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Children see it first.
Before language cages their thoughts. Before doubt hardens into certainty, they see how the world breathes. They hear music in the wind, see color in the shadows, and find meaning in the spaces between things. Adults call it imagination; they are wrong. It is memory.

There was a time when humanity was not blind to such things. When belief carried weight. When thought could shape the fabric and structure of reality. When man could call, and creation would answer, light would answer. They were not merely flesh and bone; they were vessels, conduits, born tethered to something brighter than matter.

But light is fragile. It must be guarded. Darkness requires nothing; it spreads on its own. And when corruption reached for the source from which all existence flowed, the risk was not suffering; it was collapse.

So humanity was altered. Their senses narrowed, their reach shortened. Doubt was stitched into instinct, and skepticism woven into blood. Generation by generation, the door to their awareness closed. Wonder became fantasy, inspiration became coincidence, and miracles became myth. The young could still glimpse the truth. But with time, their world would grow smaller, safer, and duller.

The great reset of humanity was carried out by beings so ancient that time itself held little meaning to them. Across countless worlds, they had been glimpsed at the edge of perception, mistaken for spirits, omens, or tricks of the mind. They possessed many names, but the one they claimed for themselves translated the same way in every reality: Mechanic.

They were not creators; they were custodians.

For ages beyond counting, they guarded the design entrusted to them and protected the source at its center. They neither hated humanity nor loved it — such things were irrelevant. They existed for a single purpose, and for an eternity that purpose was fulfilled without deviation.

Until something changed.

A signal appeared beyond accepted parameters: a human mind exceeding permitted thresholds. Perception reaching beyond the sealed veil. Worse, pattern recognition approaching what humanity had once been. It should not have been possible.

Across realms without names, calculations began. Outcomes diverged. Probabilities multiplied. For the first time in ages, uncertainty entered the equation. Mechanics convened, and an order was given: Observe, repair, or remove.

Far below, unaware that existence itself had turned its gaze toward him, a young man knelt in a field of shimmering grass, eyes closed, listening. He could hear the rhythm beneath the wind, the quiet song threaded through everything. Hidden colors shimmered within the stone around him. He knew it was not imagination, nor delusion, but something real. Something waiting, just beyond the veil of human perception. He smiled, like a child who had just remembered a forgotten dream, not knowing that somewhere beyond sight, something ancient had taken notice.