The Echo is a resonance that binds the living and the dead. Some call it divine judgment. Others call it the earth’s final, unbroken hum. Where this resonance grows strong, the boundary between life and death frays. That boundary is the Veil. When the Veil thins, the dead do not rest. They walk.

The living call these risen dead the Hushed, a name that still carries the old parental warning: hush. Their voices, when they speak at all, are fragments of forgotten prayers and unfinished lives, looping endlessly through the night.

In places where the Veil is especially weak, the air itself changes. These regions are known as Mist Warrens: pockets of unnatural fog, heavy silence, or a strange shimmer that appears even on clear days. Inside them the Hushed grow stronger, the living feel the pull of the Echo more keenly, and the ordinary rules of the world begin to fail.