The silence that followed was too clean. Too precise.
As if the world was holding its breath, waiting to see who would break first.
Kael sat near the shattered throne, staring at the mirror shard left behind by the creature. His reflection was still wrong — off by half a second, like a memory playing out of sync. He didn't blink. It did. He looked away. It smiled.
He forced himself to look elsewhere.
Sera stood guard near the stairwell, her glaive lowered but still in hand. She hadn't spoken much since the fight. Her expression was unreadable — but the grip on her weapon had never eased.
Iris, on the other hand, looked drained. Old. Fragile in a way she hadn't before.
She pressed her hands to the stone, breathing slow, controlled breaths. "It's worse than I feared. The seal didn't just crack… it shifted. The binding's alignment is off. The world above will start to feel it."
"What does that mean?" Sera asked.
"Dreams," Iris said. "Fires. Creatures bleeding through cracks. Time looping on itself in places where the Veil thins. People disappearing."
Kael stood slowly. "Like what happened in Lorian District."
Sera's eyes narrowed. "That was six years ago. They said it was a mana storm—"
"It wasn't," Iris said flatly. "It was the first leak. A failed experiment to restore the First Veil. They tried to patch the system without understanding the cost."
"And the cost," Kael said, "is people like me."
Iris met his gaze. "No. The cost is what happens when people like you are used up. The Eye doesn't just see. It absorbs. It feeds."
He clenched his jaw. "Then tell me what it wants."
She stood, moving closer. "It wants to return. All of it. Everything that was pushed out, sealed away — it wants to come back. Through you."
Sera stepped between them again. "You're talking like he's already doomed."
"He's already chosen," Iris said. "I'm just trying to make sure he survives long enough to make that choice matter."
Kael turned back to the mirror shard.
His reflection was gone.
In its place, six thrones stood beneath a bleeding sky.
And in the center — the masked figure again. Silent. Watching.
Kael blinked, and it vanished.
Sera noticed his stare. "You seeing them again?"
He nodded.
"I don't like this," she muttered. "We barely made it out of that last fight. If another one of those things gets loose—"
"They will," Iris said, walking past them. "That was just a prelude. The true third seal is far north — buried in the spine of the Winterborn Mountains. It was never meant to be reached without all five thrones intact."
Sera frowned. "There are only four left."
"Exactly," Iris replied.
Kael touched the cracked gauntlet on his arm. "Then we'll need to find the remnants. Whatever's left of the old Bound. Their stories. Their weapons. Their truths."
Iris paused. "That path leads to ghosts."
Kael looked at her. "Good. I need to ask them something."
They left the Forgotten within the hour.
The lift groaned as it rose, pulling them slowly back into the fractured world above. Clouds gathered in unnatural patterns. Birds flew backward. A thin hum followed them all the way up.
And far beneath them, in the silence of the broken thrones...
…a single glyph lit up in the stone.
Watching. Waiting.
The mountains loomed like jagged teeth on the horizon.
Kael had never seen the Winterborn up close before. He'd read about them, seen sketches — old stories from frost-choked tomes in the academy. But nothing captured the sheer size of them. They scraped the sky. Moved the weather around them. Shadows stretched for miles.
And the cold?
The cold cut through armor, skin, thought.It made your bones remember.
Sera's breath misted in the air ahead of him. She moved like a ghost through the snow, barely leaving prints, her glaive strapped across her back in a cross-sheath formation. She didn't complain, didn't speak unless she had to. Her silence was sharper than her blades these days.
Kael trudged behind her, hood up, fur-lined cloak wrapped tight. His body ached — not just from the climb, but from the pull. The Eye had been restless since they crossed into the range. It whispered. Not in words, but in feelings — anticipation, hunger, grief.
Iris brought up the rear, still barefoot somehow, leaving no trace at all. She walked like she belonged to the snow. Or maybe the snow belonged to her.
They made camp beneath a ruined watchtower, one of the old outposts from the time of the Veil Wars. Ivy grew through shattered stone. An old banner — tattered and half-buried — still clung to the tower wall, its sigil almost erased.
Kael stirred the fire with a stick, watching the embers float.
"I saw the masked one again," he said suddenly. "This morning. Just for a second."
Sera looked up from sharpening her blade. "In the Eye?"
He nodded. "Closer this time. It didn't speak. Just… stared. Like it was waiting."
