But the Veil recognized me and my bloodline. When it registered that I wasn't forcing, but negotiating and asking, the resistance softened.
I pushed deeper into the working, feeling every soldier in my awareness like individual threads in a tapestry. I could sense their heat signatures, breathing patterns, and even the slight variations in height and weight that made each one distinct.
All of it had to move together.
I wove the Veil around us like wrapping fabric, careful and precise. I made sure there were no gaps where someone could slip through or be left behind.
My protective guard shifted closer without breaking formation. Daemon's presence burned bright at the edge of my awareness, his curse-touched blood responding to my magic with uncomfortable familiarity.
The working stabilized.
I opened my eyes and found five hundred faces watching me with absolute trust.
"On my mark." My voice came out steady despite the power thrumming through every nerve. "Stay exactly where you are. Don't fight the sensation. Let it happen."
Nods rippled through the formations.
I looked at Daemon. He gave the slightest inclination of his head.
Now or never.
I reached for the compressed distance and pulled.
Reality folded.
CHAPTER 24
SERIS
The world unfolded.
That was the only way to describe it. It wasn’t tearing or ripping, but carefully opening, like petals spreading at dawn. The Veil wrapped around all of us, a living presence that pressed against my skin with a texture like warm silk.
I held the working steady, keeping my grip light even as five hundred lives depended on my control.
The stone beneath our feet dissolved.
Weight disappeared.
We hung suspended in luminous vastness. We weren’t falling or flying, but simply existing between one place and another. The Veil stretched in every direction, infinite and impossible, filled with colors that had no names and light that came from nowhere.
Someone gasped. A soldier near the front rank whispered something that might have been a prayer.
I understood. The Veil's beauty defied description. Vast crystalline sheets layered endlessly across dimensions, each one trembling with fragile iridescence. Through the translucent fabric, I glimpsed other worlds, other versions of reality pressedclose enough to touch but separated by barriers thinner than our shallow breaths.
The urge to reach for more power flooded through me. Here, in this space between spaces, I could draw from sources far more vast than the elements. I could pull enough energy to reshape continents, alter timelines, rewrite fundamental laws.
The temptation burned like a fever.
No.
Lyralei's voice echoed in memory.The Veil is not a weapon. It is the fabric that holds everything together. Tear it, and existence itself unravels.
I held my working exactly where it needed to be. I reached for no more and no less. Controlled. Restrained. Precise.
The Veil recognized my discipline and approved.
The luminous vastness shifted around us, guiding rather than resisting. Distance collapsed further. The compressed space between our starting point and destination thinned to nothing.
