The Knotted Veil did not walk roads.
Their paths were folds in the land—ravines draped in fog, bridges of bone that creaked without wind, tunnels where the air felt pressed thin, as though some great weight sat just above your head.
Kaelen followed Iryndra in single file, the others moving like a ripple of dark cloth around them. Their silence wasn't the absence of sound; it was an active thing, a pressure that swallowed the click of boots and the rustle of leather.
Every so often, the mists would shift and reveal something watching.
Once, Kaelen glimpsed an antlered silhouette standing on a crag above them, its eyes wet with red light. By the time he blinked, it was gone.
The shard under his skin thrummed in time with his heartbeat. Sometimes, he swore he felt it listening.
The memory of the Bone Mask's words clung to him: Pray the day I call on you never comes.
They crossed a span of stone so narrow Kaelen could see both drops—one into a chasm, the other into black water. Veil warriors walked it without hesitation, their masks reflecting the moon's fractured light.
"Does it ever… bother you?" Kaelen asked quietly when Iryndra slowed enough for him to catch her shoulder.
She didn't look at him. "What?"
"The way they move. Like they're not all… alive."
Her jaw flexed. "Not everything in the Veil is meant to be alive. That's the point."
Kaelen opened his mouth to press her, but the shard suddenly flared hot, and a shadow rippled across the path ahead—tall, gaunt, and crowned with twisting horns.
It didn't move to block them. It just waited.
Iryndra's hand tightened on her spear. "Keep walking. Don't speak. Don't look at it."
Kaelen did as told. But even as they passed, he felt it—some silent recognition—like whatever stood there knew the bargain in his blood, and was already measuring the cost.