Kael awoke to silence.
Not peace. Never that. Just the kind of hush that pressed against the ribs and made a man's own heartbeat feel like a trespass.
Tenebris was curled low in the corners of his thoughts, a whisper of presence in his lungs and bones. Resting, but watching. Always watching.
He sat up, joints aching from the cot's stone slab and straw padding. No pillow. No luxury. Not for the Whisperers' newest conscript. Especially not for a shadow-bound orphan with the wrong name and worse blood.
A knock—three sharp taps.
He opened the cell door.
A boy—maybe sixteen, spindly as a stalk and grinning like he'd stolen something—stood there in an oversized cloak and patchwork boots. A rat perched on his shoulder, chewing something it had no business chewing.
"You're Kael," the boy said, like they were old friends. "Aren't you?"
Kael squinted. "Who's asking?"
"Bran. Your new guide. Officially. Unofficially, I drew the shortest bone."
The rat squeaked.
Kael stared.
"Don't mind him," Bran added. "That's Pickle. He's judgmental."
Kael blinked. "They send you to babysit me?"
"They send me to make sure you don't piss yourself in the stairwell, actually. Come on. I'll show you the place."
The Whisperers' compound wasn't a fortress in the way castles were. It was older. Stranger. Built downward, like the stone had hollowed itself around secrets.
The main halls were wide and vaulted, lit by lanterns that glowed without flame—sigilstone, Bran called them. The walls bore no tapestries, no heraldry. Just old etchings in forgotten tongues and symbols Kael's eyes refused to linger on.
"They say the Veilbound helped build the lower levels," Bran said over his shoulder as they walked. "Before the Crown turned on them. Before the Shattering."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Veilbound?"
Bran shot him a grin. "Oh, right. You're new-new. You'll hear whispers. Mostly bad. Mostly earned. They're the ones like you. Shadow-bound. Too unstable to trust, too useful to kill."
Kael snorted. "Charming."
"They say the Veilbound weren't just victims of the Shattering. They remember what magic was before."
Before.
That word itched like a splinter in Kael's mind.
He said nothing.
They passed training halls: one where recruits practiced silent spellwork with fingers moving in complex weaves, another where two Whisperers sparred using only shadows and misdirection. Kael paused to watch.
Bran glanced at him. "Don't get ideas. You're not cleared for training yet. Not until they finish cataloguing your… quirks."
"Quirks."
"Your particular brand of nightmare."
Kael smirked.
They descended further.
Here, the air grew colder. The stones older. Carvings gave way to walls that breathed shadow—soft veins of black stone that pulsed faintly as they passed. Kael felt Tenebris stir, interested again.
At the final landing, a door of scorched oak waited.
Bran knocked twice, waited, then opened it without ceremony.
"Visitor for you, old wolf."
Inside, the room smelled of dust, ink, and burnt metal. Books lined every wall, bound in leather and wrapped in warding thread. A single figure sat hunched over a workbench, gray-bearded and broad-shouldered, with one leg missing and a cane resting against the desk.
"Kael Veyne," the man said without looking up. "Come closer."
Kael obeyed.
Bran gave a mock salute and ducked out.
The older man turned. One of his eyes was glass. The other, pale and human, studied Kael like a blade he meant to sharpen.
"Ser Whitmer," the man said. "Or just Whit, if you're not an idiot. Sit."
Kael sat.
"You've met the Quiet Room," Whitmer said. "You're still breathing. That's something."
Kael shrugged.
Whitmer lit a pipe. "You've got a stink about you. Like old shadow. You and your creature bonded early?"
"Tenebris found me," Kael said. "Years ago."
"Mm. That's worse."
He puffed smoke, then leaned forward, voice low. "You'll be tempted to believe your shadow's your strength. That it makes you whole. Don't. It's a wound with a voice. Every gift it offers has a barb hidden inside."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "I don't need a sermon."
"You need the truth. That's rarer."
A long pause.
Then Whitmer reached into a drawer and pulled out an iron cube covered in runes.
"This is a Veilbound relic. Not Crown-sanctioned. I shouldn't have it. But I want to see what your shadow does when you touch it."
Kael hesitated.
Tenebris surged in his blood like a thrill. Not warning—wanting.
He touched the cube.
Nothing happened. Then—
Flicker.
Not a vision. Not quite. Just feeling.
Like standing on a battlefield long emptied, where the stones remember screaming. Like the taste of ash in your mouth and not knowing why.
Tenebris whispered, softly.
This was once a key.
Kael pulled back.
Whitmer nodded. "It remembers you. Or something like you. The Veilbound didn't just touch the Duskveil. They understood it. That's why the Crown fears them."
Kael looked up. "Are they all dead?"
A pause.
"No."
Later, Bran led him to a terrace overlooking the lower compound. Fog drifted there, thin and silver, even indoors. Not mist. Not quite. But close.
"Some say that's what's left of the Duskveil after it touches magic," Bran said quietly. "It clings. It watches."
Kael stared.
A figure moved down below, across the fog. A woman in a silver-threaded cloak. Her braid swung like a blade at her back. She didn't look up.
Kael didn't call out.
He just watched.
And the fog… shifted.
Not around her.
Around him.
Tenebris tensed.
She's part of this.
Kael didn't respond.
Because he knew.
Somehow, he already knew.