Vortex Origins

Planet Varagos.

A lone titan drifting in the void. The only planet in its solar system.

Though only half the size of its sun, its scale was staggering—too large to feel real, too ancient to be understood. It loomed like a sleeping colossus in the dark, its gravity stretching far beyond its atmosphere. Two moons circled the vast world: one veiled in an eerie crimson glow, the other glinting with the golden blaze of the sun. It light painted the surface in a haunting, ethereal sheen.

But the beauty of Varagos was a mask.

Half of the planet was missing. Not in the physical sense—land still stretched beneath the sky—but nothing could be seen past the towering fog that swallowed the horizon. It was not mist, not vapor, not a trick of the atmosphere. It was something else. Something that didn't belong.

At the edges, the fog coiled in dense, shifting walls—an unbroken boundary between the known and the lost. But sometimes, just for a breath, shapes flickered in the depths—towering spires, ruined cities, landscapes that felt both ancient and unreal. As if the land within existed outside of time, trapped in a memory that refused to fade.

The fog had weight. Purpose.

It wasn't a storm to be weathered—it was a barrier. A prison. Whether it was meant to keep something in or to stop the outside world from reaching inside, no one knew.

They only knew one thing.

Anything that entered ever returned.

Ships that dared approach the mist were swallowed whole. No signals. No debris. No screams. Just silence. The kind that buried itself in the bones, leaving only whispers of horror in its wake.