Returned from the Void

The Returned from the Void are the people who came back. Cast through the gates of the Null Expanse — or descended from those who were — they survived a dimension where names dissolve and reality does not hold, and returned to a world that wished they hadn''t.

Society calls them the Diminished, and does not mean it kindly. Many assume they descend from criminals; most keep them at a careful distance. In answer, the Returned hold to each other with a solidarity few lineages match.

Names matter to them above all — in the Void a name can be forgotten, so speaking one is an act of preservation. Silence is a survival reflex, and the need to prove they still belong to the real world never fully leaves them.

How anyone returns at all is the lineage''s defining fact: the only known door home opens when an Orvath is gravely wounded — a Void Gate tears open briefly and admits exactly one person. Whatever else is said about the Returned, each of them paid that price or watched someone else pay it.