Nyxia crouched in the underbrush, one gloved hand pressed to the soil.
Warm.
The earth should've been cool this deep into the Kaldorei wilds. Moonlight filtered down in broken ribbons, silvering her skin, but something pulsed beneath the ground—like breath, like heat, like the forest was fevered.
She rose silently, bow in hand, eyes scanning the clearing ahead. Loque'nahak prowled at her flank, fur bristling. His ears were flat, his throat rumbling in a low growl that vibrated through the soles of her feet. He didn't make noise unless the threat was wrong.
"Show yourself," she whispered.
A shadow darted across the clearing. Fast. Too fast. She loosed an arrow before thinking, instincts leading. The shaft struck bark. Missed. Not possible.
She heard the growl before she saw it—something barreled from the trees at impossible speed, shimmering like heat distortion. Nyxia twisted sideways, drawing her twin crescent blades in one fluid motion. The thing lunged. She slashed low, felt resistance—and then nothing. Her blade had passed through it like fog.
Loque roared. The creature turned on him, mouth opening in a scream that never made sound. Nyxia slammed into its side with a Mongoose Bite, blades cutting deep.
No blood.
Instead, light poured from the wounds—thin, static-filled threads that unraveled as it staggered backward.
"What in Elune's name—?"
The creature glitched.
For half a second it flickered, replaced by something else: a human male in Stormwind robes, face frozen in panic, mouth moving on mute. Then it snapped back into the snarling beast. Loque tackled it mid-transition, pinning it with spectral fangs.
Nyxia didn't hesitate. She plunged both blades into its core and twisted.
The body convulsed once—then exploded into vapor. Not smoke. Not mist.
Pixels.
Floating shards of light drifted up and vanished into the treetops.
She backed away slowly, breathing hard, blades dripping nothing. Loque padded to her side, bloodless but rattled.
Nyxia scanned the area, heart hammering.
No tracks. No scent.
Only one thing remained where the beast fell—a half-scorched insignia of Stormwind, etched into a coin-sized medallion.
Her father's old adventuring partner had carried one just like it.
Nyxia sat by the fire, sharpening one of her blades even though it didn't need it. The motion was ritual. Soothing. Mechanical. Loque'nahak dozed nearby, his breath shallow, ears twitching at every crack of the woods.
The coin sat in her palm, still warm.
She'd seen enchantments fail. She'd seen cursed beasts, fel-infused horrors, corrupted elementals. But that thing in the clearing wasn't possessed. It was... projected. As if it had been stitched into reality with clumsy hands and too little thread.
And now it was gone, like it had never existed at all.
She turned the coin over. The Stormwind lion insignia was scorched along the edge. But just beneath the rim, she spotted something else—an arcane script burned in a spiral, so small it looked accidental. Not a rune. A signature.
She narrowed her eyes.
S.M.
Solas Mel'theran.
The Archmage her father had traveled to Stormwind to find.
Nyxia leaned back, opened her pack, and pulled out the leather-wrapped letter she'd carried for weeks. It had arrived by enchanted kestrel. No markings. No sender. But the wax seal on the parchment—twin crescent moons crossed with an arrow—was unmistakable.
Her father's sign.
She unrolled it slowly, eyes skimming the familiar handwriting.
Nyxia—If this reaches you, I've gone deeper than I meant to. The wards are failing. I thought it was residual ley instability, but I was wrong. It's not the leylines. It's the world.The world is… different.Solas thinks there's a shroud over it. Something layered. We've both seen things—people repeating themselves, objects vanishing, time loops. I've started forgetting things. Faces. Names.I think the Veil is real. And it doesn't want us seeing it.If I don't return—
The ink smeared. Words dissolved into tangled glyphs, shapes that twitched when she looked at them too long. She blinked. The symbols didn't stop.
Don't trust—
The parchment went blank.
Just like that.
Nyxia stared, unblinking.
The fire crackled. Loque let out a low growl.
She looked up. The trees weren't swaying. The wind had stopped.
Everything around her held still, like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
Then, from the shadows just beyond the firelight—
A voice.
No mouth. No shape. Just words, spoken in a tone that wasn't a sound so much as a correction.
"You're not supposed to see this."
And then—
"Correction in progress."
The voice wasn't heard—it happened.
Nyxia's vision split. Not like a hallucination. Like a window cracking. One moment she was by the fire, Loque at her side. The next—
She stood in Stormwind.
But it was wrong.
The stone walls shimmered like water. The light was too clean, too bright—like a painting that hadn't finished drying. The people moved around her on fixed paths, smiling too often. Speaking in loops.
"Such fine weather.""Have you seen the new gryphon models?""Such fine weather.""Have you—"
She turned.
Her father stood twenty paces away in his old battle leathers, younger than she remembered him, hair streaked with silver instead of white. He was speaking to a man cloaked in blue and gold—Solas, it had to be. But Solas's face was... blurred. No matter how long she looked, the details shifted. Beard, no beard. Hood, no hood. Human. Elf. Back again.
The conversation replayed on a loop. Four lines. Over and over.
"You said it was a leyline problem.""I was wrong.""Then what the hell are we standing in?""Something that thinks it's real."
Again.
"You said it was a leyline problem.""I was wrong.""Then what the hell are we standing in?""Something that thinks it's real."
Nyxia moved toward them.
The air shimmered with resistance, like trying to walk underwater. Her feet barely made contact with the ground, and the sound of her steps was... muted. She reached out—
And Solas turned. Not the one in the loop.
A second version. Standing behind the scene. Watching her.
Eyes glowing white, face clean and still. His mouth moved.
"Nyxia, you're early."
The world collapsed.
Not exploded. Collapsed. The walls folded inward like collapsing geometry. The air was sucked into a center point she couldn't see. Her body stretched, pulled toward that same vanishing mark. Not physically—fundamentally. Like something was trying to reduce her back to code.
Correction in progress.
She screamed.
And woke.
She was back by the fire, drenched in sweat, Loque pressed against her side, fur standing on end. Her hand throbbed. She looked down.
A crescent-shaped burn seared across her palm. Not a wound. A mark.
It shimmered faintly with the same color as the medallion—the Veil's color.