Chapter Fourteen: The White Veil

The six of them moved through the valley, the sky above thick with clouds the color of unspoken fear. Each step felt heavier, the weight not of their gear or exhaustion, but of something else — something unseen that pressed against their skin like wet cloth. Even Liora, who walked slightly apart from the others, kept glancing over her shoulder, her bone pendant twitching against her chest like a heartbeat out of sync.

Kael led the way, his white hair a pale beacon against the gloom. Dendera flanked him, shield half-raised, his breath steady as ever. Tafara darted along the edges, fingers restless against the hilts of his daggers, every shadow a potential threat. Ranga walked with one spear resting on his shoulder, the flames along its edge flickering low and blue — a sure sign that spirits were close.

Nyeredzi was the quiet center of their storm. She walked just behind Kael, her half-blind eyes seeing the world in layers, the physical and the spiritual blending into a shifting tapestry only she could read. But tonight, the air felt thicker, her spirit-sight dimmed as though something had laid a gauze veil over the world.

They saw the Maposito just past dusk.

Six figures, standing on a ridge of black stone, dressed in immaculate white robes that seemed to reject the dirt of the earth itself. Their faces were obscured by veils of shimmering silk, featureless except for eyes — bright and liquid, like molten silver. They did not speak, but the air around them pulsed with a presence that pressed into the Bloodbound Circle's minds like a finger sinking into wet clay.

Totemless. That was the word that drifted into Nyeredzi's mind — beings unanchored by spirit or ancestor, born not from bloodlines but from gaps between worlds, where rules and names dissolved. They stepped forward in unison, feet never quite touching the earth, robes floating like mist in a dream.

Liora gasped. "They're not supposed to be here."

Kael's hand dropped to his blade. "Who are they?"

"Maposito," Nyeredzi whispered. "Walkers Between. They don't believe in totems. They believe only in the self — and in unmaking."

The Maposito raised their arms in unison, and the world twisted.

The ground fell away beneath the Bloodbound Circle's feet, not into void, but into a cascade of scenes — memories, nightmares, unspoken fears. Kael saw his own face reflected back at him, but his eyes were golden and his teeth were too sharp. Tafara saw hands reaching for him from the shadows, fingers that belonged to the family he had betrayed. Dendera's shield shattered, piece by piece, each shard holding the face of someone he had failed to protect.

Nyeredzi didn't fall.

She stood at the center of the unraveling, her owl totem flaring to life within her chest — a pulse of silver and black, feathers spreading like ripples through her spirit. The Maposito tried to grasp her mind, but her sight was not bound to flesh or memory. She saw through them — through the layers of veil, through their hollow selves, through the spaces where their spirits should have been but weren't.

The others were falling deeper — into dream, into nightmare — but Nyeredzi stood between.

She closed her eyes, and her totem opened.