They left Thros'len through its lowest arteries, where light didn't reach and the stone sweated secrets. Zhurong led them down a steam-scored corridor lined with oxidized piping, each step echoing with the ghosts of a city that once pretended to be alive.
The tunnel behind them hissed shut like an exhale held too long. As the three stepped onto the surface of Dustwallow Marsh, the world shifted. The air hit different out here—wet, full of rot and ruin and something that clung to the soul like soot. Even the light felt wrong, filtered through clouds that never moved and mist that never quite settled.
Boo immediately covered her nose. "We're saving the world in a toilet bowl."
Zhurong didn't respond. His eyes scanned the treeline, golden irises reflecting the ambient swamplight like molten coin. The heat from his body already steamed the water clinging to the ferns. "Smell that?"
Nyxia nodded once. "Death. And something older."
They pushed into the thick brush, and the swamp accepted them like a bad memory—slow, suffocating, and unwilling to let go.
Their boots sank in mud that gave with a reluctant squelch. The branches overhead interlocked like broken fingers. Even the insects seemed to buzz off-beat, as if unsure if they belonged in this version of reality.
Zhurong kept the lead, fire flickering at his fingertips to light a slow path through the gnarled overgrowth. Boo trailed him by a few steps, her pistols and sabers bouncing lightly against her thighs with each stride.
Nyxia stayed in the rear, bow slung over her shoulder, senses open like a trap left out overnight.
For hours, they trudged forward in silence. Not the comfortable kind. The kind people wear when they don't know what words can't undo.
"You really think your contact is still alive?" Boo finally asked.
Zhurong's ears twitched. "If he isn't, his corpse might still be useful."
Boo snorted. "Charming."
They moved until the land gave way to an expanse of half-sunken ruins—stone circles peeking from beneath algae-streaked water, bones tangled in vines, and fading ward sigils scrawled across half-toppled pillars. The smell here was worse. Not just death, but old magic curdled by time.
"This was a druidic ring," Nyxia said, kneeling near one of the stones. "Kaldorei. Pre-Sundering."
"You'd know," Boo muttered.
Nyxia ignored her. She pressed her hand to the mossy glyph and winced as her mark pulsed faintly under her skin.
The Veil was near.
Zhurong turned, eyes narrowing. "We keep moving. This place was defiled."
They did.
By dusk, they found a plateau of dry land barely wide enough for camp. Zhurong kindled a small flame from his hands—just enough to keep the marsh fog at bay. Boo stretched out with a groan and began cleaning her blades again, talking more to herself than anyone else.
"You'd think saving the world would come with better terrain."
Nyxia didn't sit. She stood at the edge of camp, peering into the gloom.
Zhurong finally broke the quiet. "You haven't asked about the flower."
"The one that whispered my name?" Nyxia asked without turning. "Didn't feel like an invitation."
"It wasn't," he said. "It was a memory trigger. The Veil uses them to push us."
"To what?"
"To each other. To choices."
Nyxia finally sat, slowly, near the edge of the firelight.
Boo looked between them and rolled her eyes. "You're both real fun at parties, you know that?"
They ate in silence.
Zhurong passed out sealed rations and a flatbread disc soaked in heat-preserved oil that smelled faintly of citrus and iron. Boo sniffed it suspiciously, then took a bite and grimaced. "Tastes like a candle and a shoe had a baby."
"Nutritious baby," Zhurong muttered, chewing evenly.
Nyxia didn't eat. Her stomach churned. Every part of her felt coiled, like something was watching from beyond the trees. Not hunting. Waiting.
She finally spoke. "Something followed us from the city."
Zhurong stopped mid-chew. "You felt it too."
Boo sat upright, suddenly alert. "Hold on—too?"
Zhurong nodded. "Since we left the tunnel. Not eyes exactly. Something subtler. Like... memory residue."
Boo looked back toward the black edge of the trees. "Great. Love that. Can we stab it?"
Nyxia stood. "I need to check on him."
"Now?" Boo asked. "You're going to just walk into the haunted trees after dinner?"
"He's hurt. And I've been feeling him... flicker."
Zhurong looked grim. "Your beast is Veil-touched?"
Nyxia hesitated. "Not before. I don't know what he is now."
She found Loque'nahak beneath a mangrove tree, half-submerged in dark water that didn't reflect anything.
The great spirit beast's silver coat shimmered faintly under the canopy. His breathing was slow, but not labored. When Nyxia knelt, his head lifted, eyes gleaming with something unreadable.
Her fingers brushed his fur. Warm. Too warm.
Then she saw it—faint lines across his haunch. Not wounds. Not scars.
Runes.
The same runes she bore. Only half-formed, like the Veil was trying to write something into his spirit and kept getting interrupted.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
The air changed. Cold. Thick.
Loque raised his head suddenly—and growled.
Nyxia turned.
In the distance, beneath a crooked tree strung with red moss, a bloom had begun to unfurl. It wasn't white this time. Or red. It was gold and black, veined like a dragon's wing, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
It whispered a name:
"Boo…"
Nyxia reached for her weapon.
The flower pulsed again—and spat a single droplet of blood onto the stone beneath it.
Loque snarled.
Then the flower snapped shut.
Nyxia returned to camp pale and trembling.
Boo was still sharpening a blade. "You look like you saw a ghost."
"No," Nyxia said. "I saw a warning."
Zhurong frowned. "What kind?"
Nyxia sat heavily. "One meant for her."
Boo raised a brow. "You telling me my name was on a flower now?"
Nyxia nodded.
