The Seething

From afar, the Seething appears to be a vast ashen plain, flat and lifeless beneath a sky that never clears. Yet the terrain is constantly shifting—ground collapses into crevasses filled with nothing, ridges rise and crumble without cause, and time-worn paths unwind in spirals before vanishing into silence.

• The ground is gray and spongy, peppered with jagged black crystals that melt into vapor when touched.
• Wind never blows, yet dust constantly lifts and floats skyward, caught in invisible tides.
• No echoes return here—voices die inches from the mouth.

At its heart lies a vast sinkhole, impossible to measure, known as the Maw, into which land, beasts, and memories tumble and are forgotten.

Unlike the rest of Hazlan, where corrupted magic reshapes creation, the Seething is where creation rejects itself. It is a leak in the world, a place where the Mists intrude too deeply, eating at time and substance. The terrain doesn’t erode—it deconstructs, falling into an unreal logic.

Travelers report:

• Footprints trailing behind them vanish as they walk.
• Eyes melting in dreams, yet waking with clearer sight.
• Spoken truths unraveling into contradictory gibberish.

Time stutters—no one ages in the Seething, and wounds don’t bleed, but neither do they heal.

Though the Seething is “devoid of life,” things move here. Shadows with no source crawl across the dust. Emaciated figures with featureless faces stalk the periphery, mimicking travelers' motions with a delay of seconds. These are the Hollow, parasitic voids given shape, who consume not flesh, but identity and history.

Other rumored denizens include:

• The Murmur: A low chant that follows intruders, repeating every name they’ve ever had—until they forget them all.
• The White Eidolon: A humanoid silhouette glimpsed atop crumbling ridgelines, always looking away, whose back shows a door-shaped scar.
• Mistchildren: Pale, laughing things that emerge only when someone breaks down weeping.

All arcane workings in the Seething behave erratically or not at all. Spellcasters find their magic either:

• Amplified grotesquely—a light spell causes blindness, a message spell broadcasts to every mind nearby;
• Rendered meaningless—sigils collapse, energies fizzle, incantations fail mid-word.

Some Hazlani scholars believe the Seething is the terminal product of magical overreach, where reality's equations have been exhausted. They call it a “Null Wake.” None who study it long retain coherent thoughts.

Most Hazlani refuse to acknowledge the Seething’s existence. Maps blur at its edge. Official documents refer to it only as “Unclaimed Waste.” Yet rumors persist:

• “It’s where Hazlik will go when he dies.”
• “If you walk into the Seething, you keep walking forever, but the world stops following you.”
• “Bury a name there, and everyone forgets the person it belonged to.”

Those cursed by Rashemani seers are sometimes told:
“Walk east until the world ends. What you seek is already gone.”