The Veilwalkers' Covenant

The sands of the Veil desert were no longer silent.

With each step, Varek and Selene left crimson prints in the white terrain, as though the earth itself bled beneath their feet. Above them, the black sun pulsed, casting shadows that moved against the light. The air tasted of iron and dreams.

The sky whispered.

No words—only hunger.

Varek had wrapped Selene's wounds in torn cloth. Her lip was split, and dark bruises bloomed on her ribs, but her eyes were still sharp. She limped beside him, stubborn as ever. His own body hadn't yet stabilized—his hybrid form flickered beneath his skin like heat lightning, making his movements disjointed and painful.

They had left the Womb Tomb, but a piece of it had come with them.

"You feel it, don't you?" Selene said. Her voice barely carried over the wind, which had begun to howl in tongues.

Varek nodded. "Something… stuck to me. Something woke up."

"You're changing."

"So are you."

Selene didn't deny it. Her skin shimmered faintly in the sunless light, like moonlit frost. Something inside her had shifted after she stabbed the Eriseth-face. It had left her marked—no longer a pawn, but not quite free either.

They stopped at the edge of a dune. Below, an obsidian temple jutted from the sand like a broken fang. Its shape hurt the eyes—angular and fluid at once, geometries that disobeyed physical law. A dozen cloaked figures stood at its base, motionless, facing the structure in absolute silence.

"Friends of yours?" Selene asked.

"No," Varek said. "But they're waiting for us."

The figures parted as Varek and Selene descended. Their cloaks were woven from smoke and blood-thread, their faces masked in bone.

One stepped forward. Taller than the rest. Eyes like dead stars.

"The Sealed One walks again," the figure said. "And the Witch-Blood stands beside him."

Selene raised her blade. "Who are you?"

"We are the Veilwalkers. The caretakers of the final gate. We walk the edge between the real and the realer."

Varek stepped closer. "You know what's happening to me."

The figure nodded. "You are no longer bound to the living or the dead. You are a vessel through which the First Gods might return—or be destroyed."

"You mean Eriseth."

"No. Eriseth is only the womb. There are older ones. Forgotten by the moon, feared by the sun. You touched their threshold in the tomb. And now, they will not let go."

Selene gritted her teeth. "What do you want from us?"

"We want nothing," said the Veilwalker. "But you must choose. One path leads to salvation through sacrifice. The other to dominion through consumption."

"And if we choose neither?"

"Then the world becomes womb and crypt both. And the gods feast on ash."

The temple behind them groaned—not stone, but something alive. It pulsed, doors opening like eyelids.

"You must enter," the Veilwalker said. "Inside lies your memory. Your prophecy. Your sin."

Varek hesitated.

Selene took his hand.

And together, they stepped into the temple.

The inside of the temple was unlike the tomb.

It was cold, sterile. Walls made of boneglass, reflecting fractured visions of themselves. Every step echoed like a scream down a corridor of mirrors.

And then—they were separated.

The floor cracked like ice.

Selene vanished into the dark.

Varek roared her name, but no sound left his throat. He was alone in a room of blinding white light, kneeling before a pedestal made of tongues. On it sat a mirror. His reflection stared back—not the man, nor the hybrid, but something else.

It spoke.

"You will devour her."

Varek flinched. "No."

"She trusts you. She loves you. And when the gate opens, it is her heart you will be asked to give."

"I'll find another way."

"There is no other way. The Veil demands pain. The world was born from agony—it can only be remade by it."

Behind him, the room shifted.

Selene stood at a doorway of smoke, blood running from her nose. Her hands trembled, clutching a scroll made of skin. Her eyes were hollow, rimmed in silver.

"I saw it," she said. "What I am."

Varek rose. "What did you see?"

She dropped the scroll.

"That I am the key. Not just to the gate. But to you. To what's inside you."

"I don't understand."

She stepped forward, barely holding together. "I am your tether. They made me… to bind you. To keep the gods from erupting through your flesh."

Varek looked at the scroll, then her.

"And if the tether breaks?"

Selene's voice cracked. "You become them. All of them."

A silence.

Then Varek stepped to her, cupping her face.

"Then we hold each other tighter."

She broke.

Their lips met—not out of lust, but desperation. The kind of kiss that happens when you know the world will never be the same. Her hands clutched his hair, and he pulled her against him, trembling. They sank to the floor, among echoes and visions, pressed together not for heat, but for sanity.

And then—again—reality fractured.

They woke in each other's arms, but not in the temple.

They lay on a lake of glass, floating between stars. Around them hovered titanic shapes—faceless, boneless, vast.

The first gods.

One spoke—not with sound, but with gravity. The air trembled. Varek clutched Selene as they rose into a standing position on the impossible lake.

"You carry our hunger."

Varek growled, barely holding his form.

"We offer covenant," the gods said. "Feast, and rule. Refuse, and perish. Or—love, and suffer."

Selene stepped forward. "What do you want from us?"

"To be born again. Through your bond. Through your pain. Through your womb."

Selene turned white.

"They want to use us," she whispered.

Varek snarled. "No. We use them."

He pulled Selene close, his arms folding around her like a shield.

"You will not touch her," he spat. "Not in mind. Not in soul."

The gods shrieked.

But they could not breach the circle the two had formed—a bond forged not by magic, but love.

Real love.

The Veil cracked.

And they fell again.

They awoke at the edge of a cliff.

Below them lay a valley of living ruins, towers made of bone and glass, lit by heartlight. In the distance, a city moved—an ancient city, forgotten by time, crawling like an insect beneath the skin of the world.

Selene exhaled. "Is this… the first city?"

Varek nodded. "Where it all began. And maybe… where it ends."

She turned to him, her eyes rimmed with starlight. "Then let's finish it."

Above them, the black sun split into three.

And the gods watched.