The hospital loomed like a mausoleum of steel and glass.
Tall. Cold. Watching.
Eliara and Rowen stood across the street from the emergency entrance, both dressed in borrowed scrubs. Rowen had managed to forge their way in with fake IDs—his contacts were everywhere, it seemed.
But even with the disguise, Eliara felt exposed. The pendant burned faintly against her chest, a warning signal in her blood.
"Emotion breaches are different," Rowen said as they crossed the lot. "They feed off pain. Grief. Fear. It's not about space—it's about resonance."
"So the Veil here is thinner because…"
"Because this place hurts."
They passed through the main corridor. Nurses rushed by. Monitors beeped. Phones rang. But Eliara couldn't stop noticing the edges.
The shadows were wrong. Too long. Too still.
She looked into a room and saw a patient asleep in bed—an old man. But above him, floating just below the ceiling, was a shape like a screaming mouth, made of mist and memory.
She blinked. It vanished.
Rowen handed her the compass again. The thread inside spun erratically, then stopped—pulling them toward the east wing.
The psych ward.
The hallway stank of antiseptic and silence. Lights flickered above them as they moved. The thread grew stiff in her hands—pointing like an arrow now.
They reached Room 317.
A sealed observation room. Lights off. A single bed inside, empty except for a child's drawing taped to the wall.
It showed a stick figure standing between two huge eyes, arms raised. Beneath it, scrawled in crayon:
I SAW THE SMILING ONE
Eliara stepped closer, frowning.
Then the lights went out.
And the screaming started.
It came from everywhere—down the hall, up from the floor, through the vents. Not voices. Thoughts. Thousands of them, all at once.
Pain. Grief. Rage.
The walls pulsed. The floor buckled. And in the center of Room 317, a rift opened—ragged and black, bleeding color from the world around it.
A shadow stepped out.
No—not a shadow. A person.
A girl, maybe ten, with wild hair and eyes that glowed white. Her skin cracked with light like a shattered mirror.
She looked at Eliara and smiled.
And when she spoke, her voice was layered—one voice, a hundred echoes.
"Veilkeeper. You can't seal what wants to bleed."
Rowen pulled his blade. "She's not a breach. She is the breach."
"She's just a child!" Eliara shouted.
"Not anymore."
The girl's smile widened. Her body shuddered—and then she split.
Not physically. Spiritually.
Her form fractured into six versions of herself—each dripping rage, sorrow, guilt, terror, grief, and loneliness. They spread out like ghosts, circling Eliara.
The room twisted.
She was no longer in the hospital.
She stood in a graveyard. Cold. Alone.
Rain fell around her. A stone in front of her bore her name.
Eliara Venn. Beloved Daughter.
She blinked—and the stone said something else.
Failure.
She turned. The grief-avatar stood behind her, face blank, whispering.
"You couldn't save them."
Another blink.
Now she was in her childhood room. Her mother screamed behind a locked door. Glass shattered.
The rage-avatar paced the walls like a tiger.
"You remember. You still hate her."
Another blink.
She stood in an empty version of Grind & Bloom. All the tables were overturned. Blood smeared the walls. A barista lay motionless behind the counter.
It was her.
"You died, and no one noticed," whispered the loneliness-avatar.
Eliara fell to her knees.
She couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
This is how it works, a voice echoed. Emotion breaks the weave. If you fall here—you're gone.
Then she heard another voice.
Her own.
You are light between.
She remembered the dream. The silver-cloaked woman. The first breach. The way she saw the weave.
Eliara grabbed the pendant.
And pulled.
Light exploded outward—silver and violet, threads snapping through the false realities. The avatars shrieked and dissolved like ash on wind.
She stood once more in Room 317, heart pounding, the girl still at the center—but flickering now, unstable.
"She's a vessel," Eliara said. "Something's using her."
Rowen stepped beside her, blood on his lip. "Then free her. Or end her."
Eliara didn't hesitate.
She ran forward, hand outstretched, the pendant glowing with every heartbeat.
"You don't belong to them!" she shouted. "You're not a wound! You're a person!"
The girl shrieked, hands over her ears.
"They lied to you! You were seen, not broken!"
The girl sobbed—and cracked.
Her body glowed once more.
And then: imploded.
Not into darkness. Into light.
The breach closed with a sigh.
Room 317 fell still. The lights returned. The girl was gone—but a faint shape lingered in the pendant's glass. A single golden thread, spinning gently.
"A soul fragment," Rowen murmured. "You saved her."
Eliara stared at it.
"I remembered her," she said. "She wasn't the breach. She was the key."
"To what?"
Eliara didn't answer.
Because she wasn't sure.
But somewhere in the back of her mind, the Maw was smiling.