They say Zues sleeps with one eye open.
Deep beneath its mountains and valleys, beneath its rivers, cities, and quiet forgotten villages there lies a latticework of glowing stone. A subterranean map etched long before the first empire rose, before the first child spoke, before the first prayer was ever whispered.
The Veins.
From the surface, they appear as faint streaks of light running through the earth like moonlit scars. But those who have walked the deeper caverns—miners, pilgrims, smugglers—tell of something stranger.
The Veins pulse.They breathe.They shift in colour and rhythm, as if following an ancient heartbeat too vast for human ears.
Some say the Veins are alive.
Everyone knew the Veins existed.No one was allowed to study them.
Yet on the morning of the 6th day of the 16th month, the Veins beneath the capital of Rammaset stirred in a way they had not in generations.
A ripple of blue shimmered through the cobblestones before the sun had fully risen. People woke to find their floors glowing faintly beneath bare feet. Street stones brightened, then dimmed again, as though the world itself had blinked.
Old women crossed themselves.Priests stopped mid-sermon.Children pressed their palms to the floor, giggling as the light tickled their skin.
But the adults did not giggle.
The adults remembered.
The last time the Veins pulsed this strongly, a winter storm swallowed half the northern frontier. Three years later, the Emperor's brother died during a diplomatic visit to Rinnett no wound, no poison, no explanation. Ten years before that, a strange sickness swept across three provinces, leaving entire towns mute for days.
The Veins are usually silent.But when they speak—the world listens.
And today, they spoke.
...
The Markets of Dawn
Vendors setting up their stalls were the first to notice.
A fruit seller—a woman with arms hardened by decades of hauling crates—knelt beside her stall as the Veins flickered beneath the stones. She pressed trembling fingers to the ground.
"Saint of the Flame, protect us," she murmured.
A butcher sharpening his blades frowned. "Again? Three pulses in one month. The world's getting restless."
Restless.
A gentle word for a terrifying truth.
City guards felt the tremor through their boots. One of them who was a fresh recruit no older than sixteen froze mid-step.
"Is it an omen?" he asked.
His captain shot him a sharp look. "Stop talking nonsense. It's just the ground settling."
The boy nodded quickly.
He didn't believe him.
No one did.
The Veins never just settled.
Farther down the road, a pilgrim wrapped in dark robes sank to her knees, whispering fervent prayers to the Night the keeper of secrets, she who sees through darkness. Across from her, a man in flame-orange vestments of the Order of Light muttered a contradictory prayer, declaring the pulse a holy sign of renewal.
Their whispers tangled in the morning air.
The Flame and the Night were two faiths bound to the same glowing stone.
Even on peaceful days, they argued.When the Veins pulsed, they became louder.
The Veins made believers out of everyone.
...
The Scholar's Observation
In the upper district—where windows were polished, walls scrubbed clean, and gardens trimmed into obedient symmetry sat a young scholar with his palm pressed to the floor.
He had felt the pulse before rising from bed. The vibration carried through polished wood, subtle but undeniable, like the echo of a distant strike.
He closed his eyes and whispered the facts he knew.
"Blue pulse. Medium intensity. Directed toward the central lattice. Duration: five seconds."
His hand trembled as he scribbled notes onto parchment.
Blue pulses were rare.
Most Vein activity glowed red with the colour of heat, warning, aggression. But blue?
Blue was colder. Cleaner. Sharper.
Blue meant change on Zues.
He knew better than to speak these thoughts aloud. Scholars of the Imperial Academy were discouraged from romantic interpretations. According to official doctrine, the Veins were geological anomalies which are no different from tides or storms.
He didn't believe that. Few who studied them closely did.
Still, he wrote in careful, clinical script:
Correlation to terraforming cycle uncertain.
But what he meant was:
The world is shifting again.And something or someone was waking.