Cairnveil Swarm

Field account

They looked like pale moths until the first landed on a cairn and became a tiny blank mask. Then the whole swarm settled. Hundreds of masks layered over the marker stones, hiding their cuts and changing the shape of the stack. When they lifted again, the road appeared to bend east where I knew it ran north. Cairnveil does not blind the eye; it teaches the eye a false arrangement. The swarm flowed around our lantern as white motes, laying borrowed shadows over cliffs and gaps. Jessa stepped toward what seemed a stair and found open air. We broke their pattern by scattering the top stones from every cairn in reach. Deprived of trusted shapes, the little spirits lost their common face and fled as sparks into the scree. Never navigate by a marker while masks cling to its lee side.

Observed behavior

The swarm avoids direct contact and circles ahead of travelers, occupying cairns, survey posts, and broken stair edges. It alters one landmark at a time, waiting for the group to act on the false reading before changing the next. When threatened, the masks form a larger face in the air and cast overlapping false ledges around it. Individuals are fragile, but striking the cloud merely scatters it toward more markers. The surest disruption is to make the landscape temporarily meaningless: lower cairns, cover signs, and navigate by rope, slope, or running water until the swarm disperses.