Episode Title: "The Hollow of Worlds"

[Transcript of the Archivist's Research [Recorded September 12, 2025]]

Subject: Historical significance of the Silk Road and its connection to "◬" and the disappearance of The Choir's Page 13.

Start of Transcript:

ARCHIVIST: Good evening. As you well know, my investigations often lead me down less traveled paths, and tonight is no exception. We delve into the mystic and the historic intertwined in the tale of the Silk Road, but viewed through a lens polished with the ink of The Ashen Gospel and the shadow of the glyph known as "◬".

[PAUSE]

The Silk Road - a network of trade routes connecting the East and West, from the 2nd century BCE to the 18th century. This road was not just a path of commerce but of ideas, cultures, and, intriguingly, mysticisms and secrets passed in hushed tones.

[SOUND OF PAPER FLIPPING]

Here, in the marginalia of a recovered Choir ledger, missing Page 13 as it surprisingly may seem, I stumbled upon a curious reference, an anomaly. The footnote, hastily scribbled, reads: "Beneath the shadow of the ◬, the ancient caravans veiled more than silk and spice."

[PAUSE, SOUND OF RUSTLING PAPER]

Why reference ◬ here, in a document centuries old, about a trade route? Further scrutiny leads us to an ancient sect, perhaps contemporaries or precursors to the cult known as The Pale Veil.

[SLIGHT COUGH]

Their influence, spanning the vast deserts and high mountains, suggests a clandestine purpose woven through the very routes traders walked. What were they moving? Spices, textiles, jewels... or was it something less tangible? Knowledge, perhaps, or forbidden rituals?

[Exhibit A: Fragment of an ancient map showing overlapping trade routes and ley lines marked with the glyph ◬]

Notice here how the lines intersect, locations marked with our glyph. The pattern forms a barely perceptible web, a cartographer’s whisper of the arcane.

[PAUSE]

Now, turning our attention to the Ashen Gospel's forgotten verse, the one coyly numbered but rarely discussed. It speaks of a 'veil', not unlike our 'Pale Veil', that separates the seen from the unseen, the known from the buried. This verse was only found in editions predating the collapse of the Eastern route. Coincidence seems skeptical, no?

[SOUND OF CLICKING, A SOFT HUM OF PROJECTOR]

Here's a depiction from an archaeological site not far from what was once a bustling Silk Road market town. Observe the wall carvings; figures draped in veils standing around a giant glyph, the same ◬, carved into the earth itself.

[A BEAT OF SILENCE]

Is it not chilling to ponder? That perhaps the Silk Road was more artery than route, pumping not just economic lifeblood but also a dark pulse through the heart of civilizations?

[EXHIBIT B: Photographic slides of the excavated site, showing detailed veiled figures and the glyph]

But let's spiral back to the present, to the piece that perhaps ties this all too uncomfortably close to our today - the Thin Boy. You remember him, the child who appears in records only when something ominous looms. His last sighting? Hollow Pines, another crossroad, not of land but of realities.

[PAUSE, SOUND OF RUSTLING PAPERS]

In his hands, a fragment of parchment, reportedly part of Page 13, the missing page. It bore a prophecy, or a warning: "On the eve of the second cycle, the mortal coil must be reset. We do not sleep. We wait."

[LONG PAUSE]

We wait... For what? Rebirth? Reawakening? Or the realization that the Silk Road never closed, merely shifted its cargo from the tangible to the realms of shadows and whispers?

[Exhibit C: A sketch of the Thin Boy holding the parchment, eyes wide, a look of foreboding encasing his young face]

As we stand at today's crossroads, the digital highways echoing the dusty Silk Road paths, what veils might we be weaving, what glyphs are we laying down for future archivists to puzzle over?

[END OF PRESENTATION, THE SOUND OF THE PROJECTOR SHUTTING DOWN]

ARCHIVIST: So, listeners, as the lights dim, remember the power of the connected worlds, earthly or otherwise. Tread carefully in the shadows of the new roads. For in the world of the Pale Veil, some paths are best left untrodden.

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

[Marginal Note: Found scribbled in the corner of the Archivist's notebook] "We do not sleep. We wait, indeed. But are we the waited, or those waiting?"

[END OF EPISODE] Dark forebodings tangle with historic routes, as the present mirrors the past, and the Silk Road stretches unseen into the shadows of today. May the echoes of your steps be soft and your paths lit by more than the moon's pale veil.