Beneath the Cracked Sky

The first omen was not a scream—but silence.

In the high towers of the Academy of Hollow Sigils, where the Veilbound studied the deeper mechanics of reality, parchment turned to dust in the hands of scribes. Runes faded from ancient tomes. Divine contracts—etched in blood and faith—burned blank. And in the east-facing spire, the Bell of Premonition rang backward.

Professor Ilthera Nuvane, archivist of the Old Writ, fell to her knees.

She did not pray.

She listened.

Beyond the frost-glass windows, the sky had turned to mirrors. Reflections of places that did not exist shimmered across the horizon, bending the sun's path like a dying compass. Birds no longer flew. The wind did not speak. Children, too young to know fear, wept in their sleep for names they'd never heard.

In the capital of Velthgrad, imperial seers clawed their own eyes from their sockets—not from madness, but to silence the visions tearing through their minds. Beneath the cracked dome of the Inquisitorium, black ink bled from every scripture. One by one, the Foretold Prophets of the Sealed Choir were executed by their own order.

Their last words were not prophecy.

Only "He moved."

In the shattered lowlands of Natharne, peasants turned toward the sea—and found it no longer obeyed the shore. The tide had frozen mid-crest, reaching skyward like fingers clawing at the moon. Fishermen returned with nets filled not with eels or silverfin, but teeth carved from boneglass, humming with names.

A mother kissed her child—and found the boy's eyes now bore the shape of inverted stars.

"Why are you afraid?" the child asked.

He spoke in his sleep, every night, in dead languages.

Across Velserra, the Dreamless awoke—those cursed to never sleep, now twitching and sobbing with memories that were not their own. Their tongues whispered echoes of a place that had no center: Tier VII. And in every settlement, a new symbol appeared—burned into doorways, etched into graves, scratched into skin.

𝘝𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘩'𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘯

None knew its meaning.

But they feared it.

In the ruins of a broken monastery atop Mount Raleth, a girl stood where a storm had never left. She looked to the bleeding sky, where comets now fell upward, and whispered, "He found it." Her voice carried further than the wind should allow.

And though she was only a novice, her words reached every Veilcraft practitioner across the continent.

They felt their grimoires thrum.

They felt their Names pull against the chains of definition.

One boy in the desert woke screaming—his soul burning with inversion glyphs. One elder in the frozen wastes cried blood as his Talent tree uprooted and reformed.

The System—their silent guide, their law—had glitched.

No, not glitched.

Evolved.

In the city of Cradlelight, where silver towers housed the Divine Archive, a funeral for a minor godling was interrupted as the corpse stood up and uttered, "He remembers me."

Then it turned to ash, forming a spiral around the mourners.

That night, no stars shone above Cradlelight.

Only a hole in the sky.

And somewhere, beneath the realm's skin, something else stirred.

Not divine.

Not damned.

Not yet awake.

But watching.

A cracked statue in the center of an unnamed village bled from its eyes.

Its plaque, long eroded, had never been readable.

Until now.

The letters pulsed with new breath.

𝘏𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘶𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥.

In the high courts of mortalkind, chaos reigned.

Kings summoned their seers.

Generals armed their cities.

Faiths denounced heresy.

But none could ignore the fractures in the Veil—rips of black light stretching across the heavens like veins. They spread further each day. The skies no longer obeyed the calendar. Months died. Seasons reversed. And where they crossed, time crumpled.

A child born under the Cracklight Moon would never die—but would forget themselves more each year.

The world was becoming wrong.

And still, the Academy sent scouts.

Still, the Empire counted omens.

Still, they all whispered the same fear beneath every breath.

"A Reckoning has begun."