No one remembers the sound.
Not the sound of footsteps.
Not the creak of old wood.
Not even the screams.
What was forgotten...
was the sound of the break.
The break in reality.
They say it was silent — like a breath drowned in the dark.
But some, the old ones, the ones who live near the edges of what should not be remembered,
they still feel the echo.
A shiver in the veins when the sky is too quiet.
A pressure in the ears when the moon vanishes without a cloud.
It's the Veil, they whisper.
It pulses. It breathes.
And it's weakening.
Kaelyndra — the sacred tree, rooted between worlds — no longer sings as it once did.
Its branches touch bending realities.
And when its leaves fall, they never reach the ground.
They vanish.
Swallowed by an ancient silence made of everything that was never meant to return.
---
Three names.
Three presences.
Three paths that were never meant to cross.
But the Veil has already chosen.
And the Inverse Shadow waits.
Not with hunger.
Not with haste.
Only with certainty.
Because something between the veil and the shadow does not belong to either.
Something forgotten... or perhaps, hidden.
Something that walks.
And it is waking up.