The Hollow Hills rose like sleeping beasts beneath a silver sky, their curves blanketed in bristling pines and thick morning mist. Aelira tightened the straps of her satchel as she and Kaelen emerged from the trees, stepping onto the worn path that wound upward.
"This place feels… wrong," she murmured.
Kaelen nodded, his gaze scanning the low-hanging clouds that clung to the hilltops like ghostly sentinels. "Because it is. This entire region was sealed after the War of Splinters. The veil here thinned to threads."
Aelira tilted her head. "What happens if the veil tears completely?"
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he drew a line in the dirt with the tip of his boot. "The world folds in on itself. Time bends. The dead speak too clearly, and the living forget who they are."
She swallowed hard.
The wind shifted. A cold breeze carried with it the scent of ash and something older—metallic, dry, ancient.
She touched the glowing sigil on her wrist. It had dimmed but remained warm against her skin, as if pulsing with a heartbeat not her own.
They pressed on, climbing the hills in silence. With each step, the air grew heavier, thicker, like walking through an unseen force. Shadows pooled where sunlight should have touched.
Suddenly, Kaelen halted.
"What is it?" Aelira whispered.
He crouched, pointing to a jagged mark etched into a flat stone beside the trail. "A threshold rune. Old magic—Fae-born. Meant to ward off spirits or trap them."
"Are we… stepping into a trap?"
Kaelen glanced up at her, then back to the rune. "If we are, it's already closed behind us."
Aelira didn't ask what that meant.
They continued, cresting the top of the first hill. What lay beyond made her heart stutter.
A ruined village—abandoned, broken, and half-swallowed by the earth. Crooked chimneys rose from crumbled homes. Stone walls were split, overtaken by vines that grew in unnatural spirals.
And in the center stood a blackened tree, dead but standing, with its roots wrapped around what looked like a well. The bark bore strange carvings—symbols Aelira could almost recognize.
"The second veil point," Kaelen said quietly. "This is where the next trial begins."
She took a hesitant step forward. "What kind of trial?"
He hesitated. "They say the veil asks you to face what you fear most."
Before she could ask more, a shiver ran through the ground—subtle, like a heartbeat deep below.
And the well moaned.
Not from wind or echo—but from something alive beneath it.
Aelira spun to Kaelen. "You hear that?"
He unsheathed his sword slowly. "Stay behind me."
The moment his blade cleared the scabbard, the carvings on the dead tree glowed a deep crimson. Mist thickened around them, swallowing the edges of the village. The air rang with a sharp, bone-deep cold.
Then, without warning, laughter echoed from the well.
Childlike. Echoing. Wrong.
Aelira's knees nearly buckled. "Kaelen—"
"Don't speak its name," he hissed, stepping in front of her.
The laughter turned to weeping. Soft at first, then loud, anguished.
"I know you," a voice sobbed from the well. "You let me die."
Aelira's breath hitched. "No…"
The wind gusted, and suddenly the figure of a young girl crawled from the darkness. Her eyes were sewn shut. Her hair was matted with earth. And her arms were outstretched—toward Aelira.
Kaelen swung his blade between them. "It's not real. It's a memory given form."
"I remember you," the girl moaned. "You promised to come back."
Aelira staggered backward. The memory surged from her dream—that same girl. Those same words.
"I don't know her," she whispered.
But deep inside, something did know. Something older than her waking self.
"Saelwyn," the girl whispered. "You left me in the fire."
The name cracked through Aelira's mind like lightning. She fell to her knees, clutching her head as visions rushed in—flames, screams, a burning altar.
Kaelen dropped beside her, grasping her shoulder. "Aelira! Focus. This is the veil testing your mind. Don't give in to it!"
Tears streamed down her face. "I can't—she's calling me—"
"You're not her," Kaelen said fiercely. "Not anymore. You are Aelira."
The dead girl paused. The crying ceased. Her sewn eyes tilted toward Kaelen.
Then she opened her mouth, and thousands of moths poured from her throat, their wings whispering in a language neither of them understood.
Kaelen threw up a warding sigil with his free hand, the air around them pulsing with white-hot light. The moths sizzled and scattered.
The figure crumbled into ash.
The wind died.
And silence returned.
Aelira gasped for breath, heart pounding.
Kaelen helped her stand, steadying her.
"You passed the second trial," he said quietly. "The veil showed you the guilt you carry. But you resisted it."
She shook her head. "I didn't resist. You pulled me out."
He gave her a faint smile. "Then perhaps the trial was for both of us."
They turned back toward the path. But Aelira paused once more, her eyes lingering on the ashes where the girl had stood.
A part of her still heard the voice calling.
You let me die.
She would find out what that meant.
No matter what it cost.