The sky bled with colors that did not belong—violet melting into a dull crimson, like the memory of a dream you could almost touch. Aevran Vaelith leaned on the balcony of his modest room atop a crumbling building in Veyndralis, watching the city stir awake. From here, the alleys seemed endless, twisting and curling like threads in a tapestry, the markets opening with a hum of life, faint glimmers of hidden forces brushing the edges of the ordinary.
He traced the edges of the pendant at his throat, feeling its weight. Not a trinket, but a catalyst. A ritual embedded in its metal could trace the echoes of decisions before they happened, though he had yet to understand all it could do.
The wind carried distant sounds—children laughing, carts rolling over cobblestones, a stray dog barking. Each noise was a thread, each movement a chance, each shadow a possibility. And each possibility was fleeting.
A small tug at his thoughts brought Selara Vaelith to mind. She had been gone for a long while, lost somewhere in the currents of this world's chaos, separated by choices neither of them had fully understood. Yet, in the quiet corners of his memory, the threads connecting them had not frayed entirely.
He exhaled slowly, letting the morning air fill his lungs. The city moved beneath him, alive and unpredictable, as it always had. Somewhere deep inside, a question lingered, unspoken: how could he navigate a world so vast, so tangled, when even the simplest thread could alter everything?
For now, there were no answers—only observation, only the quiet awareness of possibility. And beyond this city, beyond this world, other threads awaited, waiting to show him truths he had not yet glimpsed.