With each inch the island crept, it approached an inverted sea floor arcane sigil. It was a city-sized mandala of sharp, symmetrically overlapping hands, dormant beneath the inland sea, activating the instant the mobile landmass centered above it. Plumes migrated upward like a titanic hydrothermal vent, releasing trillions of imperial topaz-like sparkles as the symbol seemed to dim to obscurity in the dark waters.

It flash-activated, erecting a massive pillar of steaming auroral light jutting upward into the heavens,  trapping the island, leaving no coastal edge unbarricaded. This spectacle was easily visible from space, instantly alarming the colossal orbital headquarters of BUREAU ZERØ, a sprawling city-sized fortress hovering, orbiting in the shadow of Teorlunx, just one of Orst's many moons.

The streak of light aligned directly with the Arx, shielded only by the moon. The massive beam pinballed between moons —Portu, Sen'ov, Ghena, continuing its celestial laser show halfway around Orst's orbit before arcing back to strike Teorlunx once more. It was like a giant unlock pattern drawn across the night sky. An astrological keycode.

Agent Helle Nygaard, as well as an audience of several other agents, observed the unprecedented phenomenon relatively breathless as the vacuum distortion systems of the Arx roared into high gear. [i]“A.U.R.I.A., what is going on?”[/i]

[i]“Anomaly detected. Updating impact projections. Initiating contingency protocols. Impact shields, evacuation corridors, and orbital defense arrays are being brought online. I would like to stress that moons are not generally expected to behave this way–”[/i]

On the surface of Orst, glimpses of the horizon stretching islands could be seen in the air like northern lights. All the agents in the observatory stood in awe, wide-eyed, jaws agape, as a stream of white light shot from Teorlunx toward Orst, revealing an external planetary layer that had remained unknown until now. It was hard to put into words the marvel revealed to them.

Among Orst’s clouds exists a plane, one invisible, thinner than even the air at that altitude—[i][b]The Veilline[/b][/i]. Like a never-ending archipelago, it stretched across the upper reaches of the troposphere, encircling Orst in a circumferential band along a thin seam of reality itself. Along its width, the sky was a vast frontier. Gravity loosened its hold, allowing massive islands bearing everything from ruins to lively cities to drift in uneasy suspension.

Within the countless stretch of islands was the Palace of Oerelle on the island of Saullies, a brutalist monolith strangled by enormous thorned vines like a kraken’s tendrils. A great chilling curse had long ago freeze-framed the surrounding forest, leaving them trapped in a perpetual winter like a glorified snowglobe. The floating island gracefully pirouetted before breaching the barrier between worlds, fully solidifying in Orst’s sky above the inland sea.

[i]"A.U.R.I.A., report on the dimensional veil."[/i]

[i]"The barrier is exhibiting instability at multiple points. Several large landmasses have already begun breaching the boundary and are slowly descending toward Orst. All while several stretches of the ring world have already begun fading away."[/i]

Saullies splintered, its frozen mass breaking into wintry fragments, descending across Orst in opposing directions: Port Solt, Solaria, Kno, the Moving Island, the Ténemarais coast, and its western archipelago. Some regions got it worse than others on the receiving end of hailstorms of ice, thorns, and stone. At the same time, the largest chunk bearing the entire Palace of Oerelle crashed just off the eastern shore of the moving island with a thundering impact, overloading the island's coastal cliffs and coves with a tsunami of salty slush and sediment until it washed over the opposite end, indiscriminately bulldozing woodlands, ruins, and Skogatti settlements off into the inland sea.

The opening of the Veilline’s gates brought forth an unparalleled amount of destruction on a day when a cluster of meteorites had already struck the continent's dense timberlands. Chunks of Saullies appeared to follow right in their trail, bombarding what should have been an already crater-laden land.