Chapter 11: The Thornveil
The forest did not begin with trees.
It began with silence.
The kind of silence that pressed into the bones, as if sound itself had been bled away, leaving only the faint tremor of something vast moving far beneath. Elias felt it first in his teeth, then in the ache of his ribs. The Loom here was not steady. It shivered like a taut wire pulled too far.
Rook bristled at his side, hackles sharp, silver eyes darting into the shifting gloom. The cub had been restless since they left Ashvale, nose constantly twitching, growl low in his throat. Hale's jaw worked as he studied the path, the soldier in him weighing danger against necessity. Elvi walked lightly, bow unstrung but never far from her fingers, eyes like a hawk's as she scanned the undergrowth.
"What is this place?" Elias asked, tense from the jagged resonance all around him.
Lysera alone seemed unshaken. The elf moved with a deliberate grace, each step balanced against the pull of the Threads that twined through the air like veins of faint light. To Elias's untrained sight, they looked chaotic, fraying and re-forming in jagged bursts, but she slipped between them as though she'd spent her life walking on broken glass.
"This is the Thornveil," she said at last, voice quiet but carrying. "Once a hunting ground, once a green heart of Elyndor. After the Sundering it became… this."
Elias tasted iron on his tongue. The air stank faintly of ash and old blood, though no battle had been fought here in years.
"What is it now?" he asked.
Lysera's gaze flicked toward him, pale hair catching the faint shimmer of the Loom. "A wound that never closed."
They pressed deeper. The trees themselves seemed wrong. Trunks twisted on themselves, bark scored with strange ridges, branches tangled in patterns that almost resembled weaving sigils but broke apart the moment Elias tried to focus. The forest hummed with dissonance, a constant static at the edge of hearing.
Every so often the hum shifted into whispers. Elias caught scraps of sound, Ava's laughter, his father's voice, the crack of rifle fire from deserts far behind him. He clenched his jaw until his teeth hurt. Lysera's warning echoed in his skull, Do not answer if it whispers.
Hours stretched like rope. The sky above was little more than a dim smear of gray through the canopy, time dissolving into the steady ache of walking. His ribs screamed, his burns itched, but he kept moving. Noll, to his surprise, did not falter. The boy's face was pale, jaw tight, but his steps never slowed.
At last the forest broke.
They stepped into a clearing where the air changed, the hum softening, settling into a steadier rhythm. Elias felt it at once, the Loom here was different, as if some unseen hand had smoothed the frayed threads into harmony.
At the center of the clearing rose stone.
Not the jagged boulders of natural earth, but cut stone, laid by hands that understood weight and balance. Pillars thrust upward, scarred by centuries yet still standing, each etched with patterns half swallowed by moss. Arches spanned between them, their lines precise, their curvature undeniable.
Roman.
Elias froze. He knew those arches. Not from Elyndor, but from books, from ruined amphitheaters and aqueducts he'd seen in pictures back home. The symmetry, the strength, the way the stone still held after gods knew how many years, it was Roman work, or something impossibly like it.
Hale gave a low whistle. "By the saints."
Elvi touched one of the pillars, fingers brushing the weathered carvings. "This is older than the rebellion, older than the Church. Mythic Age, maybe further."
Lysera's face was unreadable. "Crassus's work," she murmured, almost too soft to hear. Then, sharper, "Do not linger. This place was meant to bind."
Elias stepped closer despite her words. The carvings caught the light in strange ways, not just words, but stories carved in relief, like the friezes he remembered from Roman temples. Warriors locked in battle with beasts that wore too many teeth. Men raising spears against a tide of shadow. And at the center, always, a single figure, broad-shouldered, spear in hand, standing against the dark.
His chest tightened. The figure's face was weathered by time, details lost, but the posture was familiar, not noble, not exalted, but braced. Like a soldier holding a line because no one else would.
One panel stopped him cold.
It showed the figure raising his weapon against not a beast, but the Loom itself, strands carved in flowing lines across the stone, and the spear cutting through them. The stone cutter had etched the severed threads curling back like smoke.
Threadcutting.
Elias's mouth went dry.
He reached out, almost without thought, fingers brushing the cold groove of the carved spear. For a heartbeat the hum of the Loom around him deepened, a resonance that thrummed in his bones. Rook whined, pressing against his leg.
