Corren didn't look back.
The Veil remained hidden in the mountain's bones, but he felt it behind him—fraying, silent, watching. The air outside was colder than he remembered. Cleaner. But even as he walked free, the Song didn't quiet. It hummed faintly through every breath. Less like a warning now. More like a shadow.
He made it to the ridge by nightfall. From there, the forest stretched wide and dim under cloudlight. Each step away from the Veil felt heavier, as though something was trying to keep him tethered.
The truth clung to him like smoke.
And something else had changed.
During the escape—when the Song had fractured—he'd felt something new unravel. A pull. A resonance. As if he could now attach part of a song—someone's fear, pain, or fate—onto them like thread. And then break it.
He'd done it to Alsen. Attached the terror and shattered it. It worked.
But it took something from him.
He hadn't noticed at first. Not until the next night, when sleep came fast—and dreams came faster.
His mother stood in the doorway again, that same shadowed silhouette. But this time, she wasn't humming. She was screaming. Not in pain—just sound. Raw, distorted. Unhuman.
And Corren couldn't move.
He woke gasping, blood on his tongue from biting his own cheek.
Each time he used the new ability, something frayed.
He didn't know what part of him was being lost.
But he knew it wasn't coming back.
They weren't building anything sacred down there. Not sanctuary. Not future. Just revenge. The Veil hadn't tried to raise the Gifted—they had tried to weaponize them. And the dead children they'd claimed were justified casualties? Maxwell. Merrian. It wasn't just betrayal. It was violation.
He hadn't meant to protect them. Not at first. But now he couldn't forget he had.
At the edge of a dried-out glade, Corren stopped. He stood still until the stars showed through. No fire. No camp. Just thought.
The Veil hadn't collapsed in stone—but it had unraveled. Something broken now sang behind him, faint and off-key. The Songbinders would go silent. Or shatter. He wasn't sure which fate was worse.
He was alone again.
But not unmarked.
He now knew:
The Gifted were not inherently good. Power, like sound, could shape or shatter. And fate didn't ask permission to make its choices.
Far away, Duke Stilleon sat alone in his private chamber. A messenger's report rested unopened beside his cup of cold wine.
"Sighted near the eastern ridge," the last line read. "Moving alone."
The Duke leaned back in his chair, fingers pressed together.
He had known Corren was different from the moment Merrian described him. Not just powerful. Purposeful. But now the boy was moving again—east. He could feel it in the fabric of the north. A shift.
"What happened in the mountains?" he murmured. "And what did you leave behind?"
He tapped the table once and sent for a courier.
In the capital, Baroness Stilleon moved like a blade through her war council.
"We've confirmed movement from the mountain region," her mage said. "The Veil may have suffered a breach."
"Good," she said. "Push it open. Let what's inside spill. We'll deal with what crawls out."
"And the boy?"
She smiled coldly. "He'll either run out of road—or bring us what we need."
Corren didn't know their plans.
But he did feel the weight of unopened letters.
Merrian had sent five—each one delivered by a spell-tethered bird of copper and folded parchment. They came in silence, never more than once a week, wings flickering with faint heat before vanishing into ash. He hadn't read any of them. But he carried them in his cloak pocket—carefully sealed, slightly worn.
Sometimes, he touched them just to make sure they were still there.
He told himself it was caution.
But deep down, he knew:
He hadn't decided if he was someone worth writing back.