The Skyvein

Introduction

Once every seven to nine years, the northern skies above the Driftlands split with light—not silver, not green, but bloodred. This phenomenon is called The Skyvein, a gash across the heavens where something ancient bleeds through. It appears without warning and lingers anywhere from a single night to nearly a week. To most, it is a celestial omen; to the Driftlands, it is a reckoning.

Its arrival stirs the deep places—of land, memory, and self. Animals snarl at shadows, Animysts lose the shape of their minds, and ice turns black beneath your boots. Some call it a curse. Others believe it is Viriala’s wound, reopened to flood the land with truth and madness. Whatever its source, the Skyvein does not merely light the sky—it touches the soul, and not everyone returns from that contact whole.

Manifestation / Visualization

The Skyvein looks like a torn artery of aurora, bleeding crimson and deep violet light in long ribbons from the north. Unlike the soft undulations of typical auroras, the Skyvein pulses—rhythmic, sharp-edged, and erratic, like the spasms of a dying star. The sky it touches darkens unnaturally, stars seeming to flicker or blink out entirely near its reach. The moon turns rusted and ill-defined. No known instrument can measure or predict its return.

Under the Skyvein’s glow:

• Snow and frost gleam dully, as if coated in blood-ink.
• Reflections vanish from ice, water, and glass—faces appear blurred, or show different expressions than those worn.
• Sound carries strangely, with whispers echoing longer than they should and familiar voices taking on unnatural harmonics.
• Some claim that songs from long-dead loved ones can be faintly heard in the wind, calling from the Rainbow Falls.

The light of the Skyvein is not just a visual spectacle—it is a psychic pressure, like a migraine behind the eyes of the world. Children born under its light often scream without ceasing until it passes.

Localization

The Skyvein is only visible within the northern regions of the post-Fall continent, but its true influence localizes around Tug Hill Plateau and the Driftlands. Its reach is weakest in lowland settlements like Defiance, where it is merely an unsettling glow—but as one moves north, into the forest and frost, its effects become increasingly pronounced and strange.

Scholars from the Scribes and religious leaders from the Church of Hope agree on little, but many concede that the Skyvein:

• Follows a broken layline running beneath Tug Hill—possibly the remnant of pre-Fall orbital satellite grid interference or something older.
• Strengthens Viriala’s influence, particularly near Rainbow Falls, where sightings of ghost-walkers, Hollowed, and drifting bodies become frequent during and after the event.
• Erodes boundaries: between past and present, memory and dream, self and shadow.

Outside of Tug Hill, the Skyvein is merely an auroral oddity. Inside the Driftlands, it is a force of raw metaphysical disruption.

Effects

1. Feral Instincts
The first sign of the Skyvein’s rise is behavioral collapse among animals and Animysts.

• Deer gore their young.
• Birds fly into trees until their skulls break.
• Animysts—especially those with shorter lifespans or prey instincts—go berserk, sometimes attacking their own kin, or wandering into the woods in a trance-like state.
  Efforts to restrain or sedate them often fail; the Skyvein appears to bypass conscious will entirely, unearthing something older and deeper inside the limbic brain.

2. Black Ice
Ice, snow, and any reflective surface touched by the Skyvein’s light undergo a strange transformation:

• Reflections are absorbed, turning the surfaces jet black and lightless.
• Some say these “mirrors” still show things—but only to the Hollowed.
• The black ice does not melt, even under flame, and has been harvested in small, unstable quantities by Engineers and Doctors for ritual or experimental use.

3. Emotional Upwelling
Perhaps the most insidious effect, and the reason so many fear the Skyvein, is its capacity to rupture the emotional dam within every living being. Under its glow:

• Old traumas return in full force.
• Secrets long buried spill out uncontrollably—lovers confess infidelities, murderers weep at strangers’ doors.
• Some laugh until their ribs break; others sob until they lose consciousness.
  This emotional violence can last weeks beyond the event’s passing, especially in communities like Defiance. Many refer to it simply as the "Bleed."

Transformation: The Hollowed

Those who do not return from the Skyvein unchanged are called Hollowed.
They are not undead, nor fully mad—but something in them has been scooped out and replaced.

Traits of the Hollowed:

• Emotionless expressions, but hyper-sensitive to others’ moods.
• A fragile sense of time and place—they often believe they are living in past events, or speak to people who are not present.
• Drawn irresistibly toward Rainbow Falls, often vanishing forever into the drifting mist around its base.
• Some Hollowed gain minor gifts: the ability to read emotion by touch, to speak truth that burns lies from the air—but these boons always come with severe psychological deterioration.

Whispers persist that Viriala herself chooses the Hollowed, either as mouthpieces or as offerings.