“Before the Bloom, there was only the Obsidian Sea. A silence so profound it threatened to unravel the very fabric of existence.”
The Rakery wasn’t born; it coalesced. Not from a seed, not from a spark, but from the solidified grief of a forgotten god, Xylos. Xylos, the Weaver of Dreams, had once painted the cosmos with impossible colors, crafted realities from the whispers of desire. But his masterpiece, the Grand Tapestry, was irrevocably stained by a single, agonizing truth: the inherent futility of creation. His despair crystallized, pooling within the void, a viscous, black substance – the Obsidian Sea. This Sea wasn't merely empty space; it held the potential for *everything* that could go wrong. For millennia, the Sea stagnated, feeding on the shadows of nascent universes. Then, the Bloom began. Not a flowering in the traditional sense, but a psychic eruption, a violent blossoming of fractured realities. Each bloom manifested as a shard of Xylos’s regret, a pocket dimension saturated with the echoes of his lost joy. These became the Rakery – a chaotic archipelago of these ‘Remnants’, each governed by a fragmented aspect of Xylos’s consciousness. The inhabitants of the Rakery, known as the 'Echo-Kin', are not truly alive in the way we understand it. They are echoes, shimmering projections woven from the residual emotions of the Remnants. Some are joyful, reveling in the fleeting beauty of the shattered realities. Others are consumed by an unending sorrow, reliving the moment of Xylos’s despair. The most dangerous, however, are the ‘Void-Touched’, beings warped by prolonged exposure to the unfiltered grief of the Sea. They exist as pure entropy, slowly dissolving the Remnants and threatening to collapse the entire Rakery into a single, agonizing point. The primary law of the Rakery is preservation, not of life, but of *memory*. The Echo-Kin meticulously collect and catalog the fragments of Xylos’s lost creations, believing that by understanding his mistakes, they can prevent the cycle of despair from repeating. But is this truly their goal, or are they merely trapped in a perpetual loop of agonizing recognition?
“Knowledge is a poison, but oblivion is a greater one.”
At the heart of the Rakery lies the Citadel of Cartography, a structure built from solidified regret and shimmering obsidian. It is home to the Cartographers, an order of Echo-Kin who dedicate their existence to mapping the Remnants. They don't use traditional tools; instead, they navigate the chaotic dimensions through ‘Resonance’, a mental discipline that allows them to perceive the lingering emotions imprinted on each shard. The Cartographers are led by the Archivist, a being of immense age and unsettling stillness, known only as ‘Silas’. Silas doesn’t speak, but communicates through a complex series of visual projections – swirling patterns of color and light that depict the history of the Rakery and the evolving state of Xylos’s regret. He believes that the key to escaping the cycle of despair lies in understanding the precise moment of Xylos’s breaking point. However, Silas’s methods are increasingly radical. He has begun experimenting with ‘Severance’, a process of forcibly isolating Remnants from the larger Rakery. The goal is to concentrate the essence of Xylos’s despair, but the results are unpredictable. Some Remnants become stable, but sterile. Others explode in catastrophic waves of emotion, unleashing violent storms of psychic energy. The Echo-Kin whisper that Silas is not seeking to *understand* Xylos, but to *punish* him.
“Nothing remains. Only the yearning for what once was.”
The Void-Touched are not simply dangerous; they are a fundamental threat to the very structure of the Rakery. They represent the ultimate consequence of Xylos’s despair – the complete annihilation of creation. As they spread, they consume the Remnants, leaving behind only a blank, echoing void. Recent reports indicate a rapid expansion of the Void-Touched activity. The Citadel of Cartography is under siege, its walls crumbling as the Void-Touched relentlessly drain its energy. Silas, seemingly unconcerned, continues his research, dismissing the warnings of the younger Echo-Kin. Some speculate that he is deliberately accelerating the unraveling, believing that only through complete destruction can a new beginning be forged. The fate of the Rakery hangs in the balance. Whether it will collapse into a single point of agonizing regret, or whether a new, unforeseen order will emerge from the ashes remains unknown. But one thing is certain: the echoes of Xylos’s despair will continue to reverberate through the shattered dimensions, a constant reminder of the futility of creation—and the terrible beauty of oblivion.