The Veilborn Awakens
Blackthorn Hold had always been a fortress of shadow and blood—but with Nyra's arrival, it began to feel… haunted.
Not by ghosts.
By possibility.
By the fragile hope that something long cursed could still be holy.
Nyra had barely slept since the Hollow Ones whispered her name.
Now she stood at the high balcony beside Lyra, staring out at the dawn. Her silver lashes caught the sun like frost.
"Do you hate them?" Nyra asked softly.
Lyra didn't pretend not to understand.
"The ones who took me? The ones who let them?"
Lyra's voice was careful. "I hate what they did. I hate what they feared."
"But not them?"
Lyra placed a hand on her daughter's back. "If I hate blindly, I become what they made me."
Nyra was quiet.
Then: "I saw things in the mist. Things that looked like people, but they weren't. One had your face."
Lyra stilled.
That… wasn't possible.
Unless the Hollow Ones had crossed another threshold—one even she hadn't foreseen.
Down in the archives, Elder Sevra ran her fingers over an ancient scroll.
The prophecy was older than the Hold itself—inked before the walls were raised.
"A child shall come from flame and broken bonds.
Neither bound to darkness nor light.
She shall open the Veil or seal it shut forever."
"She's the key," Sevra whispered. "But she's not the lock."
In the great hall, Kade and Cassian stood shoulder-to-shoulder before a growing assembly of wolves, nobles, and mages.
Cassian spoke first.
"The Hollow Ones have breached every old ward we trusted. They're evolving."
Kade continued, "We can no longer afford divided rule. Not when they move from within."
A low murmur spread.
Cassian raised his hand. "This is not a claim of power. It's a vow."
Kade nodded. "From this day forward, we rule together."
Twin kings. One throne.
A dangerous move—but a necessary one.
One elder—Lord Dareth of Hollowbrook House—rose from the crowd.
His eyes lingered too long on Nyra's empty chair.
"We give you our fealty," he said smoothly. "But know this—if the girl falters, so does everything we build."
That night, Nyra wandered the halls alone.
She followed a voice only she could hear.
It led her down stone steps laced in moss… into the old crypt.
There, beneath a shattered statue of the first wolf goddess, she found it:
A mirror.
Not of glass—but of black water.
And in it, she saw not herself—
—but three versions of her.
One wrapped in light. One dripping in shadow. One crowned in fire.
They all stared at her.
And whispered in perfect unison:
"Choose."
Far above, Lyra sat bolt upright in bed.
Her heart thundered.
Something had shifted.
She could no longer feel Nyra's bond.
As if it had slipped into another world.
A veiled one.
Nyra reached out toward the black mirror.
The water didn't ripple.
Didn't reflect.
It watched.
Each version of herself shimmered in the surface—three possible futures. Three roads only she could walk.
The one wreathed in light wore a circlet of stars, her hand held out in peace.
The one wrapped in shadows held a blade dripping in silver blood.
And the third—crowned in fire—smiled like a girl who had nothing left to lose.
"Which am I?" she whispered.
The answer came not in words—but in a pulse.
A burning ache in her chest, just over her heart, where her mother's mark had started to mirror itself in her skin.
"None of us," the mirror said.
"Yet."
Lyra stormed through the lower halls, barefoot and wild-eyed.
"Find her!" she barked at the guards. "Search every sealed wing, every crypt—she's not responding to the bond."
Cassian was already at her side, and Kade just behind him. Their wolves were pacing beneath their skin, restless.
"She was drawn somewhere," Cassian said. "She didn't run. She answered."
"She shouldn't be able to cross into the Veil," Lyra muttered. "Not without an anchor."
Kade frowned. "Unless someone already opened it for her."
They froze.
And in that silence, they all came to the same thought.
Someone in the Hold had betrayed them.
In the east wing, beneath the Council library, Elder Sevra closed the vault with shaking hands.
She had seen this power once before.
In Lyra.
But this… this was stronger. Wilder. Unshaped.
Veilborn.
She whispered the name like a prayer. Or a curse.
But someone was watching her.
As she turned, a tall figure stepped from the shadows—cloaked in blue, with a House sigil stitched in faded gold:
Lord Dareth of Hollowbrook.
"You said she wouldn't cross the mirror until her thirteenth moon," Sevra said warily.
"She's early," Dareth replied, voice like ice cracking. "But still on time for what we need."
Sevra stiffened. "This wasn't the plan."
"The Hollow Ones don't wait for plans," he said. "And neither should we."
Back in the crypt, Nyra touched the surface of the mirror.
Power surged into her fingers—hot and cold at once.
And suddenly—
She was somewhere else.
Floating.
Between worlds.
She saw visions.
The fall of Blackthorn Hold.
Her mother chained in the old tower.
Her fathers dead at her feet.
And above it all: the Hollow Ones wearing the faces of wolves she once loved.
"You can stop this," the voices whispered.
"But only if you choose what they never let you be."
Nyra opened her eyes—
And fire flared in her pupils.
In the war chamber above, Lyra suddenly stumbled, one hand on her chest.
"She's crossed," she breathed.
Cassian caught her.
Kade's expression darkened. "Into the Veil?"
"No," she whispered. "She's become it."
And far below Blackthorn Hold, in the locked prison beneath the cliffs, something ancient woke.
A creature bound in iron and runes began to smile.
Because the child was awakening.
And it remembered her mother's scream the night it was sealed.