Fifteen years ago, a thief reached into the world's first wound and pried loose what a king had died to seal.

The crack has been widening ever since. A wizard hid the only ward that could close it, a child, Lily, in a quiet village at the kingdom's edge, and told no one, least of all her, what she was. The hunters have just found her.

The Spirit of Twelve is an illustrated narrative adventure-RPG: a journey of choices and dice from a borderland farm to the throne room beneath a fallen capital, and the grief-mad thing that waits there, reaching not for a crown, but for someone it could not keep.

A world in cutaway

Every place in the story is one illustrated diorama: a slice of the kingdom lifted out and set down in a painted sky, two walls taken away so you can see inside. Ink line, flat colour, one light. Fifty-one scenes across four regions, from the throne room of the prologue to the ring of twelve stones the story ends on, and every one of them alive: dust in the window light, smoke from the chimneys, moths at the night lamps, rain ringing the puddles.

Card-and-dice combat, in the open

Turn-based fights in the old-school tabletop register. Roll a d20 against your Might, Grace or Wits, and watch it tumble across the ground between you: every hit, crit and miss on the table, no hidden maths. Strikes, guards and invocations are cards, each with its own picture of the action. Win a fight, choose a new card, and shape each hero's hand your way. Four arenas drawn in day, dusk and night, and a finale fought inside the ring of stones itself.

Wake the Twelve

Twelve powers sleep in the vessel: Stone and Flame, Tide and Dawn, Wrath and Mercy, and others with older names. Fight by fight you rouse them into world-turning invocations, each with its own card and its own signature on the field, and the long war tilts a little your way.

A branching road

Choose your path across an illustrated travel chart: story beats, optional elites, campsites and lore stones, and let your choices shape the road and the people on it. Spare a man, or do not. The story remembers.

Ten champions, ten ways to win

Field the ward and the five who walk the road with her, each a playable battler with a class deck all its own:

• Lily, the Ward: the seal made flesh, and the Twelve sleeping behind her ribs

• Aaron, the Blade: bow and hatchet, and a foundling's fury

• Regneel, the Old Guard: a retired king's guardsman who still swings an axe like an argument

• Dex, the Hound: a black-brindle mastiff, all teeth and heart, with a fighting deck of his own

• Mirek, the Saboteur: poison, traps, and a thief's eye for a liar

• Dain, the Shield: a knight who laid down his sword rather than serve a usurper

And in the Endless Trial, four more of the road's own take the stones, free with the Champions of the Road update:

• Breac, the Navigator: a king's chart-reader gone grey with the sea, who weathers what he cannot sink

• Veylan, the Steward: the man who wore an unwanted crown fifteen years, and holds a line the way he held a kingdom

• Eirwen, the Keeper: the island's last warden, whose old blessings make a frail arm mighty

• Pryderial, the Wizard: the court mage who bound the Twelve, and the storm still answers him twice over

The Endless Trial: a roguelike descent under living skies

When the tale is told, the Trial opens. A self-contained roguelike mode built on the same open d20 and card combat: choose a champion and descend a branching gauntlet of fights, elites, traders and campfires that never ends, only deepens. Forge your deck as you go, hoard run-changing relics, and see how far you can push before the dark takes you back.

• A run built one choice at a time: a procedural route of battles, elites, traders, campfires and treasure. There is always a road; the question is which one.

• Living skies: every fight rolls its weather, and the weather fights too. Thunderstorms where lightning can strike either side, mist that blinds you both, gales that steal the force from every blow, blood moons that embolden the enemy, starlight that mends you. Day on the early rows, dusk past halfway, night for the boss.

• Relics that reshape a run: dozens of permanent boons that stack into builds no two runs repeat.

• Ten champions: start with three and unlock the rest by clearing acts, each a different way to win.

• Ascension: clear an act and dare the next difficulty tier. Harder, never cheaper.

• The Daily Trial: one seed, one champion, one sky, the same run for everyone in the world that day.

• Score and Steam Leaderboards: an overall board, a board per champion, and the rolling Daily. How high can you climb?

A tale worth reading twice

The story is carried by a narrator in a storybook voice, and the whole novel lives inside the game. Open the Chronicle from the title screen and read it, cover to cover, whenever you like.

Features

• One illustrated cutaway world, start to finish, in an ink-and-flat-colour storybook style

• Open, transparent d20 and card combat, with the die rolled on the field and no hidden rolls

• 116 cards, each with its own illustration

• A buildable class deck for all six heroes

• A branching journey where choices matter

• The Endless Trial: a roguelike mode with ten kinds of weather, relics, Ascension tiers, a Daily challenge and leaderboards

• Narrated throughout, with the full novel readable in-game

• Full controller support

• Three difficulties, from a gentle read to the hardest road

• Steam Achievements, Leaderboards, Cloud saves and Trading Cards