The light wasn't just bright—it was alive.It didn't blind Jayden so much as pull him forward, through his own reflection. He felt his body stagger, yet his feet kept moving. The air on the other side was thinner, like breathing in the high mountains.
When the whiteness faded, he stood on a stone bridge suspended in darkness. No stars. No ground. Just an endless abyss below and an unbroken wall of shadow ahead, so vast he couldn't see its edges. It pulsed like a heartbeat.
The cloaked figure appeared at his side without a sound.
"This is the Veil," they said. "The seam between your world and mine."
Jayden's pulse quickened. "Why show me this?"
"Because the Second Heart is not a weapon—it is a key. And you are carrying it inside your ribs." Their mask tilted toward him. "Do you feel it?"
Jayden's silver flame answered before he could. It surged into his chest, hot enough to hurt, and he staggered against the bridge's railing. But in the heat there was something else—an echo. A second rhythm. Slow. Heavy. Not his own.
"It wants to open," he said through clenched teeth.
"Of course it does," the figure said. "It was made to. By me."
Jayden's head snapped toward them. "If that's true—why not just take it?"
The figure didn't move. "Because the Heart is bound to its bearer. I could rip it from you… but you would die. And that is… inconvenient."
Jayden swallowed. "So you need me alive."
"I need you willing."
The abyss shifted below them. Shapes began to form in the dark—armies, cities, great beasts with eyes like dying suns. All of them moving toward a single point in the distance: a glowing rift in the wall of shadow.
"That is the breach your Council fears," the figure said softly. "It will happen whether you fight it or not. The only choice you have is whether you stand outside it… or stand with me inside."
Jayden's voice was barely a whisper. "Why me?"
For the first time, the figure hesitated.
When they spoke, their voice was quieter. "Because you are not only royal blood, moon-child. You are mine."
The words sank like lead into his chest.
"Jayden!"
Aerin's voice slammed into him like a rope cutting through fog. He blinked—and the bridge, the wall, the abyss—everything vanished. The vault's mirrors loomed around him again, their surfaces rippling in agitation.
The figure was already moving toward the largest one. The frost creeping from their steps reached for Jayden like fingers.
"Choose soon," they said without looking back. "The gates are falling."
Then they stepped into the mirror, and the surface sealed like ice.
Aerin grabbed him by the shoulders. "What happened? You were—gods, you weren't even here. You just—" She shook her head. "We have to move. Now."
The silver flame still burned in Jayden's chest, but now it carried that second rhythm, steady and cold, like it was marking time.
Counting down.