4308.274 · September 30, 1988 AD
Where the Veil Wears Thin
Dawn breaks cold over Broken Hill Cemetery, mist clinging to weathered headstones like something reluctant to let go. Violet walks between the graves toward the figure waiting beneath the red gum—Ethan, whose eyes hold none of their usual warmth. Only warning. He speaks of dreams that feel like messages, of caves carved with symbols older than language, of shapes that move wrong in the darkness. The dead are listening. And they are not the only ones.
30 September 1988. First light.
The Girl Guides bus leaves for Silverton in a few hours. Violet should be packing, should be thinking of campfires and starlit skies and the ordinary adventures of teenage friendship. Instead, she walks through morning mist toward a cemetery rendezvous with a boy who sees things others can't.
Ethan waits beneath the ancient red gum, its roots breaking through the earth like bones refusing burial. The words he carries are heavier than any she's heard from him before. Dreams of underground caves, their walls carved with sigils that predate language. Figures that glide through darkness with limbs at impossible angles. A gathering he witnessed near the Silver Queen mine—cars tucked into scrub, people standing in a clearing where the air tore open in swirling colours that weren't quite fire, weren't quite light.
There are forces woven through this place that don't want to be named.
When they finally part, Violet lingers at the cemetery gates. Something compels her to turn back. Beneath the red gum stands a woman dressed in the austere lines of another century, her eyes urgent, imploring.
She blinks, and the figure is gone.
