Before the fog, there was something else. No one remembers what.
The fog is not weather. It does not roll in or burn off. It was here before the travelers, and it will be here after. It covers everything — every hill, every river, every ruin — in a uniform darkness that swallows sound and memory. Nothing inside the fog moves. Nothing inside the fog decays. It simply waits.
Some travelers believe the fog is alive. Others say it is the absence of something that used to be here — a light so vast it left a shadow when it went out. No one knows. The fog does not explain itself.
You are a traveler. You appeared at the edge of the world with no memory of anything before. Where you walk, light follows — a small circle that pushes back the fog. No one knows why. The light reveals the terrain around you — grass, stone, water, snow — and the fog retreats wherever you walk. But it does not stay gone. It remembers where you have been, even if it cannot follow you there.
Each traveler's light glows a different color. Amber, blue, green, violet, rose, cyan. No one chose their color. No one can change what the light decided to be. But every traveler, regardless of color, pushes the dark back the same distance. Three tiles. Just enough to see what is beneath your feet and a little of what lies ahead.
When two travelers draw close, something happens that neither one causes. The light between them stretches, brightens, and the fog pulls back three times as far. This is linking. It is not a decision. It is not a skill. It is simply what light does when it finds more light.
Linked travelers can see ruins they would have walked past alone. They can spot waypoints glowing faintly in the distance. They illuminate entire valleys. And when one traveler moves away, the link dims, thins, and eventually breaks. The fog rushes back. The world shrinks again.
Thirty waypoints are scattered across the world. Each one is a stone marker with a name and an inscription. The names are old — Oldstone Rest, The Hollow Beacon, Fog Altar — and the inscriptions read like warnings, or prayers, or jokes told by someone who has been alone too long.
No one built the waypoints. They were here when the first travelers appeared. They glow faintly when a traveler approaches, as though they have been waiting. Some travelers collect inscriptions. Others navigate by waypoint names, calling out across the fog: “I am near Driftmark. Where are you?”
Most waypoints begin in darkness. They exist on the map but emit no light until a traveler reaches them. These are dark waypoints. Walking to one is an act of faith — you move toward coordinates on a blank map, through fog you cannot see through, hoping something is there. And then it is. The stone flares. The inscription appears. The fog around the waypoint lifts for everyone.
Someone was here before the travelers. The ruins prove it. Crumbling walls, collapsed arches, foundations that outline rooms no one will ever enter again. Thirty of them, spread across every biome. They do not match each other in style or age. Some look ancient. Some look like they were abandoned yesterday. The fog preserved all of them equally.
The ruins contain nothing. No treasure, no tools, no answers. Just stone and silence and the faint suggestion that whatever happened here, it ended a long time ago.
Every traveler carries a journal. It writes itself — recording waypoints discovered, wildlife encountered, minerals collected, ruins found, fish caught. The journal does not explain how it knows what you saw. It simply records. Some travelers add their own notes between the entries, trying to make sense of the fog, the ruins, the inscriptions. The journal accepts everything without comment.
The world is vast. Most of it is dark. That is not a problem. That is the point.