Lysera's voice cut through the silence. "Step back."
Elias turned. Her expression was hard, her eyes sharper than the carved stone.
"You know what this is?" he asked.
"I know enough," she said. "A man who cut the Loom. A man who was unmade for it. This place is his scar."
Hale frowned. "Saint Caelus," he said, half to himself. "The Church claims this was one of his miracles. They say he wove light into stone to hold back demons."
Lysera's lips thinned. "The Church says many things."
Elias looked back at the carving. The spear cutting threads. Not weaving. Cutting. He remembered the Choir in Ashvale, the way his own weapon had thrummed with resonance, the way the Prelate's song had snapped in his hands. The echo in his bones was the same.
"Whoever he was," Elias said quietly, "he wasn't weaving."
Lysera didn't answer.
Noll stepped closer, eyes wide, tracing the frieze with trembling fingers. "It looks like… like he's breaking it on purpose. Why would anyone do that?"
"Because sometimes the only way to stop a fire is to cut the rope before it spreads," Elias muttered. His hand closed around the haft of his own spear, the reforged weapon warm in his grip.
The clearing held its breath. The broken forest hummed beyond, jagged and wild, but here the Loom's song was steadier, anchored by stone and memory. Elias felt it settle into him, not peace exactly, but something close enough to rest his weight on.
Lysera turned at last, her cloak whispering. "We camp here. The Threads will not shift in this place. Not yet."
Hale nodded. Elvi was already moving to check the perimeter, bow in hand. Noll sank down against a pillar, exhaustion written across his young face. Tamsin began unshouldering her pack, muttering about firewood and bandages.
Elias lingered a moment longer before the carving. The faceless figure with the spear. The cut Threads curling like smoke.
Roman arches rose around him, pillars scarred but unbroken. The air carried the echo of stone laid by hands that should not have existed in this world.
And though he said nothing, Elias knew. Whoever had stood here before, saint, soldier, or stranger, he had fought the same fight.
And he had cut the same threads.
The fire was small, little more than coals coaxed from scavenged branches, but its light pooled against the carved stone like a fragile heart. Shadows bent across the pillars, throwing the friezes into shifting life, warriors moving, beasts snarling, the faceless figure with the spear cutting through Threads that curled like smoke.
Elias sat with his back to one of the arches, ribs aching but breath steadying. Rook sprawled at his side, head on his thigh, eyes half closed though his ears flicked at every sound beyond the clearing. The cub didn't like this place. Elias could feel it in the restless twitch of his muscles, in the low growl that hummed like a warning whenever the forest stirred.
But here, inside the ruin, the Loom felt steadier. Anchored. Elias leaned into that rhythm, let it ground him as the ache of the last days settled into something manageable.
Hale broke the silence first.
"You've seen plenty of ruins, elf," he said, eyes fixed on Lysera across the fire. "What's different about this one?"
Lysera's gaze flicked to him, pale hair catching the firelight. For a moment Elias thought she wouldn't answer, but then she spoke, voice cool and measured.
"Most ruins are bones," she said. "Empty shells gnawed by time. This one still breathes. The stone is bound. Wards layered into its very shape. Look closer."
Elias did. Now that she'd named it, he could feel it, faint vibrations running through the stone, like the hum of a taut string. The pillars weren't just holding weight. They were still carrying resonance.
"Whoever built this," Lysera continued, "was not just a mason. He was something more. A shaper."
Hale grunted, unconvinced. "The Church calls him Saint Caelus. Says he carved temples with the Loom's blessing."
Elvi snorted softly, bow across her knees. "And you believe every story priests tell?"
"I believe in what keeps walls standing," Hale shot back. "Men die. Stones hold."
"Stones fall too," Lysera said.
Her eyes slid to the frieze where the figure cut Threads instead of weaving. The firelight caught the groove of the spear's strike, deep and deliberate, a scar in stone.
Noll had been quiet until now, sitting close to the fire with his knees pulled up, hands restless against his shins. He glanced between them, then at Elias.
"Is it true?" he asked. "What you did in Ashvale, cutting the Choir's song. Was it like that?" He nodded toward the carving.
