The sky over Sunspire had a strange tint that afternoon, the kind that never belonged to one season. Tavren noticed it first while tightening the strap on his pack. The light wasn't wrong, exactly. Just stretched. Thin at the edges, like the sun was shining through a memory instead of air.
"Storm coming?" he muttered.
Elaris didn't answer. She stood on the ridge above him, studying the sky with the cautious stillness of someone who'd seen too many things pretending to be storms. Her fingers hovered over the threads that only she and Wenrel truly felt — the quiet vibrations that tied every living thing to the world's pulse. Today, they were trembling like metal cooling too fast.
"It's not weather," she said softly.
Tavren straightened. "Then what is it?"
"An intrusion." Her voice was calm, but her eyes were sharp in that way they got when she was listening to something far away. "The Veil feels thinner. As if something pressed against it from the outside."
"Creature?"
"No." She glanced toward the forest Wenrel had disappeared into earlier. "Something following her."
Tavren exhaled slowly. "She attracts the wrong kind of attention."
"She also survives it," Elaris replied.
He couldn't argue with that.
Below them, the valley stretched wide — glassy marshlands, light reflecting off thin sheets of water, flocks of Skybound Drifters circling lazily overhead. Normally, their movements were graceful, unhurried. Today, their wings beat in low, anxious bursts, each bird keeping more altitude than usual.
Even the creatures felt it.
A faint sound rippled through the valley — not quite a hum, not words, just a pressure. Tavren turned toward it and froze. One of the Titan Trees at the far edge of the valley shivered. That alone was enough to drain the color from his face. Titan Trees didn't move. They just existed, ancient and indifferent.
But this one quaked as if something had brushed its roots from below.
"Elaris," Tavren said, voice tight. "Tell me you felt that."
"I did." Her expression darkened. "That wasn't Sunspire."
A beat passed.
Then another.
The threads around them let out a sharp, metallic ping — almost like a snapped string on an instrument.
Elaris stiffened. "Wenrel."
The air to their left warped, a faint ripple spreading outward like heat rising off sand. Tavren reached for his blade, instinct kicking in before thought. The ripple held steady, then stretched open, thin and vertical like a slit cut through the world.
Something stepped out.
A woman. Or a shadow wearing the rough outline of one. Her silhouette flickered like she was caught between two overlapping forms, neither of them willing to settle. Her steps didn't disturb the grass. Her presence didn't tug at the threads. It slid between them, ignoring the rules entirely.
Elaris whispered one word.
"Impossible."
The shadow-woman tilted her head, studying them with an interest that felt cold, clinical. When she spoke, her voice was layered — soft in the front, echoing underneath, like two versions of her were speaking in slightly different timing.
"You follow the child of the Veil," she said. "Good. She will need you."
Tavren tightened his grip. "Who are you?"
"Not yours to name."
Her answer wasn't hostile. It was simply true in a way Tavren didn't understand.
Elaris took a cautious step forward. "You're not from Aevum."
"No," the shadow-woman said. "But Aevum will feel me soon enough."
The valley pulsed. A low vibration spread through the ground, past their feet, into their bones. The water in the marsh rippled outward in perfect concentric circles, like something deep beneath it had exhaled for the first time in centuries.
The woman looked toward the forest where Wenrel had vanished. Her flickering shape still hadn't settled, and Tavren wasn't sure it ever would.
"She met the Harbinger," the woman said. "He tests the living."
Elaris swallowed. "Wenrel said he—"
"He is not your threat," the woman cut in. "He is a warning."
Another pulse. Stronger. Sharper. The light in the sky thinned again.
The woman stepped back, her outline smearing like charcoal dragged across paper.
"When the world goes quiet," she said, "do not stand still. Silence is never empty."
Then her form collapsed inward, a clean implosion with no sound, leaving only a faint tremble in the air where she had stood.
Tavren stared at the space she left behind. "Elaris… what just happened?"
Elaris didn't answer right away. She pressed her hand into the grass, feeling the threads underneath. They quivered violently, struggling to stabilize.
"Something touched the Veil," she said finally. "Something from far beyond."
She rose and looked toward the forest.
"Wenrel needs us."
Tavren nodded.
And as they set off toward the trees, the sky above them continued to thin — the sun no longer shining through air, but through something stretched too far.
Something that wasn't meant to be touched from the other side.