The breaking glass
The scar still burned.
Days had passed since the attack, but the memory clung to him like smoke. His shoulder throbbed when he moved too quickly, when he slept, when he breathed. It wasn't a wound anymore—at least, not the kind that could be stitched shut. It was a mark now. A seal. A warning.
Caelan stood shirtless in the bathroom, staring at himself under flickering yellow light.
He traced the faint, crescent-shaped scar with his fingertips. The skin there was pale and smooth, but cold—unnaturally cold. His breath fogged slightly in the mirror, though the room wasn't cold enough for that. He didn't look away.
The pendant rested on the sink's edge, coiled in its chain like a thing waiting to be reawakened. The spiral at its center was dull now, no glow, no heat. But he could still feel it pulsing faintly in his bones, like a memory trying to claw its way forward.
The woman in white had been real.
Not a dream. Not a hallucination. Real.
He had seen her descend from light and strike down a creature made of shadow and rage. Her blade moved faster than thought. Her presence silenced the very air. The monster had fled—or been destroyed—and she had turned to him, helm reflecting fire, voice low and clear:
> "You are not ready... but you are known."
He hadn't seen her face. Only her eyes—hidden beneath the visor—and the spiral etched into her armor, pulsing in rhythm with his pendant.
And then she vanished, dissolving into light and wind.
He hadn't told anyone.
What would he say? I was attacked by a nightmare and rescued by a warrior ghost who knows my name?
No one would believe him. Hell, he didn't believe him. Not fully.
And yet... his reflection was starting to move wrong.
---
He noticed it first that same evening, standing at the bathroom sink, brushing his teeth.
Simple routine. Normal.
Except it wasn't.
He raised his arm. The reflection didn't.
It stared back, still and silent, a heartbeat too long.
Then it moved—too suddenly, too sharply. Catching up like a video buffering, and then smooth again.
Caelan blinked and stepped back.
The mirror showed him just as he was. Messy hair. Tired eyes. Pale skin.
But the breath in his lungs turned sharp and cold.
He didn't blink again for a long time.
---
He tried to go to class the next day. Tried to walk the campus like everything was fine.
It wasn't.
The world had started fraying at the edges. The light looked too bright, the sky too deep. He'd pass people in the hallway and they wouldn't look at him—wouldn't see him. It was like he was moving through a memory of the place, not the real thing.
A bird smashed into the café window beside him during lunch.
The sound was sharp—like a crack splitting marble. The body dropped to the ground beside his foot. Neck broken. Wings twitching. Blood on the glass.
No one else flinched.
He turned, looked into the reflection in the café's window.
A figure stood behind him.
Tall. Armored. Veiled in silver light.
He spun around—nothing.
The sidewalk was empty.
But when he looked again, the pendant beneath his shirt had begun to warm.
---
That night, he dreamed he was awake.
He sat on his couch, lights dim, the city outside muted behind his window. But he wasn't alone.
Across the room stood the woman in white.
She hadn't come through the door. She didn't arrive. She simply was—as though she'd been there longer than the walls themselves.
She said nothing at first. Just watched.
Her helm gleamed with the faintest reflections of firelight—though there was no fire.
When she finally spoke, her voice was distant thunder wrapped in calm.
> "The glass will not hold."
He tried to rise, but his limbs were heavy. His body didn't respond. Only his eyes moved, locking on her.
She crossed the room in three silent steps.
> "You are crossing, Caelan. Whether you are ready or not."
She knelt before him.
Her hand rose and pressed gently over his heart. Through dream-flesh, through his chest, he felt it burn—not with heat, but truth. The spiral mark flared between them.
> "Survive the Breaking. Or be lost."
The dream shattered.
He awoke choking.
The mirror across the room was split straight down the middle.
---
The next night, the laptop turned on by itself.
No sound. No fan hum. Just black screen and blinking cursor.
Then words appeared, typed by invisible hands:
> "You are not broken."
"You are Veilborn."
His blood chilled.
Then came the whisper.
Not typed.
Spoken.
From the corner of the room—soft, layered, wet with echo:
> "Duskwither…"
He turned slowly.
A faint shimmer pulsed in the air, like heat distortion—but cold. And in the mirror above the desk, a single, perfect spiral had bloomed in the center of the glass, formed from a crack that hadn't been there before.
The spiral matched the pendant.
He stepped forward, afraid to look—afraid not to.
His reflection changed.
He didn't see himself.
Not truly.
The face in the mirror had violet-glowing eyes and skin as pale as moonlight. Hair slightly longer. Cheekbones sharper. A presence colder than any wind. This version of himself stared back without fear, without question.
And just behind that reflection stood her—the guardian in white—watching through the mirror as if from another world.
Caelan stumbled backward, chest heaving.
The mirror dimmed. The spiral faded.
And he felt the world tilt.
---
In the mountain citadel of Duskhold, Kael Noctaryn opened his eyes beside a mirror of blood and murmured, "The glass is breaking."
Far in the peaks of Wyrmholt, Raen Wyrmholt stood beneath a sky of stars and whispered to the cold, "He dreams where we cannot reach."
The Veil trembled.
The heir of a forgotten line stood at the threshold.
And the world that called to him no longer waited in silence.
The glass had cracked.
And soon, it would shatter.