Elias felt the weight of eyes on him. Lysera's, sharp as glass. Hale's, steady as stone. Elvi's, curious but cautious. Even Tamsin, who'd been fussing with a bundle of herbs, stilled.
"I don't know," Elias said at last. His voice was low, the words rough. "I didn't ask for it. I just… felt where it would break. And it broke."
Noll swallowed, face pale in the firelight. "And if you can do it again?"
Elias looked down at Rook, at the cub's slow, steady breathing. His hand rested on the animal's flank, grounding himself in that simple, stubborn heartbeat.
"Then I'll do it if I have to," he said. "But don't look to me for miracles. I'm no saint."
For a moment the only sound was the crackle of the fire. Then Tamsin let out a breath like a laugh.
"Good," she said. "Saints get people killed. Soldiers just bleed."
The words cut closer to truth than Elias liked, but he didn't argue.
Elias leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, the firelight catching the hollows of his face. "We should speak plain," he said, voice low but steady. "If we're going to march through this forest together, we can't keep hiding behind walls and masks. Not here. Not with the Loom listening."
Elvi raised a brow, half a smirk tugging her mouth. "You're asking for confessions?"
"I'm asking for truth," Elias said. His tone carried no command, only the weary weight of a man who'd seen what silence cost. "Why you fight. What you've already lost. What you stand to gain. Because if we don't know each other…" He glanced around the circle, meeting each set of eyes in turn. "Then the first time the Loom pulls us thin, we'll break."
The fire burned low, its glow painting the ruin's Roman arches in shifting light, shadows dancing across the carved friezes of battles long lost. Beyond the clearing, the Thornveil whispered, its hum pressing at the edges, but here the walls held steady. It was the first place in days that felt like it might let them breathe.
Elias had asked for truth, and silence followed, heavy and waiting. Then Lysera spoke.
"My people cast me out," she began, voice sharp, though her eyes stayed fixed on the fire. "But that was only the end of it, not the beginning. I was born in the high towers of Aelthir, in the courts of the elven houses. My family was devout. Too devout. The Church's hymn ran through every hall, every meal, every dream. From the time I could walk, I was taught to bow when the choirs sang."
She lifted her chin, firelight cutting the planes of her face. "I never bowed. Not even once. My tutors despised me for it. My parents prayed over me until their voices broke. When I came of age, the priests branded me heretic. They said the Loom itself recoiled at my defiance. My own kin turned their faces from me."
Her mouth twisted, bitter. "I left before they could drag me to the Choirs. I thought the world might be freer beyond the towers. Instead I found the same chains everywhere else, only heavier and bloodier. The Wardens hunt those like me, the Choirs burn the rest. So I learned to fight. Not because I wanted to, but because no one else would keep me alive."
Her hand brushed the crossbow at her side, almost a caress. "That is who I am. The one who would not bow. The one who will not kneel. They call it heresy. I call it truth. And I will keep walking, home or no home, until the day the song of the Loom is broken."
Her words settled into the fire, sharp and cutting, leaving silence in their wake.
Elvi stirred next. She had been quiet so long that Elias thought she might not speak, but then she lifted her bow and turned it in her hands. The fire caught the worn wood, the scars of years of use.
"I was the middle child," she said softly. "Two brothers, older and younger. My mother sang, though not in a Choir, she sang to keep us safe when the Wardens patrolled, sang hymns that they would accept so they would pass us by."
Her eyes lowered. "It didn't work. My eldest brother, Daren, was taken anyway. He was strong, too strong for his age. They said he was blessed. The Choir burned him alive in their song. I watched from the square. He screamed until he didn't."
Her hands tightened on the bow. "My younger brother, Kairn, bent knee. He said it was the only way to survive. He joined the Wardens, wears their black threads. He doesn't look at me anymore when we cross paths. To him, I am already ash."
She drew in a long breath. "That left me. Alone. So I picked up this bow, the same one my father carried to hunt stag before he died of sickness. I fight because there is no one else left in my blood to fight. I don't know if I'll ever forgive them, or myself. But if the Choirs come for me, they'll find more than a voice. They'll find arrows in their throats."
Her voice was quiet, but the words burned hotter than the fire.
Noll had been fidgeting the whole time, restless, shifting, his young face caught between shame and defiance. When the silence turned toward him, he licked his lips, swallowed, and spoke in a rush.
