The sun rose slowly over the Glades, draping its golden light across the dew-laced foliage.
Where mountains once framed the sky in jagged pride, now only the gentle slope of green hills and jade-tinted trees stretched endlessly.
But there was something strange today. The light felt refracted, fractured, as though it passed through a lens not wholly of this world.
Tian Shen stood at the edge of a village unnamed on most maps, staring toward the aurora dancing above the treeline.
Ripples of emerald and violet shimmered unnaturally through the sky. A low hum, inaudible to most, thrummed faintly beneath the surface of the air. He could feel it in his teeth.
The villagers had called them the "Sky Trails." A beautiful name for something that left crops twisted and livestock scattered. Three shepherd families had vanished in the last month.
No bodies. No blood. Just tools dropped mid-use and fences broken without force.
