The coin was warm in Alec's hand.
Despite its blackened surface and eerie glow, it didn't burn. It felt like holding a heartbeat—steady, pulsing, alive.
He turned it over.
One side bore the Veilbound sigil—the seven-spoked eye. The other showed a tower wrapped in chains, its peak crowned by a crescent moon turned upside down.
He felt drawn to it, as if it were whispering things he couldn't quite hear.
Not words.
Intentions.
Suddenly, the air shifted.
A presence entered the chamber.
Alec spun around, gripping the rod from his belt. The silence thickened like smoke, and from the shadowed edge of the archive, a figure stepped forward—tall, cloaked in gray, a featureless white mask covering its face.
The mask had no eyes, no mouth.
Just a crack running down the center.
"So," the figure said, voice echoing without sound, "the blood of Rivenhart still carries the mark."
Alec's grip tightened. "Who are you?"
"A witness. A remnant. A mistake long buried." The figure stopped five steps away. "And your first test."
Before Alec could move, the man lifted his hand.
The world blurred.
Suddenly, Alec wasn't standing in the chamber anymore.
He was somewhere else.
The walls dissolved into mist. A red moon hung overhead. Beneath his feet stretched a cracked glass plain, and in the distance stood a gate—not unlike the one from his dreams.
The cloaked figure stood near it, arms behind his back.
"This is the Threshold," he said. "Between what you know… and what you refuse to understand."
Alec tried to speak, but no sound escaped his lips.
"Your coin is more than metal. It's a key. To power. To truth. To madness."
The gate pulsed.
"But every key demands a price."
Suddenly, shadowy shapes clawed their way out from beneath the glass. Figures in chains, faces hidden by sackcloth and black veils, surrounded Alec in a silent circle.
One of them reached forward—and Alec's mind snapped.
Memories not his own poured in.
A man weeping in a burning library.
A masked crowd chanting under a crimson sky.
A sword made of bone.
A girl with violet eyes screaming as a veil wrapped around her throat.
Then, nothing.
--------------
Alec awoke gasping, on the cold floor of the archive chamber.
The coin was still in his hand.
The figure was gone.
Only a single sentence had been etched into the stone wall beside him:
"The first mask awaits. In the Hollow Market."
-------------
He stared at it, heart hammering. He didn't know what the Hollow Market was.
But something told him he would find it soon.
And when he did, nothing in Wyrmere would remain untouched.
Not even the truth.