14
Kaelren
Night had fallen hours ago, but something was different.
I noticed it first in the way the firelight seemed to pulse—not with the wind, but with something else. A rhythm from outside our reality. Then the temperature dropped, not cold exactly, butthin. Like the air itself was holding its breath.
“Does anyone else feel that?” Vashael asked, her hand going to her throwing knives.
Elle stood, turning in a slow circle. “The wards. They’re… singing?”
She was right. The ancient protections woven into the glade had begun to hum, a frequency that bypassed the ears and resonated in the chest. In the bones. In the marks we all carried.
Then the first silver thread appeared in the sky.
“Oh shit,” Bryx whispered. “Is that—”
“The Star Veil,” I finished, my voice rough with disbelief. “I never thought I’d see it.”
More threads materialized, rippling across the darkness like the universe was showing its seams. Within minutes, the entire sky was latticed with silver light, weaving patterns that hurt to look at directly—not because they were bright, but because they were true. Reality laid bare.
Elle moved to my side, her face tilted up in wonder. “When was the last time this happened?”
“Five hundred and seventy years ago,” Eltrien said softly. “In the Breaking Fields, right before the Fracture War began. It’s said the Veil appears when the world stands at a threshold. When decisions made in one moment will cascade through centuries.”
“So no pressure then,” Peeble muttered.
The silver threads reflected in Elle’s eyes, making them look like captured galaxies. Her marks had calmed since the chase, glowing soft amber—but I could see they’d spread, delicate vines now creeping up the sides of her neck.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
“It’s dangerous,” I corrected, settling beside her. Close enough that our bond hummed with the proximity, with the weakened boundaries between us. “The Veil doesn’t just weaken barriers between waking and sleeping, between real and possible. It erases them. Everything becomes permeable. Vulnerable.”
“Including us?” she asked.
I met her eyes. “Especially us.”
“Between you and being an ass?” she suggested.
Despite everything—Nimor barely holding form, the Hunt waiting beyond our sanctuary—I almost smiled.
“That boundary doesn’t exist,” I said.
“Clearly.”
Through the bond—because yes, it was a bond, I could admit that much—I felt her amusement like warmth against my ribs. What I refused to name was what kind of bond. Magical necessity, I told myself. The result of our marks existing in tandem, nothing more. Certainly not the other thing. The thing that made my chest ache when she smiled. The thing that made me want to kill men I’d never met for hurting her.
Not that.
The others were scattered around the fire. Bryx unusually subdued, one hand resting on Kevin who’d shrunk back to pocket-size and hadn’t stopped anxious buzzing since the chase—even small, his distress was palpable. Sarnyx sharpening thorns with mechanical precision. Vashael organizingsupplies we might never get to use. Eltrien and the Sage still working on Nimor, who flickered in and out of visibility like a bad transmission.
“I’ve seen this before,” Eltrien said suddenly, looking up at the Star Veil. “Or… I will see it. Or I’m seeing it now in multiple ways.” He shook his head. “The Veil makes time strange.”
“Everything here makes time strange,” Elle muttered.
Peeble landed on her shoulder, looking up at the lights. “Pretty though. In a ‘reality might collapse’ kind of way.”
“Comforting,” Elle said.
