The four phases
Every site runs the same arc. Phase 1, the ruin sits there infested with hostile undead nesting in the rubble. Phase 2, you reach the Echo Anchor and awaken it, which costs a charge and takes about three seconds of charge-up. Phase 3, the intact building stands and you explore it, fight its garrison and find the treasure. Phase 4 begins the moment you open the treasure chest: the memory de-materialises from the top down over 90 seconds while you run, and when it finishes the ruin is back and the anchor is dead for good.
Tip: The lens is for seeing, the anchor is for doing. That is the whole grammar.
Charges, and why you cannot farm this
An anchor has three charges by default. Each awakening spends one, and claiming the treasure expires the site outright no matter how many are left, leaving it permanently dormant. Loot rolls once per site from a seed derived from the anchor's position, so re-entering gives you the same chests you already emptied, not new ones.
Tip: Config values: anchorMaxCharges and collapseTimerSeconds.
The Echo Lens does three different jobs
Held near a charged ruin, it gives you echo vision: shimmer where the walls stood and a glint on the anchor through solid stone. Used inside a standing memory, it is the escape hatch; the memory collapses back to a ruin at once. Used out in the wild with no site nearby, it summons a wayfinder spirit that drifts toward the nearest ruin for five seconds and tells you the compass direction, which works on ruins you have never visited.
Tip: Only the wayfinder costs a charge, it refills one every ten seconds, and the lens can never break.
The memory cannot be broken, and that is your way out
While a memory stands, none of its blocks can be broken, placed on, or blown up. But the attempts are counted: four sustained attempts by one player against one standing memory corrupt it and end it, dropping you back into the ruin exactly as if you had used the lens. Because the mod is not allowed to use text, this is taught entirely by escalating sound: a rising wool thud at the block, then the whole site flinching with a warden heartbeat from its centre, then the warden's approach swell, then glass shattering.
Tip: Counted attempts have a cooldown, so four of them means several seconds of deliberate hitting.
Wait-it-out timers
Four of the eight sites have a clock that runs while the memory stands and then softly collapses it: the deep mine at 10 minutes, the hedge maze at 12, the old farm and the sunken temple at 14. The other four have no timer at all and end only by treasure, lens or corruption. A slow warning beat starts a minute before the end.
Tip: This clock is not the same as the 90-second Phase 4 escape countdown, which only runs during the collapse.
The garrison
A woken memory spawns its old defenders, themed to the building: the castle's guards wear iron helmets, chainmail and iron boots, its archers carry Power-enchanted bows. Guards get double health and every equipment slot is set to a zero drop chance, so this is never a gear farm. Half the garrison baked into each building is culled at runtime by an even spatial sweep, so rooms empty out evenly and the same site is the same fight every visit.
Tip: Escape with the lens and every guard in the building lingers for ten seconds as a glowing, slowed, still-hostile wisp.
The ghosts
Memories are also full of friendly ghosts: translucent figures that drift around, look about, never fight, cannot be attacked or pushed, and are completely silent. Some loiter near where they lived, as signposts. Others are guides, patrolling a route through the building on a loop. They are there to show you where to go, since nothing is allowed to tell you in words.
Tip: Ghosts are placed inside the building's own template, so where they are is part of the level design.
No reading, ever
There are no lore books, no audio logs and no dialogue anywhere in the mod; the story is in the buildings or it is not told. The collapse countdown used to be a number in the action bar and was deleted for the same reason. Now it is a bell at the start and a heartbeat cadence that tightens as the time runs down.
