A faint dawn mist curled around the empty courtyard as Kael crept forward, each footstep whisper-soft across the wet gravel. Torches flickered low, their sputtering flames entangled with tendrils of morning fog. The training rings were eerily still, vacant of both voice and body—though the chill in the air spoke louder than soldiers could. Kael shivered and drew his cloak tighter, but it didn't help. Not today.
He paused beneath a carved eagle-head column, once a symbol of the Whisperers' unity—now a monument toward solitude. Kael tried to remember a time when he belonged here. The image twisted: Bran's easy laughter, the brush of Eline's hand when they passed swords, shadows pulsing under cold moonlight. But those memories now felt distant, like echoes under glass.
Cradling the scrap of paper found earlier—its singular message, "You're not the only one hearing it"—Kael's fingers trembled with suspicion. Was it meant for him? Or sent to taunt? He'd considered replacing it in another recruit's quarters. But no—this belonged to him.
Because everything else did too.
Mid-morning drills started without him. Kael watched from the edges, a wooden sword unused at his side, as figures he once called peers clashed and lunged within training rings.
He remembered when his only concern had been staying upright.
Now, the worry was different: Will I be admitted—or blamed—for breaking first?
Recruits cast glances his way—some curious, some wary, others openly resentful. He wore their suspicion like a second skin. Even so, one of the junior Whisperers, Lysa, dared to approach. She carried practice blades polished to mirror touch and an expression that slid between concern and challenge.
"You're staying out," she murmured, voice low enough that only he could hear. She gestured to the paper sometimes. "They say you're unstable."
He stiffened. "Perhaps."
The words between them fell into a fragile stillness—trust too brittle to hold.
The afternoons dragged on. Kael spent them in the archives, tracing the passages of his dream—the whispered words, the doorway, tenebrous glyphs. His mind ran pale and wild.
He blinked at a scrap of vellum with blinking eyes:
"…Veilborn… He who walks the rift… hears the Veil's heartbeat…"
It pulsed in his blood just reading it.
A soft murmur and a sharp breath behind him made him spin.
"She's here," Lysa's whisper drifted. Then she was gone before Kael could stand.
Silence answered.
Until the sound of a page turning closer to breaking him.
Kael followed the noise through the gloom of shelving—rows upon rows of forgotten texts binding dust and secrets. He rounded a corner and found her: Eline, seated at a wooden table, illuminated only by her green-eyeshine runes in the dim chamber. A half-open book lay before her. She did not look at him.
He hesitated.
Then he stepped in.
"Why are you here?" he asked softly.
She did not pause. "To watch," she said. "Because I care."
He'd heard it once before, uttered by someone else in the compound—and not as an admission.
They stared at each other across the reading table, a gulf of silence brimming between them.
"You must remove yourself," she continued, voice low. "This path… it grows dangerous."
Kael grabbed his coin and let it slip into her gaze. She caught it reflexively—close enough that he saw concern flicker in her eyes.
She didn't hand it back.
"How long?" she asked, an edge of desperation behind her professionalism.
Kael looked away. "Since it found me."
Silence again, thick and fluid.
"I'm not leaving," he whispered.
Eline closed the book with a soft snap. "Because you believe you must. Not because you know what waits."
Kael's mouth opened, closed. Words fractured on his tongue.
"Trust me," she said after a breath. "You have to choose whose voice you follow. The Veil's… or your own."
Then she covered the coin with a hand—fingerprints smudging the ancient glyphs—and she left. Without another word.
Hours later, Kael rose from solitary training. The world beyond the compound's walls shone with false brightness—hobbling white clouds and fields undisturbed by the Duskveil—but he felt the chill in his bones.
Inside, he found a note:
"Come alone. The eastern obsidian stair."
No name. No date. But he knew who waited.
The obsidian stair spiraled down into the earth beneath the compound's oldest tower. No torches lit its walls, yet Kael felt the pulse: Veil glyphs carved into the rock flickered faintly, as if responding to his presence.
He stepped down.
The air grew cooler, heavier.
At the bottom, just before the open door to the vault, he paused.
Inside, a single figure waited.
Bran.
Except he didn't look like the recruit who left. His hair was cropped, armor dinged and bristled. Eyes haunted.
Kael swallowed.
"Bran?"
He stepped forward as Bran's head rose in the torchlight. The corridor doors sealed behind Kael with a muted thump. The air still shifted.
"You heard the voice too?" Bran whispered.
Kael knew he'd not thought of Bran all day. But here he was.
Bran's words came quick. Tense.
"There's something beneath the compound. Something older than us."
Kael frowned. The coin pressed under his shirt, hot and alive.
"I can't—"
Bran shook his head. "Do not say that. You will."
Kael's heart hammered.
Bran continued, low-voiced:
"The Order does not know what you've woken. And some of them… they want to use it. Others want to bury it again."
Kael stood unevenly. Everything slid at his feet. The coin twisted and burned through magic and dread.
Bran-dipped into his cloak and pulled out a folded parchment—fresher than anything in the archives.
He handed it across.
On it, a crude map: the compound's foundations, undercroft tunnels, and a sigil-marked door not listed in any diagram Kael had seen.
"Chamber of Silence. Under Veil Ward. No one enters unless commanded from the highest ranks."
He paused.
Bran's voice lowered: "This place… it might tell you why you're not alone in hearing it. It might show you what happens to the Veilborn."
Kael closed his eyes and exhaled.
He had to choose.
Night fell as they ascended the obsidian stair.
Kael's mind swirled with flame and shadow, pain and promise.
The dreams had begun to crack a larger reality wide open.
But this? This was no dream.
This was where he would decide.