Veil was only eight.
Bright-eyed, fast-footed, always trailing laughter in her wake like petals on the wind. Her name had been a joke, once—"she was born between worlds," their mother said, "with one foot still in the dream." But it stuck, and fit her in a way no other name could. She believed in everything: stars that whispered, wind that watched, moss that remembered. She spoke to crows and left offerings to things Jonah couldn't see.
When it rained, she would dance barefoot in the fields, arms raised like she was coaxing the clouds into song. She talked to the scarecrow outside their window. She kissed every frog she found, certain one would speak back.
Jonah loved her fiercely. He loved how the world bent slightly around her—how strangers smiled when she passed, how even the old widow Marris once gave her a peppermint and said, "She's too bright for this place." And he hated, more than anything, that the veil saw that brightness and wanted it for itself.
The bell rang on a morning laced with mist. Jonah was fifteen.
He knew before the sound even faded. He knew by the way his mother sank to the floor. By the way his father dropped the bread he was slicing and didn't move to pick it up.
The ledger had opened itself.
Jonah followed them to the chapel in silence, rage already blooming in his chest like smoke. Veil trailed behind, holding Jonah's sleeve.
"Will it be someone I know?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
Inside the chapel, the air was thick with the scent of wax and damp stone. The bell above creaked gently, though there was no wind. Candles flickered low. The altar was bare except for the ledger, its pages curled as if from heat, even though the fire had long since gone out.
Jonah stood behind his father as he stepped forward, gloved hands trembling. The book had already turned to the page. A single name, written in red. Clean, unhurried script. Final.
Veil.
She looked at it for a long moment. Tilted her head.
"That's me," she said softly.
Their mother screamed. Jonah lunged forward, trying to tear the page out—but the ink flashed bright as flame, and the leather burned his skin where it touched him. He staggered back, clutching his hand.
"Why?" he choked out, to no one in particular.
Veil reached for his hand. "It's okay," she said. "It's what we do."
"No. It isn't okay," he hissed. "It's murder. You're a child."
She gave him that look she always gave when he didn't understand. A strange mixture of patience and pity, like someone waiting for a younger sibling to grow up.
"The stories say the roots need sleep. And sin keeps them awake. We give them rest."
Jonah's throat closed.
"No one ever returns," he whispered to his mother.
She looked away. "That's the point."
That day passed like a fever dream. Jonah barely remembered the faces of the villagers as they gathered. A procession formed by midafternoon—twelve men in grey robes, each with a silver thorn pinned to the collar. No one spoke. No one wept.
Veil was dressed in white, barefoot, a crown of withered ivy on her head. Someone had braided her hair. Jonah wanted to tear it all off. Wanted to scream, to burn the chapel, to shake the bones of every ancestor who ever made such a deal.
Instead, he followed.
The path to the hill was older than the village itself. A narrow cut through the trees, lined with stones marked in an ancient tongue. Each step made Jonah's heart beat louder in his chest. The air smelled of salt and rain. Veil walked like she was heading to a festival, not a grave. She waved to the trees. Hummed beneath her breath.
Jonah watched her walk and imagined grabbing her—running with her into the forest, through the fog, through the trees and the world's skin itself. But there was nowhere to run to.
The hill was just as he remembered. A low rise in the earth, ringed by black stones and dead grass. The soil there was always soft, always wet, no matter the season. It never grew anything.
A hole had already been dug.
It was too small. Too shallow.
Jonah saw the coffin beside it—a simple wooden box, unadorned. The salt sat in a bowl at its head. The stone, a smooth slab the size of a dinner plate, had already been washed clean.
The robed men began the ritual. They whispered the old words, voices low and shaking. The Binding Hymn came next. Jonah had never heard it in full before. It was not a song. It was not even human. The sounds grated against the air like bone across glass, syllables bent in impossible directions. It made the trees lean back. It made the wind vanish.
Veil stood by the grave, her hands clasped.
She turned and met Jonah's eyes.
"I'll wake the roots," she said.
He didn't know what she meant. He still didn't. But she smiled like she understood everything.
They lowered her into the box.
She didn't cry. She didn't scream.
The salt was poured. The stone was laid.
Jonah watched them begin to bury her, handfuls of wet earth falling like cruel blessings. His hands bled from how tightly he clenched them. His nails split. He didn't look away.
He couldn't.
And when the last of her white dress disappeared beneath the soil, he finally broke.
He screamed her name until his voice tore.
But the wind didn't carry it. The trees didn't echo it. The veil took the sound and buried it, too.
It rained that night. Not a soft drizzle. A downpour. The kind that drowns fields and pulls roots from the ground like nerves. The village went quiet, huddled in homes that suddenly felt too small, too cold.
Jonah sat outside, soaked to the bone, staring up at the chapel where the bell still hung, silent now.
It should have been him.