Here begins the story of "Versefall."
The rain in the border town of Mire's End didn't so much fall as it seeped. It wept from a sky the colour of old bruises, slicking the cobblestones and filling the air with the scent of wet soot and despair. In a narrow alley, huddled under the flimsy protection of a leaking tin awning, Elias Thorne finished tying a clean bandage around a child's feverish arm.
He wasn't a physician, not anymore. The pristine white coats and sterile tents of the Medic's Corps were a lifetime away, a ghost-memory of a man who believed in saving armies. Now, his practice was the forgotten corners of the world, his patients the destitute, his payment a stale crust of bread or, more often, a simple, grateful nod.
The girl's mother clutched a threadbare shawl, her eyes, hollowed out by poverty, fixed on the clean bandage as if it were a holy relic. "We have nothing," she whispered, her voice rough.
"Rest and clean water are payment enough," Elias said, his voice low and calm. He gave the child's shoulder a final, gentle squeeze. A faint, almost imperceptible warmth flowed from his palm, not enough to be called magic, but sufficient to ease the lingering ache. It was a practice born of discipline, a careful rationing of his own spirit. He had learned the hard way that compassion, like any other resource, could be exhausted.
As he packed his few remaining supplies into a worn leather satchel, a clatter of running feet echoed from the mouth of the alley. A man stumbled in, his breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps. He was all sharp angles and desperation, his clothes torn, his eyes wild. He clutched a small, cloth-wrapped object to his chest.
"Hide me," the man begged, pressing himself against the damp brick wall. "Please. They'll kill me for it."
Elias instinctively moved to place himself between the man and the family. "Get the child inside," he told the mother, his voice losing its gentle edge, replaced by a quiet authority that made her obey without question.
Seconds later, three figures blocked the alley's entrance, their silhouettes stark against the grey misery of the street. The leader was a brute named Silas, a local gang boss whose business was misery. A fresh, ugly scar snaked across his cheek, a testament to a recent knife fight.
"The rat came this way," Silas growled, his gaze sweeping the alley and landing on the cowering man. "Hand it over, Fen. You know the rules. Anything Verse-Touched found in our territory belongs to me."
"I found it!" Fen shrieked, his knuckles white where he gripped the object. "It's my ticket out of this gods-forsaken town!"
Verse-Touched. The word hung in the air, thick and dangerous. Relics that bled the raw, unstable reality of the Verse into the world. They were rare, unpredictable, and potent.
Silas and his thugs advanced, drawing rusted blades. "There are no tickets out," Silas sneered. "Only tolls to be paid."
Elias stood his ground. He had seen this scene a hundred times in a hundred squalid towns: the strong preying on the weak. It was a law of nature he had always refused to accept.
"He is under my protection," Elias stated. It wasn't a threat, but a simple declaration of fact.
Silas laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "And who are you? The patron saint of lost causes?" He gestured with his knife. "Move, healer, or we'll bleed you both."
Desperation gave Fen a terrible courage. "You want it?" he screamed, tearing the cloth away from the object. It was a shard of obsidian, no bigger than his palm, but it did not reflect the light. It consumed it. Veins of violet energy pulsed within its depths, and the air around it began to hum, warping like heat haze. "Then take it!"
Fen hurled the artifact not at the thugs, but at the brick wall behind him.
The impact didn't make a sound. It made a silence. A sudden, gut-wrenching void where all noise ceased. A shimmering tear, the colour of a deep-space nebula, ripped open in the fabric of reality. It was a violent, vertical wound in the world, pulling at the rain, the loose refuse, and the very air of the alley.
One of Silas's thugs, caught off balance, was yanked from his feet and devoured by the rift in an instant, his scream swallowed by the silence. Fen, laughing madly, was next, his body dissolving into the shimmering chaos. The rift grew, its gravitational pull intensifying.
Silas, his face a mask of terror, was sliding, his boots scraping uselessly against the slick cobblestones. The edge of the rift licked at his heels. He was a cruel man, a predator who deserved no kindness. Elias had seen his handiwork on the bruised and broken bodies of his victims. His every instinct, honed by years of survival, screamed to let him go.
But his principles were older and stronger than his instincts.
With a curse that was half-prayer, Elias lunged forward. He grabbed the front of Silas's leather jerkin, his boots digging for purchase. The pull was immense, a physical weight on his soul. He saw the gang leader's look of utter shock, the disbelief that anyone would try to save him.
For a heartbeat, Elias held him. The principle was satisfied. He had chosen compassion.
But the universe, it seemed, demanded a price for such choices.
The unstable edge of the rift buckled. A wave of energy lashed out, not pulling, but pushing. It struck Elias with the force of a battering ram. His grip was torn from Silas, his feet lifted from the ground. He was thrown backwards, tumbling end over end, not away from the rift, but directly into its silent, shimmering maw.
The world of grey rain and grimy brick vanished. He felt a moment of intense, crushing pressure, a discordant symphony of sensory information that had no business existing.
Then, impact.
He landed hard on something soft and damp, the breath knocked from his lungs. The transition was over. The silence was replaced by a constant, oppressive dripping and a low hum that seemed to vibrate in his bones. The air was thick, heavy with the smell of ozone, wet earth, and something else… the sweet, cloying scent of decay.
Elias Thorne pushed himself onto his elbows, his body aching. He was in a place of profound twilight, illuminated by the ghostly glow of impossible flora. Towering, tree-sized fungi pulsed with soft, phosphorescent light, their caps forming a canopy far above.
He had saved a man who did not deserve it. And his reward was to be cast into the one place he had spent years trying to avoid.
He was in the Verse.