Chapter 7: Whispers in the Veil

The land had changed.

Kaelen noticed it within the first hour of travel.

What had once been jagged woodlands and skeletal ruins gave way to stretches of barren soil, cracked and glassy. The trees here didn't twist—they reached. Upward, endlessly, their bark like charred bone and their branches clawing at a sky that offered no mercy.

The silence was heavier. Even the wind held its breath.

He moved with precision now. No more blind wandering. Every ruined marker and shifting current of air told a story. The symbols he'd seen in the mural began appearing on rocks, etched faintly, sometimes glowing when his black-threaded wrist passed too close.

The world was aware of him.

But that was mutual.

Kaelen had begun to understand something terrifying and liberating: this place operated on intent. Power didn't belong to those who demanded it. It belonged to those who believed they already owned it.

So he walked like he belonged.

He spoke to the air as if it listened.

And it did.

By the third day since the ruin, he reached a place that felt older than memory.

There was no name for it, only sensation.

A vast circular depression in the earth, smooth and cratered like a bowl carved by celestial hands. It spanned miles—Kaelen stood at its rim, windless and breathless, staring into its heart.

At the center lay a black spire.

It wasn't built. It had grown.

Roots wrapped it. Bones circled its base. Veins of obsidian ran through the surrounding stone, pulsing softly.

Kaelen descended without hesitation.

Every step into the basin thickened the air. His skin itched. The marks along his arms began to glow faintly, and the thread on his wrist tightened as if reacting to proximity.

It wanted him to go further.

He obeyed.

The spire was smooth and warm to the touch. Not alive, but not dead either. A half-sleeping thing. Kaelen placed both palms against it.

Nothing.

Then everything.

His vision cracked.

Reality frayed like old parchment as his mind was pulled inward, downward, into a sea of memory that wasn't entirely his.

He stood—not physically—within a chamber of lightless mirrors. Across each surface played fragments of moments:

A woman with six eyes screaming as chains of light tore through her.

A titan of smoke pulling cities into its chest.

A younger Kaelen, barely a teen, standing at the edge of a broken cliff, holding the corpse of someone familiar.

More flooded in.

Knowledge. Names. Feelings he hadn't earned.

Then a voice:

"You are a splinter. A thread unraveled from a tapestry long burnt. But even ash remembers its flame."

Kaelen gritted his teeth. "Who are you?"

"Irrelevant. You are the Question. The Answer must be found."

"Found where?"

"In descent. In loss. In blood. Walk until the world forgets you. Then remember yourself."

Then silence.

And darkness.

Kaelen awoke by the spire, gasping. His body was unharmed, but something was different.

The thread on his wrist had unraveled.

It now wove through his fingers like a loomstring, responding to his thoughts. With a flick of focus, it extended—sharp as a blade. With another, it dissolved into shadow and wrapped his hand like a gauntlet.

More than a weapon.

A tool.

A connection.

He rose. No food. No rest. He walked again.

It wasn't long before he found the corpses.

Dozens. Strewn across a field of white moss, each body hollowed out, their skin peeled from within. No signs of struggle. No weapons drawn. Just vacant armor and expressions twisted in horror.

Kaelen crouched beside one.

The chest bore a symbol.

He recognized it.

It had been on the mural. On the shadowed figure's palm.

So these people... followed him.

Or someone like him.

He searched the bodies—not for supplies, but for information.

He found it in the form of a fragmented crystal, clutched in a withered hand.

A memory shard.

He pressed it to his forehead.

Searing light. Screams. A name repeated like a mantra:

"The Sealed Path must not open!"

Then, silence.

Kaelen dropped the crystal.

The Sealed Path.

Whatever that was, they had died trying to stop it.

Which meant he needed to find it.

By nightfall, he saw lights.

Faint, flickering. Not fire. Not magic.

Technology.

A camp.

He crouched at a ridge, eyes narrowed.

Dozens of figures. Not Riftborn. Human. Or something close. Their armor was scorched, their movements disciplined.

Hunters. Or scavengers.

And in their center, a cage.

Inside it—barely visible—was a girl.

Chained. Silent. Eyes closed.

But Kaelen could feel it. Her presence.

Not just human.

Something older.

The thread on his wrist pulsed violently.

He watched. Studied. Marked the guards, the patrols, the blind spots.

He didn't know who she was.

Didn't know what they were.

But he felt it in his blood:

She was important.

And they would all die before sunrise.