Whispers of the Collapse

The air crackles with an unnatural energy, a shimmering distortion visible only at the edges of your vision. You feel it more than see it, a low hum vibrating in your bones. You haven't felt this in… well, not since before. Before the Collapse. Before the Weavers fell silent. You awaken with a gasp, face pressed against the cold, damp earth. Memory claws at the edges of your awareness, disjointed images of shattered towers, whispering winds carrying names long forgotten, and the suffocating weight of despair. You are… Rylan, a name you cling to like a lifeline in a raging storm. You remember being a Seeker, a hunter of lost knowledge, one of the few brave (or foolish) enough to venture beyond the crumbling walls of Aethelburg. But beyond that… darkness. A rustling in the nearby thicket snaps you back to the present. Your hand instinctively reaches for the worn leather grip of your crossbow, its weight familiar and comforting. The air hangs heavy with the scent of decaying leaves and something else… something metallic, oily, and subtly wrong. This place… it's different. Wronger than you remember. The Whispers have returned. They were gone for decades, driven back by the combined might of the Order and the Scholars. But now, they're back, their corrupting influence seeping into the land, twisting nature into grotesque parodies of itself. You can hear them faintly, a chorus of broken promises and whispered temptations carried on the wind. They are the heralds of the Shardspawn, creatures born from corrupted fragments of the fallen Weavers, beings of unimaginable power and unspeakable malice. A twig snaps nearby. A pair of glowing red eyes pierce the gloom. A Shardhound, its fur matted with oily residue, its teeth sharpened to needle-like points, snarls in your direction. It's drawn to the resonance of your awakening, a beacon in the fading light. It's hungry. Survival depends on more than just brute force now. Understanding the source of the Whispers, finding a way to silence them, and ultimately, preventing the complete unraveling of reality itself, that's your task now. The fate of Aethelburg, and perhaps more, rests on your shoulders, Rylan. What will you do?