The night lay over Eryndor like a velvet shroud—heavy, watchful, and full of teeth.
Kaela moved through the ruins of the Old Quarter with slow, deliberate steps, Aurelin's shattered streets echoing beneath her boots. Flickers of ghost-light drifted along abandoned doorways like wilted lanterns, casting pale reflections on the broken glass that littered the ground. Above, the moon sagged low and swollen, redder than blood. A hunter's omen.
She felt the city's pulse gnawing at her through the Pact scar on her palm. It throbbed with each step, as if the Veil itself was whispering down through the threads that bound her to its ancient hunger.
But tonight, something else crawled along that tether.
Something wearing her rhythm. Her breath. Her thoughts.
And it terrified her.
Thorne walked beside her, jaw tight, cloak drawn close against the cold wind. His eyes remained trained on the shifting, restless dark ahead. "Whatever has been stalking us," he murmured, "it's closer."
Kaela didn't need to be told. Every instinct in her bones had been screaming that truth since sunset.
"It's not stalking us," she whispered. "It's stalking me."
Thorne's step faltered. His gaze flicked toward her, searching. "You're certain?"
"Yes."
Because Kaela could feel it.
The way prey feels breath on the back of its neck.
She stopped at the creaking archway of an abandoned shrine. Soot-blackened pillars rose like charred ribs around the hollowed sanctuary, and a broken statue lay face-down beside the altar—its wings shattered, its stone eyes gouged out. A sigil was carved into the cracked floor, but Kaela knew it wasn't from the Veil.
It was hers.
The same mark she'd burned into the world when she had unleashed the Binding Ritual months ago.
Except this one was carved with precision—and anger.
"Somebody knows the old language," she whispered.
"Not somebody," Thorne corrected, kneeling to study the markings. "Something."
Kaela crouched beside him. The scorched edges still glistened faintly, pulsing like the rim of a living wound.
A warning.
A challenge.
Or a message.
She didn't want to guess which.
"We need to leave," Thorne said, rising sharply. "This thing is trying to draw you out."
"It already has."
Her voice felt hollow in her mouth.
Because she finally understood what the Veil had been hinting at—why she had been waking up drenched in cold sweat, feeling watched from inside her own reflection.
The Echo.
Her Echo.
A remnant born the night she forged the crimson bond with the Veil—when the shadow of the forgotten god had brushed her soul and tasted her fear. That night had split her in ways she still didn't fully understand.
She had thought the Echo was just a whisper in her dreams.
A consequence.
A hallucination.
She had been wrong.
Very, very wrong.
The wind shifted.
The shadows behind the shrine straightened.
And stepped forward.
Thorne's blade was in his hand instantly, metal ringing through the cold air. Kaela's heart lurched up her throat.
Because the figure walking toward them—
Was her.
Same height. Same posture. Same dark hair cascading over the shoulders.
But its eyes—
Its eyes were bottomless. A shade too black. Too ancient.
Veil-black.
It stopped ten paces away, head tilted like an animal trying to remember the shape of a face it once wore.
"Kaela," Thorne breathed, muscles coiled. "Stand behind me."
"No." Her voice shook. "If it wanted you, you'd already be dead. It wants me."
The Echo smiled.
And the world seemed to flinch.
Kaela stepped forward despite the tremor running through her, even as Thorne hissed her name in warning. The Echo mirrored her exactly—same angle, same pacing, same calm rise and fall of breath.
Like a reflection slipping free from the mirror.
"You've been following me," Kaela said.
Her Echo blinked once. Slow. Controlled. Too controlled.
"Not following," it said softly, voice matching hers like a perfectly tuned twin. "Preparing."
"For what?"
The Echo's head cocked. A strand of her—its—hair brushed the ruined stones.
"For when you break."
Kaela's breath lodged in her chest.
"There is a fracture in you," the Echo continued, stepping closer. "A weakness. A softness that the Veil despises. You still hesitate. You still fear. You still love."
