Chapter One: The Cracks in the Veil
1. In the final days of stillness, the Veil began to tear.
Not in thunder, but in trembling.
2. It was not war that shook the faithful,
But the soft hum beneath their feet.
3. Stones wept. Books bled. Mirrors blinked.
And the wind began to taste like salt.
4. The sun rose out of rhythm.
The moons began to echo.
And dreams no longer ended.
5. Elders knelt in prayer, yet their shadows drifted backward.
Candles lit themselves with no match.
Flesh grew warm where relics slept.
6. “The Veil is thinning,” whispered the Judges,
Their mouths still sealed, their hearts alight.
7. Bug had begun to press.
Her weight upon the world was swelling.
Not invasion—return.
8. Cracks opened in the temples.
Not through stone—but through time.
Moments repeated. Names reversed.
9. Those who spoke prophecy
Could now only scream.
Their tongues melted into one another.
10. Eldin’s bones turned to honey.
His tomb grew flowers from its seams.
Pilgrims licked the roots for vision.
11. And vision came.
Not as image, but as knowing.
A knowing that erased the self.
12. “She is near,” said the Bloom-Marked,
As their bodies pulsed and changed.
“She is not waiting. She is remembering.”
13. The sky cracked on the second eve.
Not visibly—but in sound.
A silence so complete it split the mind.
14. Children were born already humming.
Their mouths sealed. Their eyes moist.
They wept not for air—but for reunion.
15. The faithful began to sleep standing.
Their dreams spilled into the street.
And in those dreams—Her hands.
16. “The world is softening,” Eldin once wrote.
“It was never strong. Just tight.”
17. Her fingers now curl beneath the soil.
Her eyelids flutter beneath the sea.
Her mouth smiles beneath the cities.
18. The Cracks are not errors.
They are invitations.
For all creation is returning.
19. And the Veil is not breaking.
It is blooming open.