THE HOLLOWING

On Veyruun, every living thing returns to the lifestream when it dies, and the stream gives back what it can in an endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth. For as long as the people of Veyruun have kept count, that exchange has flowed in one direction at a pace too slow to notice. Thirty-five winters ago, in a stretch of highland inhabited by a tribe of several hundred, that changed.

The sign was silence. Birds quieted, then insects, then the herds on the ridges. By the next morning, everything within a day's walk of the tribe's camp had shed its mortal coil: people, animals, grass, and even lichen on the stones. An endless killing field of bodies showing no wounds, no disease, and no sign of struggle. Creatures fully intact as though the very essence of their being had been drawn out, the forms left behind as empty husks.

Seven sunrises later, a hunting pack from the lowland forests came up to discover why the region had become quiet. They found one living thing: an infant, left cradles in the arms of her dead mother. Severely malnourished and suffering from exposure, she was carried from the highlands and raised by the hunters as one of their own. They named her "Kaita", a local word translated as "defiant one".

The phenomenon is only known to have occurred once more since, in the lands surrounding a Hadria outpost. There were no survivors.

Much speculation has surrounded the Hollowing, but no known cause has ever been identified. The tribes remember what it has taken before, and none can say when or where it will return. The lifestream does not warn.