Thorne stiffened behind her.
The Echo smiled, razor-thin.
"Love makes you vulnerable."
Kaela's pulse hammered painfully. "What do you want?"
The Echo's form rippled, shadows bunching beneath its skin like a second skeleton shifting to the surface. "To become whole."
Its voice deepened—still hers, but twisted through something older.
"Only one of us can remain."
It lunged.
Kaela barely had time to raise her hand, her glyph flaring blood-red. The Echo hit her like a tidal wave. She slid across the dirt, shoulder slamming into a broken pillar hard enough to crack it.
The Echo stalked toward her, barefoot, steps soundless.
Thorne charged.
The Echo blurred.
One heartbeat Thorne was swinging steel.
The next, he was on the ground, coughing blood.
"Thorne!" Kaela pushed to her feet.
The Echo stopped, turning its head sharply—too sharply—like a bird listening to bone crack.
"You see?" it whispered. "He will die for you. And you will destroy yourself for him."
Kaela's vision pulsed red.
She raised her hands. The glyphs along her arms ignited like living magma, runes spiraling outward in a furious storm. The ground trembled underfoot.
The Echo shivered with delight.
"Yes," it whispered, almost reverent. "Show me the part of us that kills."
Kaela unleashed the force of her Pact.
The air detonated. The shrine's shattered roof screamed as the attack tore through it. Light flooded the ruins, red lightning curling into the sky like a furious storm serpent.
When the dust settled—
The Echo still stood.
Unaffected.
Amused.
It stepped closer, the world darkening with each footfall.
"You cannot kill me," it murmured. "I am the truth you fear. The strength you deny. The shadow you were born to become."
Kaela backed away unconsciously.
Her Echo matched her step.
"You carry the Veil's hunger," the Echo said softly. "But you refuse to feed it. You chain yourself with mortal guilt. You cling to things that have no place in our destiny."
Kaela swallowed hard. "You're not me."
"Not yet," the Echo whispered. "But soon."
It lifted its hand.
A perfect mirror of hers.
And then the world split.
A ripping sound tore through reality—like canvas shredded by claws dipped in fire. The ground beneath them convulsed, opening into a jagged fissure that radiated crimson light. Symbols Kaela had never seen before spiraled out across the stones, burning through the earth like veins of molten iron.
The Echo stepped into the circle.
The Veil answered.
Dark tendrils slithered up from the glowing abyss, wrapping around the Echo's arms, torso, throat—adoring, reverent, as if welcoming back something long lost.
Kaela felt the pull.
Not on her body.
On her soul.
The Echo raised its gaze, eyes now twin pits of swirling shadow.
"Do you feel it?" it whispered. "The thinning? The unraveling? The moment the Veil will no longer separate what you are… from what you must become?"
Kaela staggered, pulse exploding.
"Stop—"
"You cannot stop what has already begun," the Echo hissed, voice splitting into layered tones. "The god beneath the Veil remembers you. Calls you. Claims you."
Thorne dragged himself upright, blood on his lips. "Kaela—don't let it bind you!"
The Echo smiled.
"It is too late for warnings."
The tendrils flared, wrapping tighter. The ground shook violently, throwing Kaela to her knees. A roar—ancient and enraged—tore through the air, shaking the stones.
A voice rose from the cracks.
A voice Kaela had heard only once before.
The Forgotten God.
Its whisper crawled across her skin like frostbite.
"Daughter of the Veil…"
Kaela's lungs seized.
The Echo spread its arms wide, accepting the voice like a lover.
"…the time to choose has come."
The fissure exploded in crimson fire.
Thorne lunged for Kaela.
The Echo lunged for Kaela.
And Kaela—
Froze.
Pulled between them.
Between two fates.
Two selves.
Two destinies.
The world went white.
And when the light finally died—
Kaela was gone.
Thorne's scream shattered the air.
The Echo's laughter followed him into the darkness.