Beneath the Veil

Maerlyn's journey took her through valleys where mists clung like a second skin, blurring the line between day and night. The deeper she traveled, the more the world felt…unmoored. Trees leaned in ways that defied nature, roots pulsing with a dull, hungry glow.

At dusk on the seventeenth day, she approached a crossroads marked by a stone pillar. Ancient symbols wrapped around its surface, half-buried under moss and time. When she traced her fingers across them, a chill raced up her arm.

A warding stone, she realized. Old, powerful.

But something had torn through its protective sigils, leaving deep gouges as if from a monstrous claw.

She drew a breath, steadying her pounding heart.

"They've been here," she whispered, voice shaking.

That night, she camped within sight of the pillar, sleep coming only in fragments. Dreams stabbed through her mind like knives — a flickering vision of the Circle of Sable, their ranks sundered, standing before a broken gate wreathed in green flame. A single voice, calm but cold, repeated again and again:

The wound widens. The wound widens.

She awoke drenched in sweat, gasping for air.

Back in Frostfang, the repairs pressed on. Hammers rang all day, shaping new walls from stone hauled up the cliffs. Kaelin drilled her soldiers without mercy, and their ranks grew stronger, faster. Yet something gnawed at her — a hollow place that would not fill.

One night, unable to sleep, she climbed the half-finished watchtower. From there, she could see the lands beyond: fields reborn with green, forests dark and still.

And then she saw them.

Shapes moving in the trees.

Too many to be wild animals. Too silent to be normal men.

Kaelin's skin prickled.

"Guards!" she barked. "Torches on the walls — now!"

Flames burst to life along the ramparts, revealing the silhouettes of things that should not have been. Twisted, half-human shapes, eyes burning with a sickly red glow.

They recoiled from the light — then melted back into the trees.

Kaelin swore under her breath.

Not yet, she thought. We aren't ready.

Meanwhile Aldric held endless councils, his eyes shadowed with exhaustion. Messengers brought tidings from the outlands: rumors of curses spreading through the far villages, of dreams turned into waking nightmares.

One letter chilled him more than the rest — a page of ragged script from the western reaches:

"The children sleep, but they do not wake. They whisper of a woman crowned in crows, who waits for them beyond the dream."

He read it twice, then folded it with shaking hands.

"Rowena," he called.

The priestess came swiftly, still wearing the soot of burned offerings.

"Your Grace?"

"Read this," he said, passing her the letter.

Rowena scanned the words, her lips tightening. "There are stories," she admitted, "of a spirit who collects the souls of children. The Crow Queen, she is called. But she is myth."

"Nothing feels like a myth anymore," Aldric said bitterly.

Rowena closed her eyes. "Then I will see to the children," she vowed.

On her nineteenth night of travel, Maerlyn came to a place marked on no map: a hollow of stone, cradled by twisted yews. A faint glow shimmered around its entrance, like a dying star.

Steeling herself, she stepped through.

Inside, a circle of figures waited. Seven — or what remained of seven. Some little more than illusions, wavering and thin, as if memory barely held them together.

She fell to her knees.

"You are the Circle of Sable," she breathed.

A chorus of voices answered, neither male nor female, echoing with impossible sadness.

Once, yes. Now, shattered. We are echoes of ourselves, broken by the Sundering.

"The Sundering?" Maerlyn demanded.

When the dream realm was torn, when its heart was poisoned. We stood against it. We lost.

Maerlyn's hands clenched around her staff. "Can you teach me how to close these rifts?"

We can show you, but it will cost you.

Her mouth went dry. "What price?"

Part of what you are. Part of what you love.

Maerlyn's heart twisted. She thought of Aldric, of Kaelin, of Rowena — the fragile bonds she had built.

"I will pay," she said finally, voice shaking.

Then come into the veil, they whispered.

The circle expanded, warping space itself, pulling Maerlyn into a realm of endless gray. Sounds blurred. Light fractured. The rules of the world dissolved.

Images struck her from all directions:

Frostfang in flames

Aldric kneeling on blood-soaked stones

Kaelin's sword shattered in her hands

A black wolf with a human face, laughing

Through it all, the Circle guided her, binding fragments of old magic into her mind, weaving patterns so ancient they hurt to even glimpse.

When she finally collapsed, hours or days later — there was no way to tell — she felt hollowed out, her spirit a cracked vessel.

But she had the knowledge.

The Circle's voices followed her back to the waking world:

Mend the wound. Or the world will drown.

Maerlyn staggered from the hollow, eyes rimmed red with tears.

She was no longer the same.

At Frostfang, Aldric and Kaelin prepared for the inevitable. Patrols doubled, scouts ranged far and wide. Every night the air felt colder, as if something vast and cruel waited just beyond the walls.

Rowena, true to her promise, traveled to the western villages. She found children sleeping in unnatural stillness, their lips murmuring of the Crow Queen. Desperate, she called upon every prayer she knew, laying protective wards of flame and salt and iron.

But when she closed her eyes, she could feel the Queen's presence, vast and patient, waiting behind a veil of shadow.

On the twenty-first night, Maerlyn returned.

She rode through the gates at dawn, hair tangled, eyes deep as an ocean storm. Aldric ran to meet her.

"You found them?" he demanded.

Maerlyn nodded, but tears glittered on her cheeks. "They showed me what to do — but it will break me to do it."

Aldric caught her hands. "We will hold you together," he promised.

That evening, Kaelin called the captains to the keep.

"Our enemies move in the night," she said. "They test our walls, they test our courage. We will not let them break us. At first light, we march to cut them down."

One captain, a grizzled veteran with half an ear, spat on the floor. "They'll come again and again. It never ends."

Kaelin slammed her fist on the table. "Then we will end it. Do you hear me? We will end it."

The next morning, Frostfang's gates opened. Columns of soldiers streamed out, their banners ragged but proud.

Kaelin rode at their head, eyes hard as diamond.

Aldric stood upon the battlements, Rowena at his side, watching them go.

"Bring them home," he whispered.

Rowena laid a hand on his arm. "They will come back," she said, voice steady — though she did not truly know if it was true.

Maerlyn, in a chamber heavy with the scent of herbs and candlewax, began to prepare the spell to heal the rifts. Her hands trembled, for the Circle's price was already working on her heart, tearing memories away one by one.

She focused on Aldric's face — refusing to forget it — even as it grew hazy at the edges.

Beyond the hills, the enemy waited: a dark tide of beasts and twisted men, eyes shining with hunger.

They turned toward Frostfang's soldiers, snarling, weapons lifted.

The war was coming.

Maerlyn felt it in her bones — and knew that this was only the beginning of something far worse.