VEYROS*
The chamber Vaelith now occupied had been modified under heavy enchantment. Wards lined every surface etched in bloodstone and layered with invisible runes that could restrain a hundred minds at once. And yet, he sat on the floor like a bored child, humming to himself.
Veyros entered in silence.
Vaelith's eyes flicked up, half-glazed with madness and insight. He tilted his head.
"You've come with questions again. Dangerous ones, I think."
"I want answers," Veyros said simply.
Vaelith leaned back against the wall, as if amused.
"Everyone does."
"I need to know my role in this coming storm," Veyros said, circling him slowly. "Where do I stand when the bearer of the Void rises?"
Vaelith's humming ceased. A strange stillness stretched between them.
"I see many threads," the seer whispered. "Some snap. Some snarl. Yours..." he tapped his temple, "yours is fraying."
Veyros narrowed his eyes. "Be specific."
"You're standing at the edge of your own grave, and you don't even know who's holding the shovel."
"And the bearer?"
Vaelith chuckled darkly. "That's a slippery thread. I saw her... or rather, I saw what's around her. Fire. Collapse. Unraveling. Light that turns to hunger."
He leaned closer, his gaze sharp and suddenly lucid.
"You should be afraid."
Veyros left without another word.
He didn't go back to the Court. Instead, he shifted across realms... through a dark channel only the ancient bloodlines could access and found himself before a towering spire carved from obsidian and bone.
At its peak lived Sareen.
Sareen, half-witch, half-demon, welcomed him with a crooked smile and a flick of her fingers. Her sanctuary pulsed with magic... candles burning upside down, mirrors whispering in forgotten tongues.
"Ah, Veyros," she drawled, "I felt you coming. Like a storm through silk."
"I need your vision. One stronger than Vaelith's riddles."
Her grin widened. "Riddles are safer, love. Clarity has a price."
"I'll pay it."
She led him to a wide basin filled with something thicker than water. "Blood from the River of Forgotten Wombs," she explained. "Holds the truth like a mirror, but it cracks with time."
She began the ritual.
The room darkened. Her eyes rolled back. Winds howled through the spire though the windows never opened.
And then she spoke, in a voice that was not entirely hers:
"The bearer of the Void is awakening.
A girl born of light and loss,
The vessel sealed by sorrow,
She will be your end… unless you bind her first.
But beware... binding cuts both ways."
Veyros clenched his fists. "How do I find her?"
"She's already near," Sareen whispered. "And she bleeds power even now."
"What must I do?"
Sareen's eyes snapped open. "Capture her. Before she chooses another."
Veyros turned to leave, but Sareen added:
"Bring her to me. I can hold her. Hide her. Maybe even bleed her slowly. That kind of power shouldn't belong to a child."
----
Back in the lower city, Veyros summoned three trusted but dangerous demons... Zorrak, a sadistic soul-binder, Ilaith, a shadowmancer, and Brynn, a warlock with a taste for memory-stealing.
"She must not be harmed unless there's no other choice," Veyros told them. "You are to locate her. Observe. Follow her movements. If she awakens further... you are to capture and bring her to Sareen's fortress."
"And if Kael interferes?" Brynn asked, his violet eyes gleaming.
"Then bind him. Or bleed him."
---
Unbeknownst to Veyros, Sareen stood at her highest tower, watching the storm gather across the Veil.
She traced a rune into the stone with a clawed finger.
"So much power," she murmured. "If I can extract the Void before it anchors fully into her soul, I can shape it. Drink it. Command the ancient dark."
The truth? She didn't care if Talia survived.
She had once watched the fall of Nyros himself. She remembered the sound his heart made as it was torn free. She had tasted its echo on her tongue.
The Shard of Nyros might belong to Kael now, but the Void, the raw, true power, was about to bloom inside a girl who didn't even know the world was breaking beneath her feet.
Sareen smiled.
"Let them chase each other like fools. When the fruit is ripe, I will pluck it for myself."
---
Meanwhile, in the outskirts of the mortal world, in the bar where shadows stretched long at night, Talia's breath hitched.
A pulse of energy radiated through her. A flash of memory she didn't own. A face. Red eyes. Claws. Blood.
A whisper echoed through her thoughts.
"They're coming."
But she didn't know who. Or why.
Yet...