"I was a farmer's son. Grey Knoll. You know the place." His voice cracked, but he pressed on. "I was meant to till soil, mend fences, raise oxen. Nothing more. That was all my father ever wanted for me. Simple, safe, quiet."
His fists clenched against his knees. "But quiet doesn't feed families when the Wardens come. They took half our grain every season. When we had nothing left, they took our neighbors instead. Hung them on the road as an example."
He sucked in a shaky breath. "I wanted to fight. My father forbade it. He said to keep my head down, that we were too small to matter. But I watched my friends starve. I watched the Wardens trample our fields and burn our barns. I couldn't stand it. When Grey Knoll fell, I picked up a spear from the mud and followed anyone who would take me."
His eyes flicked to Elias, fierce now despite the tremor in his voice. "I'm no soldier. Not yet. But I'll learn. I have to. Because I'm tired of watching, tired of being afraid. If he can do it," he nodded toward Elias,"then so can I, I won't be left behind. Not again."
Elias reached out without thinking and ruffled the boy's hair. Noll ducked, cheeks flushing, but didn't pull away.
The dwarf had been quiet the whole time, which was unusual for him. He usually filled silence with hammer rhythms and booming laughter, but tonight he sat hunched, scarred hands folded across his knees, beard still carrying the stink of soot from the forge.
When the eyes of the circle turned toward him, he gave a short, rough laugh. "You want truth, do ya? Saints take me, but truth's uglier than steel."
He spat into the fire, sparks snapping. "I was born under the mountains of Karak Thul, to a line of smiths older than your empires. My clan forged crowns and blades for kings. They told me I was to do the same, steady hands for steady work. But I was never steady. I wanted to see what happened when you bent the rules, when you mixed metals that weren't meant to touch, when you sang fire into stone, when you taught steel to dance like a mad thing."
His grin flickered, there and gone. "My masters called it brilliance when it worked, blasphemy when it didn't. I blew a forge sky high trying to cage a storm in a hammerhead. Killed no one but myself in reputation. They cast me out, said my madness would burn the mountain halls to rubble if I stayed."
He rubbed at the old burn scars across his arms. "So I wandered. Took work where I could. Made toys for lords, weapons for killers, gear for rebels too desperate to ask where it came from. Every time I thought I'd found a place, the fire in me wanted more. And every time, someone else called me cursed for it."
He looked around the circle, eyes gleaming in the firelight. "But when Hale brought you to my forge, soldier, I saw the same curse in you. Mad ideas, born of fire and ruin. Not careful, not safe, but necessary. The world is breaking, and steady work won't hold it. Only fire will."
His grin returned, fierce this time. "So I fight because fire's all I have left. I fight because when the end comes, I'll not be remembered as the smith who bent knee to kings, but the mad bastard who laughed as he set the world alight. And if I die with hammer in hand and sparks in my beard, so be it."
He leaned back then, the firelight catching in his scarred hands, his laugh rumbling low. "That's me. Thorek Ironbelly. Too stubborn to die quiet. Too mad to live safe. And damned glad for it."
The fire popped, and all eyes shifted at last to Hale. He sat like a stone, broad shoulders hunched, face carved with old lines. For a long time he said nothing. Then, finally, his jaw worked and his voice rumbled low.
"I was a soldier long before I was a captain," he said. "Raised in the gutter alleys of Velros, conscripted at fifteen when I stole bread from the wrong hand. They gave me a spear instead of a noose. Said if I bled for them, I could eat."
His hand flexed, curling into a fist. "I bled. Through my youth, through my manhood, through every war the lords could invent. I learned to keep men alive when orders were suicide. I learned to hold lines that should have broken. I rose in rank, because the dead can't argue and I never stayed down."
He leaned forward, eyes locked on the fire. "But the cost… I see every man I've buried when I close my eyes. Faces young and old, men who trusted me to lead them home. Some burned in Choirs. Some gutted in alleys. Some because I gave an order that bought the day but cost their lives. And when I wake, their eyes are waiting."
He drew in a long breath through his nose. "I fight now because their graves must mean something. Because I can't put this spear down until I know their names weren't wasted. Maybe when it ends, I can rest. Until then, I carry them."
