There was never a time when the Wound did not exist.
There was only a time when it was smaller.
Before Elyndor.
Before the empire.
Before the concept of sky finished inventing itself—
there was a place where something looked at nothing
and felt lonely.
That loneliness was the first cut.
The Wound is not a hole in the world.
It is the moment the world realized it was alone
and tried to fold itself inside out
to find the thing it was missing.
Everything that has ever fallen through—
armies, cities, gods, childhoods—
is still falling.
If you press your ear to the obsidian at Greyspire, you can hear them.
SFX: sssshhhhh— distant screams rising, falling, rising, falling… like breathing.
The Wound does not want to destroy reality.
It wants to hug it until there's no difference between inside and outside.
Until everything is warm
and dark
and together again.
That is its love language.
House Voss — The Family That Married the Cut
The first Voss was not human.
His name has been erased so thoroughly
that even the Abyss flinches to remember it.
He was the only creature to ever climb back up the Wound after falling in.
He came out a thousand years later
carrying a child made of his own shadow
and a bargain carved on the inside of his skin
in letters that moved when you tried to read them.
The bargain was simple:
"Keep the Wound asleep.
Feed it one heart's worth of your bloodline every generation.
In return, we will let the world stay separate a little longer."
Every Voss since has been born with the bargain tattooed across their ribs—
letters crawling, rearranging, whispering.
When a Voss dies, the letters migrate to the heir,
burrowing under the skin like eager parasites.
Kael's letters have been glowing violet since the fall of the capital.
They spell a new sentence now.
One letter per mile.
So far it reads:
THANK
YOU
FOR
COMING
HOME
SFX: thm… thm… thm… (letters pulsing under skin)
The Journey Becomes Unraveling
They have abandoned the road.
The highway twisted sometime after midnight—
looping back on itself in the shape of a noose.
Travelers who stay on it are found days later,
walking in perfect circles,
mouths sewn shut with their own shadows,
eyes replaced by tiny violet stars.
So the trio walks across the Glass Plains instead—
where no road has ever been allowed.
The obsidian here is warm.
It pulses.
Sometimes it shows reflections from tomorrow:
Veyra with her throat opened in a red smile.
Seraphine unmaking herself thread by thread.
Kael kneeling in the Wound, arms spread,
shadow wings eclipsing the sun.
The reflections bleed if stared at too long.
Nightfall: The Stars Descend
The stars don't fall.
They descend.
Lowering themselves on threads of black light
until they hover just above the glass,
close enough to touch.
Each star is an eye.
Each eye cries a single black tear that never reaches the ground.
Veyra tried to stab one.
Wrathbinder passed through and came out wrapped in her own intestines.
The intestines were still attached.
She laughed until she coughed blood.
Then casually tucked them back in.
SFX: schlkk… squelch… clink of chains.
Seraphine no longer walks.
She floats an inch above the surface,
leaving footprints shaped like absence.
Grass grows in those voids—
grass with teeth
that sings lullabies in Queen Elyra's voice.
Kael's shadow has begun to speak aloud.
Not in his head—aloud.
A second voice, soft.
Alcris at fifteen.
"Almost there, brother.
Just a little farther.
I kept my promise. I jumped.
Now it's your turn."
Sometimes it laughs like their mother.
Sometimes it cries like the Wound.
They have not slept in four days.
Sleep is punishment here.
Sleepers wake up inside the glass,
pressed flat like flowers between pages,
still blinking.
On the Fifth Night, the Sky Itself Talks
The clouds twist into a single enormous face—
no mouth,
only Kael's eyes repeated a billion times.
It weeps violet rain that tastes like childhood.
SFX: pit… pat… pit-pat… (rain humming like lullabies)
Veyra drinks it without hesitation.
Her thorns bloom black roses
and she wears them like jewelry.
Seraphine catches the drops in her palms
and writes apologies in the air.
The letters hang glowing, trembling—
until the wind erases them one by one.
Kael lets the rain soak into him.
The crawling script across his ribs completes its message.
THANK
YOU
FOR
COMING
HOME
I MISSED YOU SO MUCH
LET ME HOLD YOU FOREVER
SFX: heartbeat under the skin, louder than his own—thm-thm, thm-thm.
Greyspire Rises
Greyspire appears on the horizon tomorrow.
Or perhaps it has always been there,
and they have only just earned the ability to see it.
The glass beneath their feet has begun to breathe—
slow, patient, enormous.
The Wound smiles with someone else's mouth.
And the family reunion is nearly here