“He will not see you,” Mother Inrith said flatly. “You must find other ways to supplement your… lacking knowledge.”
Ilys’s jaw clenched. She thought of Grim, gone without a goodbye, and of Baron, stolen in a single breath. How a day could strip a life away, burn it down, and leave nothing but ash.
Grief hollowed Ilys. She drifted like a wraith through the Sanctum, her body frail, her gaze empty, her days measured only by hunger. She carried Baron’s sketches to the places she had drawn him, pressing charcoal ghosts against the stone as though the past might breathe again.
He was here. Now he was not. Over and over she practiced the exercise. Her mind could not reconcile the two.
She cursed Grim. She missed him. She needed him. And yet, deep down, she knew why he had gone. He could never forgive her for what she had done. Not Baron. Not like that.
At night, in dreams, she saw only their departures. Every face she loved turning away from her, and always, Death stood behind them, silent and watchful.
You are no one’s daughter.
She despised him. What did Death know of loyalty, humor, or tenderness? He had not known Baron’s softness, nor his wit. No divine will had demanded this, only Death’s cruelty.
Her thoughts circled the Bargain. She replayed it again and again: the King raising his sword, Death’s voice answering like stone.
One will always take my place. I am constant, though my will and voice may change.
And she understood. Death was no single god at all. It was but a role. Each Death bore his own will, his own cruelties, his own voice, and when one fell, another rose to carry the Bargain forward. The world did not end. It endured, bound to the pact.
The knowledge burned through her veins. So he could fall.He could fall.
And this Death, with his faulted, wicked agenda, expected her to kneel beside him? To play the puppet at his side?
Her grief curdled into fury. The one who ruined her, who spoiled her, who murdered Baron for daring to love—he was not eternal. He was replaceable.
She would inherit Grim’s march, yes. She would walk beside this hollow tyrant, veil to veil. But not as his puppet.
As his undoing.
Her mind settled, cold and certain. She would put a blade through Death. Through the creature who thought himself inevitable.
She would find a way to kill him.
Part II
The Book of the Veil – Part II
"Sealed in the first days, spoken in the last, unbroken until the end of all things."
V. The Succession of the Veilwalker (Hiram 2:1-17)
And in those days, when the chosen had fulfilled their purpose and the weight of their duty had come to its end, the King did stand before the people and say:
"The blade must not dull. The burden must not falter. The covenant must not break."
And Death did answer him, saying:
