The Bleed

The Bleed is the name given to the places and moments where the two verses leak into each other. It is not one thing, it is a set of concrete mechanics, and every inhabitant of either layer will encounter at least one form of it in their lifetime.

1. Bleed Locations. Physical places where reality is thin. There are five canonized pairs, each site in FateBreak shares a twin across in Wheel of Ruin. Crossings at these sites can be scrying (vision-only), ritual (monks who have studied the crossing for years), portal (deliberately opened, usually at catastrophic cost), uncontrolled (one-way leaks; things come out, nothing goes back), or cosmic-lock (prisons holding something older than creation).

2. Bleed Events. Scheduled, or unscheduled, moments when the Bleed widens enough to affect everyone. Wars, visitations, extinctions, migrations. When a Bleed Event fires, the Chronicler announces it on the World News feed so every adventurer in both verses knows.

3. Verse Wanderers. People, or things, who crossed and never fully went home. Some remember. Most do not. A few forget on purpose.

4. Lost & Found Artefacts. A weapon declared lost to the Bleed in one season may reappear centuries later in the other verse, rebalanced, re-named, sometimes re-cursed.

To inhabitants of either layer, the Bleed is the single most important fact about the shape of reality. It is how they know they are not alone.