Smoke rose in lazy curls above the ruin.
Rellmoor was gone.
No fire remained, but the heat still lingered in the blackened bones of the village—ash clinging to crumbled walls, stone split by heat so intense it had warped iron.
Kael stepped over what had once been a child's toy: a wooden horse, half-melted, staring up at nothing.
No bodies. Just outlines.
Scorch marks on the ground where people had once stood.
And a silence that felt wrong.
Even the wind refused to blow here.
Darric knelt beside the survivor: the tongueless priest, still trembling despite the blankets wrapped around his thin frame.
The man would not meet their eyes.
He had clawed "It spoke in her voice" into the dirt four times before Kael had arrived.
Darric looked up, grim. "No enemy tracks. No Veilhounds. Just… this."
Kael didn't speak.
He walked deeper into the ruins.
Where the earth was burned deepest, he dropped to one knee and pressed his palm to the ground.
The Veil answered.
And what it showed him turned his blood cold.
A shape walking through fire.
A face that wore faces.
Screams without mouths.
Memory being erased like chalk from stone.
Kael's body tensed. His eyes bled crimson light. Black sparks danced across his skin as the Veil fought him, trying to blur the memory.
But he held on.
He saw it.
"Voice-Eater," he said softly. "Malrik's unearthed the deep horrors."
Lyra looked pale. "They're myths. Old nightmares from the Godfall."
"So am I," Kael said, rising to his feet.
Darric cursed. "How do we fight something that kills sound? That consumes memory?"
Kael stared toward the Vale of Mourning, where smoke still marked other battlefields.
"We don't fight it head-on. Not yet."
"We learn. We adapt. Like it does."
"But from now on—no one travels alone. No units without shielding glyphs. And everyone learns the binding tongues."
Lyra stepped beside him. "You think there's more?"
Kael's eyes darkened.
"There are sixteen vaults beneath the Spire of Bones."
"This was only the first."
He turned, cloak snapping in the dead wind, and began issuing orders.
Burn wards. Veil-scout patrols. Glyphsmith reinforcements.
The war had changed. The rules were gone.
But Kael Rivenhart had walked through the old stories and survived.
Now, he would teach the Black Host what fear truly meant.
"They want to unmake the world," he said quietly.
"Then I'll remind them who forged it in flame."
(Flashback — 11 Years Earlier)
The wind howled through the high passes of Kyr Volenn, where the mountain split like a jagged scar and the sky looked close enough to touch.
Kael was fifteen.
His hair, even then, was red as burning coals, wild and matted with sweat. His fists were raw. His eyes bled light when he lost control—which happened often in those days.
He stood in a shallow pit ringed with Veilstone shards.
A training circle. A prison. A crucible.
"Again," said Master Coran, voice like cracking slate.
Kael clenched his jaw, trembling from the last surge of power. His vision swam with ghost-light, whispers clawing at the edge of hearing.
"I can't," he said. "It won't shut up. It's screaming—"
Coran struck him across the face—not with cruelty, but purpose.
"The Veil always screams. That's its nature. What matters is whether you scream back."
Kael stepped into the circle again. The glyphs beneath his feet ignited.
Coran began the incantation. Not a spell—but an invocation of exposure.
The Trial of Echoes. Designed to drown the mind in Veil-noise until only the strongest parts remained.
As the air thickened, Kael fell to his knees.
He saw visions—broken cities, winged things crawling from holes in the sky, his mother burning, his hands soaked in blood he didn't recognize.
He felt every mistake, every grief, every fear as if it were happening again.
And still—he stood.
Blood running from his ears. Nails digging into his palms.
He did not scream.
Later, Kael sat by the mountain fire, shaking, drinking water like a dying man.
Coran knelt beside him and set down an obsidian blade.
"The Veil is not your ally," the old man said. "Nor your curse. It is a force. It does not care who commands it."
"But if you let it name you…"
"You're already lost."
Kael looked up. "Then what do I name myself?"
Coran stared at him a long moment.
Then placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You don't."
"You let the world name you. But you decide what that name means."
The memory faded like smoke in Kael's mind as he stood once more in the ruined village of Rellmoor, watching Lyra and Darric tend to survivors.
The Veil still screamed.
But now, Kael screamed back—and it listened.
He closed his eyes, steadying his breath.
"I haven't forgotten, old man," he murmured.
"And I won't let it name me."