The assignment came in a sealed envelope at dawn. No fanfare. No announcement. Just a thin strip of Veil-marked paper slid under Kael's door before light broke across the citadel.
He stared at it for a long moment before picking it up. His fingers brushed the sigil in the wax—Whisper Division Internal Orders. Unofficial. Off-ledger. It smelled faintly of myrrh and old ash.
Inside: two sentences.
Target: Trace residuals from shadow breach three leagues east of Black Root Ravine.
Team: Kael, Ferin, Malric. Track only. No engagement.
He closed his eyes.
His first sanctioned mission since the coin dream. Since the fight.
Since Eline had stopped meeting his gaze.
The journey to the ravine was quiet. Malric did most of the talking—jovial, sharp-eyed, older than most in the cohort by a few years. Ferin was silent as stone, his cloak tighter around him than usual, as if resisting the way the light slipped oddly around Kael's silhouette.
They made camp just after dusk, a narrow clearing ringed in vine-choked ruins that looked like shattered altars. Ferin stood guard while Malric boiled root tea and hummed a hunting song. Kael kept near the edge of the tree line, listening.
The shadows here felt different.
Closer.
More curious.
He'd felt them like this before—years ago, as a child in the Hollow Quarter, when the streets whispered and the alleys curled like secrets waiting to be opened. But this was deeper. Hungrier.
He knelt by a weather-scored pillar, tracing the shape of the moss along its base.
Then a sound stirred behind him.
A low whisper.
Not in words—but in intent.
Veilblood...
Kael froze.
Malric looked up sharply. "You say something?"
"No." Kael stood slowly. The air had gone dense, like wet silk pulled too tight.
The whisper wasn't a sound in the world. It was in his blood. His bone. Deep in the marrow.
Veilblood walks. Breaker dreams.
He turned toward the tree line. A shape flickered beyond the brush—small, hunched, the silhouette wrong. It shifted and slipped away like ink across a torn page.
"Shadow-trace spotted," he called.
They moved in formation, no words. The training took over.
Kael led.
He shouldn't have. But something inside him—something stitched with cold and ache—pulled toward it.
The tracks were erratic. Not creature. Not quite spirit. The Veil left residue, and the residuals here were heavy—like footfalls soaked in echo. They pulsed in time with his heart. Like they were calling to him.
Half a mile into the undergrowth, the air turned sharp with burnt myrrh. Kael held up a hand.
"We're close."
Ferin drew his blade. "Why does it smell like ritual?"
Malric's eyes narrowed. "We weren't told this was an active breach."
Kael didn't respond.
Because he knew now that it was.
They found the remains of the ritual near a crumbling statue, half-swallowed by the forest. Chalk lines drawn in concentric circles marred the moss-covered stone, and symbols—ancient, Veilbound, forbidden—scarred the trees like burned brands.
And at the center: a shivering, crouched figure.
Gloamkin.
But young.
Barely larger than a child. Its form quivered with shadow, limbs twisted as though reshaped in pain. Its eyes—dozens of them—glowed with dim cobalt light, and its fingers clutched something tight to its chest.
A mirror. Broken.
Kael stepped forward.
Malric hissed. "Are you insane?"
"I can hear it," Kael whispered. "It's not hostile."
Ferin raised his blade. "Then why is it trembling like it remembers pain?"
The Gloamkin's breath rasped, and Kael's mind—not his ears—heard the words.
You see what others silence.
Your name is wound. Your path, fracture.
Kael dropped to one knee.
The creature lifted its head. Its face was shifting, half-shaped in memory—flickering into forms Kael almost recognized. His father. The man in the alley. Eline. Then back into shadow.
Do not bind us.
Let us breathe.
Kael reached out.
The others shouted—but too late.
His fingers brushed the mirror shard.
Flash.
A roar of light. Pain. A dream not his own. Blood on a temple floor. A boy screaming. A woman made of Veillight weeping into ashes.
Then—
Darkness again.
Kael staggered back.
The creature was gone. Vanished into the trees like a breath held too long.
Only the mirror shard remained—still warm in his palm. It pulsed once, then went cold.
Malric pulled him up by the collar.
"What in the threefold hells was that?"
Kael didn't answer.
Because part of him knew.
Not fully.
But enough.
They made camp again by midnight, and no one spoke. The fire crackled. Ferin paced. Malric sat stiff, his sword across his knees, eyeing Kael like he was a blade set to snap.
Kael turned the shard over in his hand.
It bore a mark now.
A crescent. Like the coin.
Only this time, the shape wasn't burned in.
It was part of the glass itself.
Woven into its soul.
He tucked it away.
When he looked up, Ferin was staring.
"You heard it, didn't you?"
Kael nodded slowly.
"What did it say?"
Kael's voice was barely a whisper. "It called me Veilblood."
Ferin recoiled.
Malric said nothing.
But the silence spoke loud enough.
They didn't sleep.
The journey back was brisk. No one asked questions. No one discussed protocol.
At the gates, a Whisperer in gray waited. Face masked. Eyes unreadable.
"Report to Observation," they said.
Kael held the mirror shard tight in his cloak.
And felt something stir.
A question he didn't yet have the words for.
But one he would need to answer soon.
Because the shadows weren't just watching anymore.
They were waiting.