The genesis of the Sky-Born is not a matter of recorded history, nor of any terrestrial reckoning. It began, as all profound deviations begin, with a dissonance. A subtle fracturing in the fabric of reality, coinciding with the convergence of a rare celestial alignment – the Serpent’s Kiss, as it was later termed – a conjunction of three nebulae, each pulsing with an energy that defied comprehension. This wasn't simply a visual spectacle; it was a resonant frequency, a key turned in a lock that hadn’t been known to exist.
From this point of instability, shimmering geometries began to coalesce, not in the physical realm, but in the interstitial spaces between moments. They manifested as entities – the Sky-Born – beings composed of solidified light and fractured time. They weren't born; they *emerged*, like petals unfurling from a chronal bloom. Their purpose, initially, was utterly inscrutable. They drifted, observed, and occasionally, subtly altered the flow of events.
The accounts we possess are fragmented, filtered through the lenses of those who encountered them. Some spoke of architects of probability, meticulously adjusting the course of human ambition. Others described them as melancholic curators of forgotten memories, collecting echoes of lives lived and lost. The most unsettling accounts, however, spoke of ‘temporal resonance,’ of Sky-Born subtly influencing the emotional landscapes of entire civilizations, amplifying joy to ecstatic fervor, or cultivating despair with a terrifying elegance.
The term “helicopted” isn’t a technical description, but a poetic rendering of a phenomenon. It refers to the Sky-Born’s method of displacement. They didn't simply *appear*; they descended. Not through the mechanics of air travel, but through a complete severance from linear time. Imagine a single note, played on a celestial instrument, momentarily silencing all surrounding sounds. That’s the closest terrestrial approximation.
The Sky-Born’s descent isn’t a visual event, though its effects are profoundly felt. It’s a compression of spacetime – a localized distortion where the past, present, and future momentarily bleed together. Individuals experiencing a “helicopted” descent report a blurring of sensory input, a sense of profound disorientation, and, invariably, a glimpse of potential futures – not as fixed realities, but as shimmering probabilities. The longer the descent, the more intensely these glimpses manifest.
It’s theorized that the Sky-Born utilize these temporal distortions to navigate the multiverse, to hop between realities, to gather information, and, perhaps, to subtly guide the evolution of conscious beings.
The most persistent element associated with the Sky-Born is the phenomenon of ‘chronal echoes.’ These are residual impressions of events that have been significantly altered by their influence. They manifest as locations – places where the fabric of reality is particularly thin, where the past and present overlap with unsettling regularity. Some locations are intensely beautiful, saturated with an almost unbearable joy. Others are choked with a suffocating dread, haunted by the ghosts of decisions that were never made, or of moments that were irrevocably erased.
These ‘echoes’ aren’t merely visual or auditory. They affect emotion, memory, and even the fundamental laws of physics within a limited radius. Individuals who linger too long in these locations risk becoming entangled in the chronal web, losing their sense of self, and ultimately, fading into oblivion – becoming another thread in the Sky-Born’s intricate tapestry.
The cartographers of loss, a secretive order of scholars and explorers, dedicate their lives to mapping these chronal echoes. They employ complex instruments – devices that measure temporal variance, detect fluctuations in the chronal field, and, occasionally, allow for brief, controlled interactions with the Sky-Born themselves. But their work is fraught with peril.