The silence is the first thing I notice.
Not peaceful kind. The wrong kind.
The kind that hums behind your ribs, waiting to become something else.
Something sharp.
The sky had already spilt hours ago, carved open by a red light that burned like a scar. I'd watched it from the rooftop, frozen, as it tore across the stars. Beautiful. Terrifying.
Now… the night fells thinner.
Like something pushed through it.
I sit up in bed, sweating, fully clothed because I knew I wouldn't sleep. The fragment in my satchel is completely still, but the room around me feels like it's holding its breath.
Then a pulse.
Not from the fragment.
From the earth.
Soft. Distant. But real.
I swing the satchel over my shoulder and slip out into the darkness.
Narrowridge is quieter than it should be.
No owlcalss. No creaking rope bridges. No drunk laughter from the water grinders.
Just a cold wind and the soft, constant beat of my own heart.
I follow the feeling down through the old stone alleys, past the withered prayers flags and rust colored moss clinging to the outer walls. I pass no one. But I'm not alone.
I know it.
I can feel it in the soles of my feet.
Something is out here.
There's a faint light bleeding over the edge of the eastern cliffs not moonlight, but red. Glowing like embers hidden behind stone.
I hurry towards it.
By the time I reach the outer field, "I'm not the only one." He tought.
Someone's already there.
A figure kneels beside a shallow crater in the mossy ground. The fragment floats above the center, jagged, red and alive like it hasn't fully decided what shape it wants to be yet. It hums softly, resonating with the stillness around it.
The figure reaches for it.
I don't even have time to shout.
The moment his fingers touched the surface his body seizes.
He screams, but it's short, like something cut it off mid breath.
And then he collapses.
Smoke rises from his mouth. His skin glistering like glass from inside. cracks in silent, red light fractures from the cracks.
He doesn't move.
I stand frozen, breath caught in my troughs.
"Is he dead?"
The fragment hovers there, completely unaffected. As if it was meant to kill him.
And that's when I hear them.
Boots, cloaks and Whispers.
From the tree line emerging like shadows peeling off the dark, come vijf figures.
Their robes are deep grey, stitched with moveing ink like symbols that shimmer and vanish. Their faces hidden behind bone masks shaped like old gods with crooked eyes sharp mouths and no expressions.
No one ever talks about them.
But I've heard the name in rumors.
The veilbound.
They look at the body.
They don't speak.
They move like they've done this before.
One of them holds out a smooth box of black rootwood. Another gently plucks the red fragment from the air and places it inside.
The box seals itself.
The humming stops.
The dead man is rolled into a bone silk wrap. Bound, lifted and gone.
Within minutes, the crater is covered. The grass regrown by one of them with a simple touch. The moss. The rocks even the blood
Ereased.
As if it never happend.
But I saw it.
I saw a fragment burn a man alive.
I saw the veilbound come for it. Hide it. Claim it.
And they never even noticed me.
Or maybe…
Maybe they did?
And simpler didn't care.
After that I ran as fast as I could home.
But when I arrived, the satchel on my back is warm again. My fragment pulses once. soft, like a heartbeat against my spine.
The voice returns. Whisperd. Closer this time.
"Some fragments kill. some reveal. Yours wait."
That night, I dream of the skye bleeding. And a voice behind the stars calling my name.