Lord of the Ended Revel

The Lord of the Ended Revel, the lord of a manor in the Twilight Kingdom, is a nearly seven-foot-tall figure of ambiguous gender presentation. They wear their long hair pulled back behind their neck and a velvet evening jacket that fades from dark blue to pale blue like the evening sky at sunset. Their face is expressionless and almost mask-like. Mortals perceive the Lord’s emotions only as flickers at the edge of their vision; stared at directly, the face seems less like their true appearance than a human mask worn by something older, wilder, and less containable, like an unfinished story.

Lord Endless Ending, once known as Lord Revel Beginning, now known as Lord of the Ended Revel, was the host of an endlessly ending party at their manor in the Twilight Kingdom.

Their Story

Before their revel began, Lord Revel Beginning found a strange lost child beside a bottomless well. The child had no language and did not understand the world around it. Revel was patient and kind, teaching it words, letters, stories, games, and the shapes of familiar things. They brought it books and taught it about trees, roots, leaves, mushrooms, roads, doors, and houses, and helped it learn to grow its own body into buildings and stretch its roots outward.

Revel eventually had to return to their manor and take up their part in the story of the beginning revel. They believed that stories contained a before and an after, and promised the child that they would return after the party began. The child understood that this promise would not be fulfilled. Revel never saw the child again, but the friendship endured in both their memories.

At the height of the revel, a delegation of mortals led by the wizard Thalestria asked Revel to send every mortal visitor through the front door of the House of 27 Rooms. Their gifts and stories failed to persuade the fae lord, so the mortals challenged Revel to a game of poetry and naming. Revel named the estate as it had always been: wide lawns, welcoming lanterns, and a party beginning. Thalestria instead named what it would become: lawns gone askew, lanterns flickering low, and a party ending.

The new name changed both lord and estate. Lord Revel Beginning became Lord Endless Ending, trapped in the moment when the revel had passed its height but had not yet finished. Empty glasses crowded the surfaces, wine lay spilled, candles guttered, and departing guests hovered forever at the edge of leaving. Whenever the mortals’ grandfather clock struck zero, Endless Ending was compelled to send another mortal guest down the road toward the 27th House.

When the prisoner of the 27th House finally released its captive souls and returned home, the revel at last reached its conclusion. The lanterns went dark, the grounds fell silent, and the guests departed. No longer Lord Endless Ending, the fae became the Lord of the Ended Revel. Alone in the upper room of the dark manor, they looked toward the sunset and remembered the child they had befriended before the party began.