Zhurong stood slowly. "Then it's started. The next one of us is being tested."
They broke camp at dawn, or what passed for it in a place where the sky never cleared and the mist never lifted. The sun was a rumor, somewhere behind the clouds. The trees leaned in closer now, like they were listening.
Zhurong led them east, following a half-buried runic trail etched into petrified roots. His fingers glowed faintly with flame, just enough to see by. Boo kept one saber out and one hand near her pistol. Nyxia trailed them both, eyes scanning the horizon.
"Is it just me," Boo murmured, "or is the air thicker here?"
"It's not the air," Zhurong replied. "It's the magic. Something's bleeding through."
They moved slowly through a stretch of knee-deep water, past stone totems half-sunken in algae. One had a face. A mouth frozen in an eternal scream.
"That's comforting," Boo muttered.
Nyxia paused at a tree stump covered in a tight spiral of tiny, black-veined flowers. She didn't touch them, but her mark lit faintly in response. Not pain. Just... attention.
"They're watching," she whispered.
Zhurong stopped. "Don't talk like that unless you want them to answer."
The scream came without warning.
High, sharp, inhuman.
It echoed through the marsh, shattering silence and scattering birds into the fog. Boo spun, blades drawn. Zhurong's claws flared with fire. Nyxia nocked an arrow.
Movement—near the treeline.
Too fast to track. Then gone.
Boo whispered, "I hate this place."
Then it hit them.
A thing of vine and bone, shaped like a human once but now twisted into something that crawled on broken limbs and shrieked through a mouth lined with bark. It lunged at Boo first—she ducked and drove both blades upward through its chest, but it didn't fall. It grabbed her by the arm and burned her through its touch.
Zhurong roared and slammed a burst of fire into the creature's spine. The vines caught instantly—sizzling, snapping. It thrashed violently, then collapsed in a heap.
Silence returned.
Boo stared at the burn on her arm. It wasn't bleeding. It was glowing.
Zhurong crouched beside the body.
"This wasn't natural," he muttered.
"No kidding," Boo snapped.
Zhurong looked up. "I don't mean the creature. I mean the timing. It was sent. Pulled here by something—or someone—tied to us."
Nyxia stood very still.
"The Veil's not just drawing us together," she said. "It's drawing everything else too."
They burned the corpse.
Then they kept walking.
By midday, the path broke apart completely.
There was no trail—just broken patches of earth where the marsh had swallowed what once stood tall. The trees opened up into a clearing strangled by roots, their trunks bent backward as if recoiling from the circle at the center.
It was stone. Ancient. Veil-carved.
A shrine.
The kind built not to worship, but to contain.
They stepped inside the circle slowly. Boo instinctively moved wide, circling left. Zhurong walked the perimeter, flames low in his palm. Nyxia approached the center.
There, on a raised slab, was an orb.
It pulsed.
Not light. Not magic. Just presence.
Nyxia stepped closer. Her mark blazed to life. Boo's winced, one hand on her hip. Zhurong's entire arm flared red.
"Back up!" he warned—but it was too late.
The world shifted.
Nyxia wasn't in the clearing anymore.
She stood in a field of ash under a violet sky. Bodies lay everywhere—human, troll, elf, draenei. All marked.
A woman stood in the center, her robes torn, her arms raised. Fire bloomed from her hands—not wild, but precise. Measured. Controlled. She wept as she burned.
Zhurong stood beside her.
No—a man who looked like him. Furless. Younger. But the fire was the same.
He turned to Nyxia.
"You're not supposed to see this yet."
Then she was back.
Slammed into her body like a thrown stone.
She fell to her knees. Boo rushed over, catching her by the shoulder. Zhurong stumbled backward, shaking his hand like it was bitten.
"What the hell was that?" Boo barked.
"An echo," Nyxia gasped. "A Veil echo."
Zhurong's face was pale, lips pressed thin. "A warning."
Nyxia looked up, eyes wide.
"Of what?"
Zhurong glanced at the orb.
"Of what happens if we fail."
Much later that night, when the fire had burned low and the others pretended to sleep, Boo found Nyxia sitting alone near the edge of camp. Her bow lay beside her, untouched. Her eyes tracked something distant. Unseen.
"You look like someone who got an answer and hated it," Boo said, plopping down beside her.
Nyxia didn't look at her. "I saw people die. Marked ones. Just like us."
"Was it real?"
"I don't know," Nyxia whispered. "But it felt like a memory. And not just mine."
Boo picked up a stone and rolled it between her fingers. "You think the Veil's showing us how this ends?"
"No," Nyxia said. "I think it's showing us how it could end. If we get it wrong."
They sat in silence.
The marsh gurgled somewhere beyond the trees.
After a moment, Boo said, "Do you think we were chosen for a reason? Or just because we were nearby when the sky cracked open?"
Nyxia finally looked at her.
"I think we were chosen because no one else would've survived it."
Boo let that settle.
Then: "That's either comforting or terrifying. Haven't decided yet."
"You'll have time."
"Don't make promises like that, Huntress."
Nyxia didn't smile, but the silence between them softened.
Boo leaned back, staring at the shimmer of the fog above. "If we're all marked... then there are more out there. Right?"
Nyxia nodded. "There always are."
"Good," Boo said. "Because I am not dying with just the two of you."
By morning, the marsh had gone quiet again.
Too quiet.
The wind carried no scent. The fog did not shift. The Veil had opened a door, and now it was waiting.
Somewhere far ahead, another flower prepared to bloom.
And someone, marked and alone, was already dreaming of them.