Chapter 6: Between the Threads of Reality
She does not fall. But is consumed.
There is no air. No weight. No gravity. Just absense.
A world without form, where light does not reach, where time is neither still nor moving. Everything stretches, her body, her thoughts, her breath. She exists, yet she is unraveling.
She cannot tell if she is weightless or if she is being pulled apart in too many directions. The pain from her wounds dulls, fading into something distant, something no longer tethered to flesh.
But she is not healed.
She should not be here.
And yet, the Veil has taken her.
It should have torn her apart. That is what the stories say. What the scholars warn. What happens to those who touch the Veil and are not meant to.
And then, she hears them. The voices. Not words. Just fragments. Memories that are not hers.
There are whispers, distant and shifting, echoing in her ears half formed.
"She walks between..."
"...not meant to be here."
Something immense and unseen watches her from the void. A heartbeat that is not hers pulses through the absence. Slow. Measured. Watching. She should not exist here. And yet, the Veil does not reject her.
It accepts.
It lets her remain.
She does not know if that is better or worse.
Aldia gasps, grasping for something solid, something real.
The Veil shudders around her.
And then—
It lets her go.
Aldia collapses onto damp stone, gasping.
The impact sends a jolt of pain through her body, sharp and unforgiving. The weight of reality slams into her like a wave crashing against the shore—heavy, cold, and merciless.
She is back.
The city presses in around her. Its damp air, its crumbling ruins, its silence. The scent of wet stone and rust fills her lungs, something that has never left them for years.
Her body is solid again, real again.
She grips the ground, forcing herself to breathe, to find her bearings.
But something is wrong. The Mirehound is gone. There is no blood on the streets. No claw marks in the stone.
No sign that the beast had ever been there. As if it had never existed. As if the Veil had swallowed it whole.
And then—
A soft sound.
Not a voice. Not yet.
A presence.
She lifts her head, looking through her blurry vision.
And Nyxie is watching.
The creature perches atop a broken stone pillar, silver eyes glinting like slivers of moonlight in the gloom. Its body flickers at the edges, never quite committed to one form.
It is too still. Too quiet.
"You should not have survived that." Nyxie's unamusing yet surios gaze lingers a little too long on Aldia's skin.
Aldia swallows, her throat raw, her breath uneven. She doesn't respond. Because she knows.
She should be dead.
But she isn't.
She touched the Veil.
And it let her go.
"What did I just do?" Aldia's voice was slow and hoarse. Her strength was depleting.
Nyxie's head tilts, considering her like something curious, something fragile.
"You bled between." Nyxie pointed as if Kaelen does not know that already. It's gaze travels towards the moving shadows in atmosphere, The Veil. Something is stirred.
Aldia's hands tighten against the stone.
"Not helpful." She replies
Nyxie does not blink. Its eyes fixed on The Veil.
"Not everything is meant to come back, Aldia."
A pause.
"And yet—you did."
Aldia exhales, long and slow.
The Veil should have destroyed her.
It should have pulled her apart, left her scattered in the spaces between.
But it hadn't.
It had let her in.
And worse—
It had let her out.
She presses a hand to her side, where the Mirehound's claws had torn through her. The wound is still there, still bleeding. But the pain feels distant, dulled somehow, as if it belongs to a different version of her.
She forces herself upright, her limbs unsteady, uncertain.
Nyxie watches, unblinking.
"Well. What now, little traveler?" It asks amusingly.
Aldia meets its gaze, her jaw tight. Her vision blur.
"Now?"
She looks toward the far end of the ruins, where the Veil had opened, where she had stepped through and returned. It blinks and then disappears.
"Now, I find out why...."
The ground sways beneath her feet, though she isn't moving.
A deep, pounding ache burrows behind her skull, spreading like ink through water, thick and suffocating. Her body is too heavy, the weight of her own limbs unbearable.
She barely registers the feeling of her knees buckling.
The moment before she collapses, her vision wavers.
Something...no...someone—is moving towards her. A presence, silent but near.
Not Nyxie.
She sees Nyxie, just for a breath, a flicker of dark fur and silver eyes, before it vanishes, melting into the ruins as if it does not wish to be seen by whatever is moving towards them.
And then—
Darkness.
__________________
She wakes to throbbing pain.
Not all at once.
In pieces.
A dull pulse in her side. A hand twitching against something rough—stone, maybe.
Blurred edges.
Shifting shadows.
A voice, distorted, slipping through cracks in her mind like water seeping through fractured glass.
"...shouldn't have made it through..." it sounded distant, indistinct.
She tries to focus. But its a blur. A figure, maybe, a person.
The words slide away.
The world tips sideways again.
---
She wakes again.
This time, the pain is sharper.
Her head pounds, deep and insistent, like something clawing behind her temples.
She forces her eyes open, just for a moment.
A figure,just beyond the reach of clarity.
Standing, watching.
Dark clothing. A glint of something metallic.
Her vision tilts, wavers.
"...don't die on me yet, little ghost." The figure moved closer, its voice amusing.
Then—
Darkness again.
---
She wakes a third time.
And Nyxie is there.
Perched at the edge of her vision, silver eyes gleaming from the gloom.
Kaelen tries to speak, but her throat is raw, dry. No words come out.
The room is not familiar.
Not her sanctuary. Not the city streets.
Where?
A noise—soft, shifting movement.
"...you fight even in your sleep... stubborn little thing." The voice was mich closer this time, the face infront of her eyes.
It is female. Amused.
The world goes dark again, dragging her with it.