Iris didn't open her eyes. She sat cross-legged near the tower wall, hands in her lap. "It knows you're coming. The seal in the Winterborn is different. It's older. Wilder. It's tied to the one they erased."
"You mean the sixth?" Sera asked.
Iris nodded. "The one they didn't bind. The one they buried."
Kael stared into the flames. "Why erase them at all?"
Iris opened her eyes, pale and glowing faintly in the dark. "Because they didn't die to protect the gate."
"…What did they do?"
"They tried to open it."
A gust of wind slammed into the tower. The fire flickered hard. Snow whipped sideways for a moment, and then the world settled.
Kael didn't speak again that night.Neither did Sera.
But he dreamed.
He stood in a circular hall of ice.Six pillars.One shattered.The others glowing with the same symbols that now burned in his Eye.
At the center stood the masked one.
Only this time… the mask was cracked.And beneath it—Kael saw his own face.
Older.Worn.Unrecognizable.
He woke just before dawn. Heart pounding. Fingers trembling.
Sera was already up, scanning the ridge.
"We're being followed," she said.
Kael stood, scanning the trail. "How far?"
"Not far enough."
He squinted through the rising mist.
Down the slope — half-hidden among the trees —Something moved.
Tall. Gaunt.
And its face reflected his own Eye.
The thing in the trees didn't move like anything human.
It stood too still. Watched too long. And when it finally stepped forward, there was no crunch of snow, no rustle of cloak. Just silence. Like the world had paused to let it pass through.
Kael tensed. "You see that?"
Sera nodded slowly. "Yeah. I see it."
She didn't reach for her glaive. Not yet.Neither did Kael reach for the gauntlet.
Because some part of him recognized it.
The figure wore a traveler's cloak, blackened at the edges, as if scorched by ancient flame. Its body was mostly hidden — but the face…
It wasn't Kael's face. Not exactly.
It was smoother. Hollow. Like a mask carved to resemble him, but too perfect. Too still. And where his Eye burned blue-gold with Veillight… this one bled a deep, twisting red.
A corrupted mirror.
The thing tilted its head.
Kael's Eye flared, vision doubling — then tripling — as voices rushed through him:
"He walks ahead of you."
"The path you refuse is the one he embraced."
"This is not your enemy. This is your eventual."
"Kael?" Sera's voice pulled him back.
The figure raised one hand.
Fingers curled in a pattern Kael didn't understand — but his body responded anyway, twitching like it had been wired to the same signal.
Then it spoke. Quiet. Calm.
"You are not ready."
Kael stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The figure paused. Then lowered its hand. "I am what you could be. If you stop fighting."
Sera moved in front of Kael. "You've got three seconds to get out of our path."
The figure smiled. "She always burns first."
Kael's blood froze.
And then the ground erupted.
A tremor burst from beneath them, sending snow and stone flying. Sera grabbed Kael and leapt clear just as a massive spike of obsidian tore through the campfire, shattering the tower remains.
Behind it, more figures rose from the snow — warped shapes, wrapped in cloth and chains, heads tilted at impossible angles. Their limbs were too long. Their skin pulsed like it was holding something inside.
Veilspawn.
But not like the ones from the south.
These were… designed.
The masked version of Kael stepped back into the fog. "If you live, we'll speak again."
And then he was gone.
The creatures moved.
Sera was already airborne, glaive spinning, slicing through one of them mid-lunge. Kael activated the gauntlet, heat flaring around his fist as he slammed another down with a crack of earth-shattering force.
More kept coming.
Kael ducked, twisted, countered — but they were coordinated. Moving together. Like something was guiding them.
"Iris!" he shouted.
She was still on the ridge, arms extended, lips moving. Her eyes glowed white.
A surge pulsed through the mountainside — and with it, a flare of runes beneath the snow.
A trap.
The slope exploded in a blinding wave of ice and energy. The creatures screeched as the spell detonated, tearing through them. The light burned the fog away, and silence followed.
Kael coughed, rolling over to check on Sera.
She was already sitting up. Bleeding from the lip. Furious.
"Okay," she spat, "what was that?"
Kael didn't answer.
He was staring down the ridge.
Where the masked figure had stood…
…a single scorch mark remained.In the shape of a glyph.And it was the same one etched in Kael's Eye when he first bonded.
A choice.
A warning.
A promise.