The Sundrown Wilds breathe stories into being, but not all of them are whole. Some never find an ending, their names lost before they can take root in the world. These are the Flickerkin - whispers without form, the beginnings of myths that never fully coalesce. They drift unseen through the Wilds, clinging to the remnants of bark, bone, and forgotten relics, their presence felt but rarely glimpsed.

Those who wander too deep into the Wilds often speak of shifting shadows that move when unobserved, glimpsed figures at the edges of vision, or laughter that vanishes the moment one tries to listen. Some say they are the first echoes of legends, waiting to be spoken into existence. Others insist they are dreams that escaped their dreamers, lost to the waking world with nowhere to go. The truth - if such a thing can be said to exist in the Wilds - is uncertain.

It is said that to name a Flickerkin is to define it and grant it shape and purpose within the stories of the Wilds. Some scholars believe these beings seek out travelers, hoping to be given form through recognition. Others warn that not all Flickerkin should be spoken into being. A name might solidify them, but it does not choose what they become.

Even those who scoff at tales of the Flickerkin admit that something moves within the Sundrown Wilds that cannot be easily explained. Their influence lingers in places where paths turn back on themselves, shadows stretch the wrong way, and voices call your name, but no one is there. Some say they are harmless, mere echoes of half-forgotten stories. Others believe they warn of what happens to those who lose themselves in the Wilds - not entirely gone, but never truly present.

 But if they are nothing more than flickers of the unreal, why do their footprints sometimes remain?

“They are not spirits, nor fae, nor echoes of the dead, yet they are all these things at once. Half-formed myths that drift upon the wind, flickering like candlelight in a storm. Name them, and they become something real. Ignore them, and they fade.”
 -  Morrighan Quell, itinerant chronicler, known for her extensive studies on ephemeral phenomena.

“The Flickerkin belong to that strange liminal space between fear and curiosity. They are the things we nearly remember, the stories we almost told, the figures we glimpse in the periphery of our thoughts. To look upon them is to be uncertain, and uncertainty, in the Wilds, is a dangerous thing indeed.”
 - Kaelthir the Twice-Written, historian of vanished things.