His voice trailed into silence. Even the Thornveil seemed to hold its breath.
At last they turned to Elias.
He had listened to each of them, felt their words weigh in his chest, heavy as armor. When the silence settled on him, he didn't flinch from it.
"I was a soldier too," he began. His voice was low, roughened by gravel and smoke. "Not here. Not in your wars. On another world."
The firelight caught the shadows under his eyes as he stared past the flames, seeing deserts and blood instead of forest. "I wore a uniform, carried a rifle, fought wars in places with sand that swallowed you whole. Two tours overseas. I learned how to clear rooms, how to fight hand-to-hand, how to survive. And I learned what it costs when orders are written by men who never bleed. I brought pieces of that war home in scars and sleepless nights."
His hand tightened on the haft of his spear.
"Then I found love and had a daughter, Ava." His voice faltered, raw. "She was my light. My reason to stop being a weapon. She laughed like the world couldn't touch her. And for a time, I believed it couldn't. Until it did."
The silence deepened, firelight catching the sheen in his eyes.
"She died," he said simply. "Too soon. Too unfair. And I broke with her. Marriage failed. Faith failed. I drowned myself in the only thing I had left, the bottle, the fight, the soldier's emptiness."
He drew in a ragged breath. "My last day on Earth, I saw a child about to die. Not mine. Someone else's. But I couldn't stand by. I threw myself between her and the fire. It cost me everything."
His gaze dropped to Rook at his side, the cub's silver eyes gleaming in the firelight. "And then I woke here. In this world. With nothing left but a scar, and a choice. So I fight. Because I couldn't save my daughter. But maybe I can save someone else's."
The words scraped raw as they left him, but they were true.
The silence that followed Elias's words was thick, heavier than before, but not empty. It was shared. Lysera's gaze lingered on him, unreadable. Hale inclined his head once, as if in recognition. Elvi leaned back, expression softer, grief mirrored in her eyes. Noll looked at him with something like fierce hope.
The fire snapping like it too carried the weight of what had been spoken.
Then Thorek cleared his throat, scratching at the soot in his beard. His eyes gleamed with curiosity more than pity.
"What's a rifle?" he asked.
The others blinked at him. Lysera's brow arched, Elvi's lips twitched, and even Hale's scarred mouth looked like it almost fought a smile.
Elias let out a rough laugh, rubbing his face with one hand. "Of course that's what you latch onto."
Thorek spread his hands, grinning like a wolf. "You said you carried one in your world. Sounds like a weapon. Everything about you stinks of weapons. So, what is it?"
"It's… complicated," Elias said, settling back against the stone. "Think of a crossbow. Now take away the string. Replace it with fire and powder that explodes in a tube. That force hurls a piece of metal faster than sight. Straight through armor, through men, sometimes clean through walls."
Thorek's grin widened with every word. "Explosions and metal, you say? Fire in a tube? By the Forge, lad, why didn't you tell me sooner!"
"No." Elias jabbed a finger at him. "Don't. Not yet. You'll blow us all sky high before you get the first one right."
Thorek chuckled, unashamed. "Aye, you're not wrong. But tell me you wouldn't sleep sweeter knowing you had one in your hands."
Elias shook his head, though a corner of his mouth twitched. "I've had one in my hands. Slept worse every night because of it. Trust me, Thorek. There's fire we can use now, and fire we need to leave buried until the world's ready. Rifles belong to the second kind."
The dwarf grumbled into his beard, but his eyes still sparkled. "You'll talk me round to it one day, soldier. Fire like that doesn't stay buried forever."
"Maybe," Elias said. "But not tonight."
For the first time since Ashvale, a ripple of low laughter passed through the circle, easing the weight that had hung over them. Even Lysera's lips softened a fraction, though she shook her head like she regretted it. Rook gave a small huff and laid his head back down, as if the cub had decided the fire was safe enough to sleep beside again.
The fire crackled on. Around them, the Roman arches loomed, scarred but unbroken. The friezes of Crassus's deeds watched with silent stone eyes, their stories half erased but not forgotten.
And in the hush, it felt as though the Loom itself had listened, binding their stories into thread.
And above it all, the Loom hummed, steadier here, anchored by the work of hands that should never have touched this world.
