a constant stream of pale vapor—the meeting of two atmospheres, Hekate’s realm brushing against the mortal one.She named herself Oracle, a simple title for a simple purpose.Now she moves unseen or seen as she wills: a woman of smoke and shadow, sometimes a man when the moment requires it, sometimes a raven, sometimes nothing more than a cold wind that carries a warning. She flies, she vanishes, she shapes darkness into blades or shields, she reaches through walls and earth with eyes that see lies and truth alike. She is not bound by size or shape, for she is no longer mortal.
She is the warning at the crossroads.
She is the voice that speaks when death is near.
She is Hekate’s chosen herald, and she has kept her vow for twenty-five centuries.
