It began, as all tragedies do, with a shimmer. A shimmer of light on the surface of the Azure Expanse, reflecting the twin moons, Selene and Nyx. Shelia, a cartographer of forgotten currents and whispered storms, had been charting the eddies of the Abyss, a task deemed both vital and profoundly unsettling by the Chronomasters of Veridia.
Shelia initiated the descent, her submersible, the 'Echo', a vessel crafted from solidified starlight and reinforced with the bones of leviathans. The Echo’s primary function was to record the subtle shifts in the temporal currents – a phenomenon theorized to be linked to the manifestation of 'Lost Echoes' – fragments of memories and emotions adrift in the void.
The initial readings were… chaotic. Not the organized dissonance of a storm, but a screaming, fractured symphony of regret. The Echo’s sensors registered a sudden spike in 'chronal bleed' – a dangerous leakage of time itself. Shelia, ever meticulous, adjusted the Echo’s dampening field, attempting to isolate the source.
Then came the silence. An unnatural, absolute silence, deeper than any darkness Shelia had ever encountered. The Echo’s instruments flatlined. The chronal bleed intensified, manifesting as a swirling vortex of iridescent grey – a ‘Shadow Bloom,’ as the older cartographers called them. Shelia realized with horrifying clarity: she had stumbled upon a point where the fabric of reality itself was unraveling. The Shadow Bloom wasn’t just bleeding chronal energy; it was *consuming* it.
Her last recorded transmission, a garbled plea, contained a single, chilling phrase: “The echoes… they remember… everything.” The Shadow Bloom expanded, engulfing the Echo. No trace of the submersible was ever found. Only a lingering distortion in the temporal currents, a place where the past, present, and future seemed to bleed into one another. Some whisper that Shelia’s consciousness remains trapped within the Bloom, endlessly charting the lost currents, a silent testament to the dangers of seeking forbidden knowledge.