The legacy of a forgotten soldier, Elias thought. Whoever he had been, his mark remained. A man who cut Threads. A man who stood as Elias now stood.
The night pressed close, the Thornveil whispering at its edges, but inside the ruin the fire held.
For the first time since Ashvale, Elias felt like maybe, just maybe, they could hold, too.
The fire had burned down to embers when Elias's eyes snapped open.
Not to danger, not yet. To sound.
The Loom's hum had shifted. Subtle at first, a tremor just under the range of hearing, then rising until it thrummed against his ribs like a second heartbeat. Rook stirred at once, ears pricked, head lifting from Elias's thigh with a low whine.
"Easy," Elias whispered, hand brushing the cub's flank. The resonance wasn't hostile. It was… insistent. Calling.
He rose carefully, ignoring the ache in his bruised body. The others slept in the ruin's shadow, faces softened by firelight: Noll curled like a pup, Elvi's bow across her knees, Hale rigid even in sleep, Lysera awake but silent, her gaze following Elias as he moved.
"You hear it," she said softly.
He didn't answer, just followed the pull.
Beyond the fire's reach, the ruin stretched deeper than he'd realized. Arches gave way to a half collapsed hall, stone worn smooth by centuries but still holding its weight. The walls bore carvings almost lost to moss and time, but where the firelight reached, the grooves gleamed faintly, threads of resonance still woven into the stone.
Elias touched one. The vibration leapt into his bones, sharp and alive.
It wasn't just stone. It was memory.
He pressed deeper, Rook padding at his side, Lysera following without a word. The hall opened into a chamber at the ruin's heart, its roof shattered so moonlight spilled across the floor. Dust hung silver in the air. And there, on the far wall, stretched a mural untouched by moss, its carvings deeper, sharper, preserved by some ward that still hummed with power.
Elias froze.
The mural told a story.
First, men in legionary armor, the lines unmistakable, shields and pila carved with the discipline of soldiers who built as much as they fought. Elias's breath caught, he knew that armor from the pages of his childhood history books. Roman.
At their head stood a man. Broad shouldered, his features eroded but his stance unmistakable, one hand raised, the other gripping a spear. Around him arched bridges, roads, domes, structures Elias recognized instantly. Aqueducts. Fortifications. The works of an engineer.
The next panel shifted darker.
The man was shown not in triumph, but in collapse, a bridge breaking beneath him, stone and timber tumbling into a carved river below. Figures clung in desperation, soldiers and civilians alike, their faces twisted in panic. At the center, the man braced himself, one arm outstretched as he flung a small child toward safety.
The final panel hollowed Elias's chest.
The man stood alone in a new land, strange skies carved above him, his spear planted in unfamiliar soil. And still the sculptor had given him the child, not clutched in his arms now, but etched smaller, lighter, almost ghostly, a figure more symbolic than real. A burden carried across the chasm, not of flesh but of meaning.
The message was clear, he had come to this world marked by sacrifice, chosen because he had given his life to save another.
Elias stared at it, throat tight. Elias's knees weakened. His breath caught on stone dry air.
He knew that act. He had lived it.
A sacrifice, not for glory, but for a life.
Rook whined low, pressing against his leg. Lysera stood beside him now, her face pale in the moonlight.
Lysera's breath caught as her eyes traced the carving. "This… this is Saint Caelus," she whispered at last. "The Church says he was the first chosen of the Loom, born in Elyndor, blessed to lead the Age of Harmony."
Her words faltered. She frowned, studying the bridge, the collapsing stones, the ghostly child etched at his side. "But this… I don't understand. The stories never spoke of this."
Elias shook his head slowly. "Not a saint." His hand touched the carved spear, feeling the deep groove bite into his palm. The resonance thrummed, steady and alive. "A soldier. A man who gave himself to save a life. That's what carried him here."
The words came unbidden, but they felt true.
Lysera's gaze sharpened, unsettled. "How would you know that? How could you know that?"
Elias had no answer. Only the echo in his chest, the way the Loom's hum resonated with the carving until it felt like his own heartbeat. The spear. The sacrifice. The child, faint and ghostly, carved as more than flesh, a memory carried into stone.
It was his story, but older. A shadow stretched across centuries.