Eliara woke with a gasp, heart pounding, the whisper still echoing in her ears.
The Veil, or the Void.
She sat up, clutching the pendant around her neck. It was warm again, pulsing faintly like it had a heartbeat. The air in the apartment felt off. Heavier.
Something had changed.
She slid out of bed and pulled back the curtain. The city outside looked the same—but her eyes, now partially awakened to the weave of magic, picked out tiny distortions. Rips in the fabric of things. Shadows where light should have been. Faint glowing marks scratched into brick walls and lampposts—sigils, hiding in plain sight.
She wasn't just seeing more.
She was being watched.
Rowen met her later that morning in the alley behind the café. He didn't bother with pleasantries.
"You felt it," he said.
Eliara nodded. "Something shifted. Last night."
"The Veil cracked."
"Cracked?"
"It's like a pressure system. Too much strain from the other side, and it fractures. If it splits wide enough, things will come through that even the Watchers fear."
She swallowed. "So what do we do?"
"We find the breach."
He handed her a small compass-like device. Instead of a needle, it had a piece of shimmering thread suspended in glass, twisting and pulling against invisible forces.
"This will lead us to the weakest point," Rowen said. "But once we find it… you'll have to act."
"Act how?"
Rowen looked at her with something like regret. "You're the only one who can seal it."
The compass thread pulled them across the city.
Through back alleys, under bridges, down into forgotten tunnels beneath the streets—old maintenance shafts and storm drains that hadn't seen use in decades. The deeper they went, the more Eliara felt the pressure building.
And the colder it got.
At last, the thread began to spin, frantic, then stopped—pointing straight ahead at a rusted steel door marked with an ancient Veilkeeper glyph.
"We're here," Rowen said, voice quiet.
Eliara stared at the door. Her hand hovered over the latch.
"Wait," she whispered. "Do you hear that?"
A low hum filled the space. Like breathing, but not quite. Too many lungs.
Rowen tensed. "They're already through."
Eliara opened the door.
The space beyond was not part of the world.
It was a cavern of shifting geometry—walls bent at impossible angles, floors that pulsed like muscle, shadows that didn't move with the light. And at the center of the room: a tear in the air, jagged and writhing.
From it, something leaked.
Mist. Cold. And shapes—flickering, half-formed creatures that looked like sketches brought to life. They twisted and turned in silence, as if they didn't yet know they existed.
"We have to close it," Rowen said. "Now."
"How?"
"Focus on the pendant. Remember what you saw when the weave revealed itself. Picture the Veil—not broken, but whole."
"I don't know how!"
"Yes, you do," he said. "You were born to."
Eliara stepped forward. The mist curled around her feet, whispering her name in a dozen voices.
The pendant grew hot.
She closed her eyes.
The world fell away.
She stood in the void between worlds—the place behind the Veil. An endless field of drifting light, woven like threads across the stars. She could see the rip—dark, gaping, pouring black ink into the luminous strands.
And standing beside it, watching her: a tall figure cloaked in nothingness, its face a shifting blur of mouths and eyes.
The one from her dream.
"Veilkeeper," it said in a voice that cracked mountains. "You are too late."
She raised her pendant. The silver fire bloomed from her hands.
"No," she said, voice steady. "I'm just in time."
She thrust the light into the tear.
Reality screamed.
The rift collapsed inward with a sound like shattering bone. The mist howled, trying to escape, but the light swallowed it. One by one, the half-formed things vanished. The cavern groaned. The space folded.
And then—it was over.
Eliara collapsed to her knees, panting. The pendant still glowed, dimmer now, like an ember after a fire.
Rowen knelt beside her. "You did it."
She looked up at him. "I saw something in there. Something huge. It knew me."
"It's called the Maw," Rowen said grimly. "An ancient being. Older than the Veil. It's been waiting for a breach large enough to slip through."
"It's still waiting."
He nodded. "But now it knows your name."
That night, she didn't sleep.
Instead, she sat on her rooftop, staring out over the city. She could still see the faint lines of magic under everything—the weave, now more visible than ever. The world was different. And so was she.
The quiet buzz of her phone broke the silence.
A message from the unknown number again.
One breach sealed. Seven remain.
Eliara stared at it.
Seven.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
Then she typed:
Where?
The reply came instantly.
They're waking up, Veilkeeper. Come find them.