The Shape of Xoru

They say the world used to be one.

Not in the way of geography or empire, but in how it felt, how breath moved through it, how sleep came without fear. There were dreams then, yes. But they were soft things. Maps of the soul. Not traps. Not teeth.

But something broke.

And now, Xoru is a world stitched along the seam of a wound it doesn’t understand.

The Dream and the Dark

In the quiet spaces between stars and memory, two forces still gnaw at the edges of being:

• The Dreamworld—a place where meaning pools and hope remembers how to sing.

• And the Nightmare Realm—a place where memory frays and thought forgets itself on purpose.

No one calls them that out loud. Not anymore.

Not in the way they’re written in books or sung by priests. Because the people of Xoru don’t speak of cosmology. They speak of what happens when your child won’t wake up. When a dog barks in a dead language. When someone in town digs a well and finds their own name buried in the stone.

This is not myth.

This is weather.

It’s something you brace against.

How the People Understand the Nightmare

The Wilderburrow Clans (Centaurs)

“The world remembers what we forget. That’s why the wind cries different when it’s near.”

The centaurs of Wilderburrow do not write history. They remember it in silence, in hoof-beaten trails, in sacred trees blackened by fire they do not speak of.

• They name their children only after five winters.

• They don’t say the names of the missing—not out of reverence, but fear of calling something back.

• If a foal sleepwalks three times, the elders walk them into the woods. If they return, they’re watched forever.

They call it the Old Hunger. And they believe it listens.

The Seven Eyes Archipelago

“You ever seen a sailor sleep with both eyes open? You will.”

The folk of the pirate isles speak of dreams as tides—pulling you out, washing you in things not meant for land. They don’t speak of gods or realms. Just stories. Just curses.

• Ships hang empty hammocks for the drowned who follow.

• Red coral is worn on the tongue for the first hour after waking, to “bleed the salt from the dream.”

• Any sailor who dreams twice of the same storm is marooned or killed.

Lila came from that world, where love vanishes with the tide and even ghosts charge toll.

The Sunthorne Dominion

“Sleep is a privilege of the righteous. If you dream of fire, you must’ve lit the match.”

Sunthorne teaches that nightmares are punishments, not warnings. If the veil is thinning, it’s because you let it. If the Dreamweaver is faltering, it’s because you weren’t praying hard enough.

• Households pass down family purification rites, older than scripture.

• Children are taught to bind their soul with mantra before bed.

• It is said that confessing a dream can cleanse it. Or condemn you.

Gerrick once believed the fire was holy.

He doesn’t anymore.

Dol Marris and the Leximancers

“Words hold the world together. But now, some of them are going missing.”

In Dol Marris, scholars treat language like mortar—holding up the walls of reality one glyph at a time. But now, spells fail. Grammar bleeds. Books scream in their sleep.

• Scribes tattoo binding phrases down their arms in case they forget them.

• Glyphsmiths have begun to go missing, mid-sentence.

• Students are taught to read with blindfolds, to keep their minds from leaking into what they’re learning.

Vizious left that world chasing a silence shaped like a woman’s last smil

The Wanderers of Nameless Erdwelm

“Some songs aren’t sung. They just wait for you to sleep.”

They live in ruins of a lost empire, where no map leads and no name holds. To them, the Dreamworld is a forgotten story—unfinished and now waking up.

• They tattoo their dreams down their backs, one line per night.

• The old women hum lullabies in reverse, so the past doesn’t hear them coming.

• Bards whisper that to dream too deeply in Erdwelm is to wake up elsewhere, wearing someone else’s fate.

They carry their fear like a chorus.

And sing anyway.

What People Actually Know

Most of Xoru does not know the name of the Soulful Steelyard, or the Dreamweaver who bleeds beneath the world to hold the boundary shut.

But they know something’s wrong.

They feel it when the bread rises wrong. When mirrors don’t match. When a name you’ve never heard slips into your mouth like you’ve said it a thousand times.

In the end, no one needs a priest to tell them the world is changing.

Because they’ve already started leaving knives beneath the pillows.

The Cost of Forgetting

The Dreamweaver’s Tomb isn’t a legend. It’s a scar. A place where the wall between what’s real and what’s waiting wears thin. Most people don’t believe it’s real.

They believe in headaches. In babies born blind but speaking perfect high Sunthornic. In fires that burn blue.

But someone, somewhere, always knows better.

And when that someone stops holding the line—

The world won’t collapse all at once.

It’ll just begin to forget.

First your name. Then your face. Then the sky. Then waking itself.