From the Veiled Annals of the Old World,
Kept in the Dust-Halls of Pre-Dawn Memory
Before the skies were given borders and the winds learned obedience, there was Vaelith, whom the oldest tongues named Fear na Gaoithe Saor—the Free Wind Given Form. He was not merely master of air, but its intent: motion without destination, breath without ownership, the will to wander unchained. Where Pyrion burned with purpose and Thalyra flowed toward return, Vaelith existed only to be unheld.
The Chroniclers agree on this much: Vaelith was the god least shaped by reverence, and the one most diminished by worship. He refused temples, for walls insulted him. He rejected fixed names, shedding them as easily as clouds shed rain. Those who were touched by him were not granted command, but release: the loosening of roots, the unlearning of fear, the ache to move even when no road lay ahead.
When Vaelith chose to be seen—an act he performed rarely and without warning—he appeared as a tall, shifting figure whose edges could not be cleanly traced. Witnesses described him as ever in motion, as though the world itself struggled to keep him in focus. His form was lean and wind-worn, carved as if from stormlight and pale sky, with skin the color of dawn-clouds before they burn away.
His hair was long and pale, streaming upward or sideways regardless of gravity, braided with feathers from birds that no longer exist. His eyes were said to be hollowed with sky-depth, reflecting not the present moment but the distance between places. When he spoke, his voice arrived a breath before his words, carrying the scent of rain, salt, and far mountains.
Vaelith bore no crown. Around his neck hung no sigil of rule. His only mark was a mantle of tattered vapors—An Brat Sgaoilte—which unfurled behind him like a living banner, whispering in forgotten tongues. Some accounts insist the mantle was not worn, but grown, woven from every promise of escape ever dreamed by mortals.
Vaelith was the patron of crossings: mountain passes, open seas, thresholds left unguarded. He was invoked by sailors who trusted the horizon more than the shore, and by messengers who carried truths too dangerous to stay still. Yet he was never a god of safety. Many who followed his call were lost, scattered, or unmade—not by malice, but by the simple truth that freedom offers no guarantees.
In the councils of the Five, Vaelith was the most restless. He walked out of debates unfinished, scattered carefully laid plans with careless laughter, and warned—always—that permanence was a lie mortals and gods alike told themselves to sleep at night. The Annals record that he alone refused to bind the world too tightly, arguing that stagnation was a subtler death than fire or flood.
When the War of the Five broke the Old World, Vaelith did not fight as the others did. He raised no armies of storm nor sought dominion over the skies. Instead, he unraveled paths, scattered hosts, and opened routes that should not have existed. He was chaos not of destruction, but of escape—and for this, he was named a traitor to order.
His sealing was devised with grim care, for none could cage the wind without first teaching it stillness.
Vaelith was not bound by chains nor stone, but by absence.
The surviving records speak of Dùn an Anála Dheireannaich—the Fortress of the Last Breath. It was not a place upon the map, but a hollow carved into the world itself, high above the firmament where air thins into nothing. There, the winds fall silent, and even thought struggles to move.
To cast Vaelith away, the victors did not strike him down. Instead, they drew him into that airless wound and sealed it by closing all passages—physical, spiritual, and remembered. His name was struck from common prayer. His sigils were erased. The paths he once opened were folded shut.
Thus, Vaelith was imprisoned not by force, but by forgetting.
Yet the Annals end with a warning written in a different hand, as though added long after the dust had settled:
Wherever a road breaks free of its ending,
Wherever a storm refuses command,
Wherever a soul chooses the horizon over the hearth—
There, the breath of Vaelith still moves.
The Chroniclers do not claim he sleeps, nor that he waits. Only that wind cannot be slain—only delayed, diverted, or denied a name.
And names, as the Old World learned too late, are never forever.