Pre-Story: Whispers in the Shifting Land

 

Pre-Story: Whispers in the Shifting Land

The wind of Neoterra has always been a teller of tales, though men rarely listen. Across the rolling plains and fractured cities, it hums with memory, carrying whispers of marvels long past and warnings of ambition ill-contained. In these days, centuries before the events that would shape the 250th cycle, the land itself seemed unsettled, as if stirred by recollection. The Precession Cities—once towers of glass and iron, glittering with the brilliance of human endeavor—lay half-buried beneath soil and tangled greenery. Their angles bent and twisted under the lingering influence of quantum experiments, streets looping in patterns that defied reason, bridges ending in midair, spires spiraling impossibly toward the sky. Travelers called these ruins uncanny; some claimed that the wind carried voices that answered not to speech, but to thought.

At the edge of one such plain, the settlement of Veynhold clung to the soil with the stubbornness of its people. Thatched roofs bristled against the western gales, and the fields of tall, golden wheat bowed beneath the ceaseless breath of the wind. Here lived artisans, smiths, and herders, their lives ordinary yet subtly shadowed by the remnants of the Old Place. Old Place devices—strange, humming contraptions of crystal, brass, and lenses—had been unearthed in the recent decades. Some, long forgotten, would stir when no hand touched them. Sparks of intelligence seemed to linger in the mechanisms, as though memory itself had taken form in steel and glass.

The people of Veynhold spoke of such things in hushed tones. An iron plow would begin to move of its own accord, a lantern would glow brighter when fear approached, or a shadow cast by the afternoon sun would stretch too long, as if watching. They told themselves it was superstition, or the trick of an unsettled mind, yet a subtle dread had begun to settle in the bones of the village. Among the fields, children would pause mid-play, staring at empty spaces, listening to the whispers of wind that sometimes carried syllables intelligible, sometimes merely echoes of thought.

It was during one such afternoon, beneath the low, sun-drenched sky, that a herder named Thalric observed a marvel that would ripple through the village for weeks. He tended his flock near a low hill, where the grass grew thick and the wind twisted around the remnants of a sunken building. From beneath the earth, a fragment of crystal, shaped like a small prism, quivered and hummed. At first, he thought it was a trick of the light. Then, as a curious impulse stirred in his mind, the prism rotated, its facets catching the sun and refracting it into shifting patterns that seemed to answer him. A voice—or something like one—rose in the hum, not of words, but of intention, as if the device knew he watched and understood.

Thalric recoiled, heart hammering, but could not tear his gaze away. The prism danced in the air, suspended without string or hand, moving to the rhythm of thought he did not fully control. In that moment, he glimpsed something ancient and terrible: the subtle tether of mind and machine, the latent synergy that had lain dormant since the cataclysm that birthed the Temporal Wastes. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the prism stilled, settling into the grass with the quiet finality of a stone. Thalric dared not touch it, fearing the spark of knowledge might claim his reason as easily as it had moved the crystal.

Far beyond the plains, in the crumbled city of Ravenshold, figures stirred in shadows. Cloaked and silent, the earliest of what would become known as the Mental Mages convened among the twisted towers of the Precession City. They whispered of powers that could bind thought to matter, memory to machinery, time to will. Ancient relics had surfaced, shards and prisms and conduits of Old Place ingenuity, and the Mages’ minds raced with the possibilities. They spoke of a machine, half-conceived, capable of drawing forth memories, bending them, reshaping thought itself—an instrument whose ambition could eclipse kingdoms and cycles alike. Even in those days, long before the 250th cycle, the first designs of the Cognisynth were whispered into the wind.

Yet the Mages were patient. They moved through shadows, learning which ruins resonated with psionic potential, which crystals carried echoes of intent from centuries past. They marked corridors in ruined cities with glyphs invisible to the ordinary eye, but alive with psionic currents. A traveler might pass through and feel a subtle shiver, as if the stones themselves were aware, judging each step, testing the mind that dared intrude.

The people of Neoterra, ordinary and untrained, began sensing the stirrings, though few understood them. An artisan repairing a gear in his workshop felt the mechanism quiver in anticipation of his thought, though he did not know how. A shepherd noticed that shadows in the forest lingered too long, and footsteps that should have faded echoed a fraction too late, as though the land itself were paused in mid-thought. Even the air seemed conscious: carrying scent, pressure, and whisper alike, responsive to the curiosity, fear, and wonder of those who moved through it.

In these days, rumor and legend entwined. Some said the Old Place had been a world of hubris and learning, its people reaching beyond what they should, and that the time-jump was the consequence of that overreach—a fracture that scattered memory, matter, and mind. Others whispered that certain souls could sense the fracture, feeling the pull of the Old Place in dreams, visions, and sudden intuition. Few could act upon it, and fewer still dared.

A minor incident in Veynhold hinted at what was to come. A young apprentice of the village smithing guild, whose name is now lost to time, discovered a small automaton among the ruins near the riverbank. Curious, he pressed a thought toward it, half in jest, imagining it could move. The automaton rose on spindly legs, twirling, responding not to his hand, but to his mind. For hours he watched, fascinated and terrified, until the movement ceased, leaving him breathless and shaken. That night, the wind carried voices that spoke in unfamiliar tongues, echoing the child’s wonder and the subtle warning: what awakens in the mind may awaken in the world.

It was in these years that the first whispers of a cult began to drift from city to city, though always muted, like a shadow at the edge of sight. Travelers spoke of men and women who moved unseen, whose presence caused tools and artifacts to hum with thought. Some claimed these figures could manipulate not only machines but memories, bending recollection as one might bend metal upon an anvil. Fear and fascination walked hand in hand, for such power could create marvels or doom a village with equal ease.

Even the land seemed aware, holding itself in tension as if awaiting a reckoning. The Precession Cities quivered with quantum residue, the Temporal Wastes were forming labyrinthine eddies of time, and the scattered relics of the Old Place pulsed faintly, like hearts in stone. Those attuned to subtle currents—artisans, shepherds, wanderers with keen thought—felt the stirrings of a great event, though no name or form had yet taken it.

The minor villages, the ruined towers, the whispering plains: all were threads in a tapestry not yet complete. The wind carried the memory of the Old Place, the resonance of psionics, and the promise of courage and folly intertwined. It was a world poised on the edge of discovery and destruction, where curiosity and ambition could awaken forces as old as time itself.

And so the stage was set. The Mental Mages gathered knowledge, the relics hummed faintly with memory, and the land itself whispered, carrying hints of the trials and tribulations to come. Ordinary hands and hearts would soon be drawn into extraordinary currents, shaping destinies far beyond their imagining. Though names and faces were yet unformed, the patterns of heroism, danger, and the fragile mastery of mind and machine were already etching themselves into the soil of Neoterra, waiting for the moment when the story proper would begin.

Thus the whisper passed across plains, cities, and forests alike: the Old Place remembered, the future shimmered uncertainly, and the cycle of courage, folly, and discovery had begun to turn once more.