The Archive smelled of dust and flint. Not old parchment or leather bindings—this was something deeper, like the breath of stone left untouched for centuries.
Kael descended the spiral steps past the "End-of-Use" texts—manuals and codices deemed irrelevant after the Fracture—and entered the vault wing marked in Veilscript. He shouldn't have been here. This level required double-clearance, two veilsigns braided with council authority.
He had neither.
But the seal had shimmered strangely when he'd brushed his fingers along the frame.
It had recognized him.
The door had opened.
Tenebris hadn't spoken since the catacombs.
Not in words, at least. But Kael felt it awake in him again—tense, alert, like a beast sniffing the air before a storm. As if even it didn't want to know what lay beyond these shelves.
Rows of shelves leaned like broken teeth. Most books had no titles. Some bled ink when touched. Others pulsed faintly with sigillight, resisting every eye. Kael walked past them all, following an instinct he didn't know how to name.
Until he found the ledger.
It was unmarked, wrapped in black cloth sealed by wax. When he pulled it free, the wax flared—just once—and then crumbled silently to ash.
Kael unwrapped it and opened the first page.
"Initiate Record—Designation: Veilheart-001."
His hands clenched involuntarily.
The page continued in longhand. A scholar's script. The kind used by Whisperer Historiates before the councils rewrote everything into standard code.
"Subject: Aranel. Veilborn, not summoned. Breathed through the rift-stone at birth. One of three. Only survivor."
"Power unstable. Memory fractal. Emotions bound to Veilwaves. Requiring anchor object—locus stone."
Kael's pulse ticked faster.
The description was clinical, but what it implied was unmistakable.
This Veilheart—Aranel—was not chosen.
He was created.
Or worse… born into it.
Like a vessel.
Like Kael.
He turned the page.
"Aranel resisted conditioning. Escaped central containment twice. The sigils marked him as both conduit and corrosion."
"Witness reports he sang in sleep. Said the Veil remembered being alive."
"Council declared him anomaly-class Omega. Ordered him severed."
"He vanished during the Dusk Rebellion."
No death report.
No final note.
Just a smear of ink.
As if something—someone—had ripped the page free.
Kael stared at the spot, his breath gone shallow.
The term "Veilheart" had never appeared in any formal training. It wasn't just rare—it had been erased. Buried behind newer terminology. Echo-Linked. Riftbound. Shadowborn.
But this—this was different.
This was the first.
And it terrified them enough to wipe him from memory.
A name echoed in his mind.
Aranel.
He returned to the surface before dawn, his boots silent against the stone. The wind hadn't risen yet, but the air tasted of frost. The compound looked empty from this high vantage, save for one shadow moving near the eastern wing.
Eline.
Kael froze.
She didn't see him. Or if she did, she made no sign.
She moved with purpose, toward the restricted wing.
Her posture was tense, her hands tight at her sides. And then—for the first time in days—he saw it:
Hesitation.
She paused at the archway. Glanced behind her. Then went inside.
Kael didn't follow.
Not yet.
Later, during the midday drills, Kael was called aside by Ser Idrin.
The Council-trained observer rarely left the black-wing.
She was tall, grim, and spoke like words were weapons to be measured and rationed.
"Kael of Hollow Quarter," she said without preamble. "You were seen in the restricted vault two nights ago."
Kael didn't lie.
"I was."
Silence stretched between them like drawn wire.
"You shouldn't have been."
"I know."
Idrin studied him, eyes the color of dead glass.
"You passed the sigil lock."
He said nothing.
"That shouldn't be possible."
He still said nothing.
Idrin exhaled through her nose. "The Council believes it prudent that you cease unapproved research. The archives are not playthings."
Kael tilted his head. "You're afraid I'll learn something."
"Only that you'll misinterpret what you find."
"Like the Veilheart?"
A flicker. The first sign she was human after all.
"Watch yourself, Kael," she said, voice flat. "Names like that have a cost."
"Who was Aranel?"
Idrin turned away. "A story. A failure. And none of your concern."
She walked off before he could speak again.
Tenebris stirred faintly in the pit of Kael's chest.
They know. And they are afraid.
That night, Kael sat in the reflection chamber, watching his own shadow.
The candle burned low beside him, casting flickering shapes on the polished stone floor.
He let his hand drift across the flame—slow, deliberate.
No burn.
The heat licked his skin but left no mark.
He tried again.
Same result.
He wasn't immune to fire.
He was disconnected from it.
Shadow did not absorb flame.
It remembered it.
And in that memory, Kael found something deeper:
Not resistance.
Reversal.
He didn't sleep.
Instead, he opened the mirror-shard journal again. The crescent symbol had changed once more.
Now two rings—interlinked, like eclipse and orbit.
He didn't know what it meant.
But it felt like a countdown.
By morning, news had spread.
Whispers.
The kind with teeth.
Someone had broken into the inner vault.
A relic had gone missing—one of the locus fragments used in the original resonance trials. No proof was offered, but eyes turned toward Kael.
And one other.
Eline.
She didn't appear in the sparring yard.
Didn't speak in the council debriefs.
She was vanishing, piece by piece.
And Kael could no longer tell if she was pulling away to protect him…
…or preparing to strike from within.