Uruva is not one person so much as the name the circle gives its gatherings. Members arrive in mismatched combinations: a stooped woman with a watchmaker's magnifying lens, a square-shouldered man with a river-shell necklace, a narrow-faced elder whose coat is buttoned with tiny carved birds, and others. Their faces are lined in different ways, but they share an unnerving habit of looking at Fennik as if comparing him to a portrait just out of sight. Their clothes are carefully mended, their hair obsessively groomed, and they carry the clean, sharp smell of crushed juniper and wet stone. They move with the measured caution of people who have learned that every doorway might open onto an old argument. The unexpected detail: several wear bright children's ribbons tied around their wrists, faded but meticulously washed.

The circle is hospitable but not comforting. They offer food and a dry place to sleep, then ask questions that feel like cross-examination. They cherish one another, yet take pleasure in catching one another in small errors. When calm, they are patient listeners; when discussing Fennik, their patience curdles into accusation. Each member is convinced that remembering correctly is a form of love.

The circle first formed around a winter hospice where strangers arrived with no memories and left with borrowed ones. Its original members were caretakers, a traveling storyteller, and a magistrate who had all survived the same plague year. Over generations, others joined, and the group became a loose fellowship of witnesses who preserve accounts that official histories discard. Their bond changed when they encountered Fennik years ago. Each remembers him under a different name and insists he once played a different role in a calamity they call the Unmooring. The oldest member, Uruva, remembers him as a rescuer; another remembers a betrayer; a third swears Fennik was never there at all. Their disagreement has grown bitter enough to split gatherings and end friendships. They are now following rumors of a sealed hospice archive that may contain the first record of Fennik, while trying to keep a former member from destroying it.