The slow awakening of Oakhaven was a quiet, beautiful thing. It was a world discovering its own capacity for wonder. The "talents," as the villagers called them, were never grand or destructive. A farmer found her crops grew stronger if she sang to them. A weaver discovered she could weave threads of sunlight into her cloth, making it shimmer with an inner warmth. It was the birth of a gentle, homespun magic, a magic of creation and community.
Nox and Serian watched, their hearts full. They had given this world a gift, and it had embraced it with a gentle joy that was a balm to their own battle-scarred souls.
But the multiverse was a place of echoes. And not all echoes were harmonious.
One night, Nox was awoken by a familiar, chilling sensation. A cold spot in the fabric of reality. A psychic scream that only he could hear.
'Liona,' he thought, his consciousness instantly alert. 'Report.'
