Molten Veils
The Breath of the Mountains
“It looked like someone poured glass into the sky, but it never touched the ground. I stood too long watching it, and when I blinked, I was ten steps closer without moving.”
They begin at the edge of sight. A shimmer. A ripple. A line of air that moves like heat over stone, even in places where the snow has not melted for months. The Molten Veils are rare, but unmistakable. Where they appear, the world seems thinner. The light bends. The breath catches. And all who see them understand that something buried is reaching toward the surface. The Veils rise from hairline fissures in the rock. These are not volcanic vents or sulfurous pits. There is no smoke, no sound, no scent. Only a distortion in the air, thin and slow. As it thickens, the shimmer begins to resemble liquid metal. Not poured, not spilled, but drifting. Light breaks against it in irregular waves, casting brief halos on the surrounding stone. They are born from heat. Geothermal pressure climbs through veins laced with Arin Silver, striking the surface with just enough force to fracture the snowpack and bend the air. The temperature near the Veils is dangerous, though the danger does not announce itself. There is no roar, no glow. Only motion. Only light moving where light should not. To see one from a distance is to be drawn toward it. The motion is hypnotic. It feels alive, but not animate. A ripple of thought passing through the spine of the world. Those who draw too close begin to feel it in their skin. Not pain, but pressure. The sense that the air has become heavy, like water about to boil. No one touches a Molten Veil and survives. There is no burn. No scream. Only absence. A sudden collapse of shape into color. A fading ripple where the body once stood. Witnesses report a sharp scent, like cold iron struck against stone, and a low vibration in their teeth that does not fade until they leave the site. Alchemists seek out the Veils for what they suggest. Power in motion. Heat drawn through silver. Sites where the veil between elements bends. But few ever collect samples. The terrain is unstable. Instruments fail. Not catastrophically, but subtly. Measurements drift. Data corrupts. After a few days, most researchers leave with sketches and nothing else. Miners are more pragmatic. They mark the zones and work around them. Some carry charms made of crushed slag and thread, meant not to ward the Veil, but to remind them where not to step. It is not fear that drives them. It is a form of respect. The mountain breathes where the Veils rise. And when it breathes, it does not always exhale. To those who live in the lower hollows, the Molten Veils are not omens. They are not curses. They are a sign that the old seams are still moving, still alive. And that something under the stone remembers how to reach upward, even if only for a moment.
Manifestation
“My shadow bent toward it. That’s how I knew to leave.”
The Molten Veils are purely atmospheric. They have no physical mass, no flame, no smoke. They appear as shifting walls of distorted air, rising vertically or curling along fault lines like banners caught in windless motion. Their form is dictated by the shape of the fissure and the pressure beneath it. No two are alike. The shimmer is bright, but not radiant. It catches and splits the light, throwing ghost-color onto nearby surfaces. When the sun is low, the Veils reflect it in broken fragments. At night, under moonlight, they gleam with a soft internal blur. The light does not pulse. It slides. Always in motion, always without purpose. The effect resembles heat distortion seen above a forge or brazier, but denser. Slower. Heavier. Some compare it to looking through polished glass set in motion by water. Others say it resembles a curtain made of living mercury. Whatever the form, it does not settle. It flows. Snow does not fall through the Veils. It vanishes or sublimates before contact. Ice forms rings around the base but never crosses the boundary. Plant matter curls and browns when carried into the field. Insects vanish. Birds avoid the air above it. The silence that surrounds the Veils is complete. Those who approach report blurred vision and a muffled sensation in the ears. Sound becomes distant. The body feels slow. One observer said she could hear her blood moving, as if the Veil amplified everything within but dampened the world outside. She left with no injuries, but refused to speak of the experience again. No wind moves the Veils. They drift with their own current, often against the prevailing direction. Some rise vertically and vanish into the air. Others collapse inward as if folding into a hole that cannot be seen. A few split apart mid-motion, then reform. No known pattern predicts their shape or behavior. Efforts to record or measure the Veils have failed. Sound recordings produce static. Visual attempts show only glare and distortion. Magical scrying darkens the lens. Even written notes often blur near the field, as if the ink resists committing the shape to paper. The Veils do not want to be remembered. What remains consistent is the presence of Arin Silver. Always buried, never visible. The Veils form above it and vanish when the metal lies exposed. They are not caused by silver, but they require it. It is the medium, not the message. The light bends where the buried metal breathes.
Localization
“No color. Just reflection that didn’t reflect anything I recognized.”
Molten Veils form only in the high fault zones of the Agriss range, where pressure, mineral content, and insulation align. They do not appear in volcanic regions. They are not tied to surface warmth. Their origin lies beneath layers of stone and packed frost, where silver veins twist around deep geologic tension. The southern ridges near Deadfall Shelf are the most commonly reported sites. A few Veils have been seen near the upper reaches of Hollow Step Pass. These areas share no vegetation, little sun, and constant subzero surface temperatures. Where snow survives all year, the Veils sometimes rise. There are no towns in these zones. No trade routes. Only cairns left by miners or etched warnings near broken tools. The Veils avoid inhabited places. Or perhaps inhabited places avoid the Veils. Either way, there is no overlap. Where people build, the shimmer does not come. Those who track them do so alone. Small expeditions vanish more often than they return. The mountain offers no clear markers, only suggestion. Heat lines. Stone fractures. The moment before the shimmer begins, the air tastes metallic and the back of the neck tightens. Then the ripple starts. Some believe the Veils migrate. That they move not just through air, but underground. That what appears in one place may rise somewhere else days or years later. These theories cannot be tested. But old guides sometimes mutter names of passes as if the shimmer walked them once and may walk them again. Superstition holds that the Veils do not burn what they touch. They take it. A slow absorption into light and heat and nothing. Some claim the shimmer holds memory. That what vanishes inside becomes part of it. Faces have been seen, they say, moving within the Veil’s flow. Not screaming. Not pleading. Just watching. No known creature hunts near a Molten Veil. Not birds. Not wolves. Not anything that leaves prints. Even scavengers give the ground a wide berth. This absence is not fear. It is recognition. The shimmer does not belong to life. It is something else entirely. A fracture in the skin of the world, filled with light that has no warmth and no mercy. And when it moves, the wise do not follow. They watch. They wait. Then they go the other way.
“It was beautiful. Terrible. Not warning, not invitation. Just motion where motion had no business being.”
Type
Natural
“We left the markers and backed away. The shimmer doesn’t chase, but it notices. I won’t test the difference again.”
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