Some nights, the Veil is thin enough to taste.
Tonight, it is porous.
I stand at the threshold where shadow meets the edge of forgotten light, watching the ridge simmer with the remnants of Nyra's flame. Even across the rift between worlds, I feel the pulse of her awakening — bright, disruptive, reckless.
She is early.Earlier than any foretelling dared suggest.
The air shifts as her magic fades back into the earth, but the echo of it lingers, threading through the Veil like a heartbeat stretched across two realms.
I close gloved fingers around the railing of the overlook.The metal burns under my touch, not from heat — but from recognition.
Blood Marked.Awakened.Alive.
All three truths resonate like bells struck at once.
Below me, the Veil Forest writhes. Its trees coil in unnatural spirals, branches bending toward the spot where Nyra's flame ruptured the boundary earlier tonight. They respond to her instinctively — call to her, beckon her, reveal their hunger.
She does not know what she stirs.
Not yet.
The ground trembles as the revenants retreat, their armor gleaming with Kael's residual fire. Poor creatures. They were forged for one purpose, yet even they do not understand the shape of the war unfolding.
A rustle behind me pulls my attention.
"You linger," a voice says — cool, detached.
I don't turn. "The girl touched the Flame."
A pause.A deliberate inhale."She wasn't meant to survive it."
"No," I say softly. "She wasn't."
Silence stretches. Uncomfortable for most. Natural for me.
The other presence moves into my peripheral vision — slim, armored, faceless. A lesser sentinel. One of dozens who guard the Veil's thresholds without understanding who they guard for.
"Should we report her awakening?"
I let the question hang.
The Flame coils in the distance — not visible, not audible, but present like a pressure behind the eyes, or a hum beneath the skin. It is searching, reaching, restless. And in its searching, it brushes against me.
Recognition.
I inhale sharply.
"She remembers," I murmur.
The sentinel stiffens. "The Flame cannot remember. It is power, not consciousness."
I smile — small, humorless."Tell it that."
The Veil ripples around us. A soft vibration, as if the realm itself is listening.
"She is dangerous," the sentinel says. "Too dangerous to leave uncontained."
"Yes," I agree. "But not yet."
I step closer to the boundary, watching the mortal realm through its shifting surface. The ridge still glows faintly — as though some part of it refuses to let her go. And beyond it, I sense movement. Nyra's breath. Her confusion. Her fear.
And beneath that… something else.
Something waking in her bones.Something I've waited a very long time to see.
The sentinel speaks again. "And the other one? Kael?"
Ah.The fire-forged.The anomaly the Flame accepted instead of erasing.
He will be a problem.But a necessary one.
"He lives," I say simply. "More or less."
"That was not expected."
"No," I murmur. "But perhaps expected outcomes no longer matter."
The Veil twists, forming a ripple of pale light that dances along my gloves.
Nyra steps into view for a brief second — her outline blurred by distance but unmistakable. She moves like someone haunted by something she doesn't have a name for yet. The mark on her wrist glows through the fabric of her sleeve in faint pulses.
My chest tightens — an emotion I refuse to examine.
"Do you fear her?" the sentinel asks.
A laugh escapes me — low, dangerous, entirely unamused.
"Fear her? I'm counting on her."
I let the Veil swallow the last image of her before turning away.
"Alert no one," I say as I step deeper into the darkness. "Not yet. The others will interfere, and she needs time."
"But if she becomes unstable, the realms may—"
"They will," I interrupt. "That is the point."
I pause in the doorway carved of shadow and flame.
"When she is ready," I whisper, "she will tear the Veil herself."
"And Kael?" the sentinel asks, voice shaking now.
I smile, slow and sharp.
"He will go to her. There is no force in existence strong enough to stop that."Then, softer — a truth only the Veil hears."Not even me."