They say the world was once larger—that beyond the horizon shimmered realms now forgotten, sealed by silence and time.
Vinperia remembers them. In its winds, in the trembling of its rivers, the echoes of those gates still sing.
Before the stars learned distance, before rivers chose a direction, the Gates stood between what is and what could be.
They were not doors of stone or steel, but of resonance—vibrations woven from pure magic.
To step through them was to walk into a thought made real.
And so the early wanderers, the Dreamborn, traveled between worlds as easily as breathing.
But every gate was alive, listening.
When men began to forget the language of wonder, the gates grew quiet.
One by one, they folded themselves into the fabric of mountains and seas,
leaving behind only faint tremors—echoes that never die.
It is said that in the city of Elanora, where alchemists brew memory into glass,
there still walks a lineage of Gatekeepers.
Their task is not to open what was lost,
but to remember the tone each gate once sang in.
Each dawn, they climb the mirror spires and listen to the wind.
When it hums just right, when the air itself seems to hesitate,
they write its rhythm on silver leaves and cast them into the sky.
The leaves never fall; they drift until they find a forgotten echo,
and for a heartbeat, the world remembers itself.
Across Vinperia lie fragments of the old harmonics—arches of lightless crystal,
valleys where the air bends sound into visible shimmer.
Travelers say that if you whisper your true name in those places,
you may hear another voice answer—not in imitation,
but in recognition.
It is not an echo, but a reply.
Some mages still hunt the Lost Gates, drawn by visions and half-heard songs.
They return pale and trembling, claiming to have seen the world fold like paper—
mountains turning inside out, rivers running backward into starlight.
Most never speak again.
The wise say the Gates are not closed out of malice,
but mercy.
To hear all worlds at once is to forget which one is yours.
Yet sometimes, on nights when Vinperia’s moons align,
you can feel a soft pull in the air—as if the realm itself breathes differently.
Crystals hum without touch, dreams taste of other skies.
And for a moment, every shadow feels like an invitation.
Those who walk the Auralis Plains on such nights
swear they see silhouettes of gates in the mist—
shapes of light and memory, waiting for a voice brave enough to answer.
The scholars of The Obsidian Reach believe the Gates never truly vanished.
They became the spaces between words,
the silence before music,
the stillness inside the breath of magic.
Perhaps the Lost Gates were never meant to be found.
Perhaps they live now in every act of wonder—
every story told beneath the starlit soil of Vinperia.
And if you listen closely,
the echo is still there—
not a call to return,
but a reminder that the paths between worlds
begin within.
