The Arcane Rifts

Arcane rifts are tears in the veil of reality where raw, uncontrolled magic leaks into the world. They appear without warning, sometimes as flickers that vanish in moments, sometimes as wounds that last for ages. Their forms vary from frozen lightning etched across the sky, rivers of liquid light seeping into the world, or invisible fields that hum against the bones.

As they grow, their form begins to shape itself into the rift itself, like a laceration in the world forming an unstable, erratic dimensional connection between Anuheim and the plane of Arcane-Mind. Rarely do they spill into other planes of existence but it is possible.

However they take shape, their presence is unmistakable and their danger undeniable.

Nature of Rifts

Unlike spellcraft, which draws threads of power in a measured way, rifts are breaks. They open when the planes press too heavily against the world, or when great workings of magic weaken the veil until it tears. On rare occasions, the overload of a myric shard can rip open a rift. They are a natural phenomena of magic that no being can wholly predict.

Effects

The world bends around a rift. Magic misfires, spells unravel or repeat endlessly, and time flows irregularly. Travelers report losing hours or days within a rift’s reach, only to return unchanged. The strongest tears carry echoes of other places, glimpses of realms not meant for mortal eyes.

From the largest rifts emerge riftspawn which are masses of raw arcane force that shift in form but move with presence and intent. Even the smallest tears may produce such beings, though their strength rises with the wound that birthed them.

Exposure to a rift carries its own peril. Arcane energy seeps into the body, glowing in the veins until it overwhelms flesh and thought alike. Most who linger too long collapse into statues of crystallized magic, locked forever between moments. The few who survive the change, their bodies adapt and become known as the Aetherforged.

The Aetherforged

The Aetherforged bear veins of silver-pink light that grow across their skin with more exposure, faintly glowing with the rhythm of arcane energy. They are stronger and faster than mortals, their senses sharpened by the magic that sustains them. Yet survival is no blessing.

The Aetherforged must feed on arcane energy as others feed on bread. When starved, they fall into frenzy, unleashing wild bursts of uncontrolled magic and force until they wither into arcane husks.

Most live and die within the ranks of the Veilbreak Covenant, bound to the rifts that sustain them but rarely seen as a curse.

Known Rifts

Only a few rifts have endured long enough to earn names. These are not flickers or anomalies, but lasting scars that remain open upon the land.

The Weeping Scar: A vast wound carved into the high desert canyons beyond the Everreach Mountains. Rivers of liquid light flow down its walls, and those who near it find themselves fractured across moments of time.

The Maw of Mirrors: Hidden in the Everreach Mountains. Reflections within its reach defy their source, moving with will not one’s own. Those who linger too long are said to vanish into the image that stepped before them.

The Singing Rift: A small but potent tear inside a Great Tree of the Ebonhart Forest called Singingspire. Within it, a song is being sung in a language no one understands. The rift resists widening, bound by the strange will of the forest itself.

The Fractured Spire: A sundered mage’s tower at the foothills of the Everreach, where Freeport’s grasslands climb into stone. Its upper halls hang suspended, locked in their own gravity, and those who enter feel their minds split into diverging paths.

The Veilbreak Covenant

The Veilbreak Covenant is the foremost power concerned with rifts. Their order spans across nations, bound not by crown or creed but by hunger for the arcane tears that bleed into Anuheim. Within the Covenant gather arcanists, mercenaries, laborers, and above all the Aetherforged.

Their stated purpose is twofold: to study the rifts and to harvest them. But most of them are just addicted to the arcane magic exposure. Raw magic is captured into myric shards they name Veilshards, vessels that hold the arcane power.

From these shards the Covenant forges weapons and relics like Veilswords, Veilstaves, and other devices that turn the chaos of the rifts into instruments of war. Such craft is sold in secret to fund their endless work, while the greatest of these weapons are kept in the Covenant’s own vaults. They also use them to sate their insatiable desire for arcane power.

To outsiders they are zealots. Many of their number are addicts who cannot live apart from the rifts, their very bodies and minds bound to the arcane flow. The Aetherforged hunger for the

power as sustenance, and even those who are not transformed find themselves drawn back again and again.

Yet despite the danger, the Covenant is tolerated. Without them, rifts would remain open, festering into permanent scars. The Covenant closes them only after their harvest is complete, but this is enough to earn them passage.

Among their ranks stand arcanists who pursue knowledge above all else. For them the rifts are not temptation but frontier. They map the patterns of distortion, record the spawn that arise, and seek to understand why some regions resist while others tear open freely. Whether driven by obsession, addiction, or ambition, all within the Covenant share one truth, they will never walk away from the rifts.