The fire crackled softly.
Aeryn sat huddled close to it, hands outstretched, trying to pull warmth into his still-damp body. The green glow of the alien sky barely filtered through the dense canopy above, casting twisted shadows that danced across the clearing.
He didn’t speak. Not because he didn’t want to, but because every word that hovered on his tongue felt like the wrong one. There was too much to ask—and somehow, too much he already feared to know.
Kael stood several feet away, back turned, watching the woods with a stillness so absolute it made Aeryn feel like he was vibrating out of sync with the world. Kael hadn’t moved since they arrived, except to glance briefly at Aeryn’s limbs as if assessing whether he was truly functional.
He hadn’t spoken again, either.
Aeryn wasn’t even sure he breathed.
The silence between them wasn’t exactly hostile—it was worse. It was unreadable.
“Kael,” Aeryn finally said, voice low and hesitant.
The man didn’t turn.
“I need to know where I am.”
A pause.
Then, softly: “You wouldn’t understand.”
Aeryn’s frustration spiked. “Try me.”
Kael exhaled through his nose. “This place has no name that your tongue would recognize. The locals call it Ilithien. A shard-world.”
“Shard-world?”
Kael turned then, his gray eyes catching the firelight—two chips of a storm trapped in glass.
“This land was once part of a greater plane. Broken during the Sundering, left adrift in the Veil between realms.”
Aeryn’s heart stuttered. He wasn’t sure what disturbed him more—the unfamiliar words, or how naturally they spilled from Kael’s lips, like history recited from memory.
“I died,” Aeryn whispered. “I remember the car. The street. I remember… blood.”
“And yet you woke up here,” Kael said, stepping closer, cloak dragging slightly behind. “Which you should not have. No soul crosses the Veil without being summoned.”
“So I was summoned?”
“No.” Kael’s jaw tightened. “That’s what troubles me.”
Aeryn absorbed that in silence.
The fire popped, sending a spray of glowing embers into the air. Aeryn’s eyes flicked upward again, toward that sick green sky. The light it cast made his skin look bruised.
“Why is the sky like that?” he asked.
Kael followed his gaze.
“This place is... infected.”
Aeryn blinked. “Infected?”
“The Veil is thinning. Corruption seeps through. Warped light, twisted creatures—this realm is being slowly devoured by what lies beyond.”
Aeryn’s breath caught.
“This isn’t just another world,” he murmured. “It’s dying.”
“Yes,” Kael said simply.
“And I’m stuck here?”
A beat passed.
“You may not be stuck,” Kael said. “But returning to your world... would take power that hasn't existed for centuries.”
Aeryn let that settle. He drew his knees to his chest and stared into the fire, feeling the heat do little to thaw the ice in his chest.
This wasn’t a dream.
He was dead. Reborn—or pulled—into a place of rot and decay, a place collapsing under its own skies. And the only person who knew anything about it was a stranger with eyes too deep and a face too perfect to trust.
But trust was all he had.
After a while, Kael stepped away from the clearing’s edge and knelt beside him.
“You’ll need to rest soon,” he said. “We move at dawn.”
Aeryn blinked. “There’s dawn here?”
“A sick version of it,” Kael said. “But the beasts sleep during it. Mostly.”
Aeryn hesitated. “What exactly are we running from?”
Kael’s expression didn’t change.
“They’re called the Hollowed. Beings born of corrupted essence. They were once human, animal, even divine—but now they are only mouths and hunger. They sense the Veil-walkers like blood in the water.”
“Veil-walkers?”
“That’s what you are now. A soul not born of this world. Your scent... it calls to them.”
Aeryn shivered.
“So they’ll keep coming?”
Kael nodded. “Always.”
They sat in silence again. But this time, it felt less sharp. Less like a wall between them.
“You weren’t surprised when I appeared,” Aeryn said after a moment. “You were already there. Watching.”
“I felt the tremor when you crossed over,” Kael admitted. “It was small—too small. No spell, no circle, no offering. I went to investigate.”
Aeryn’s eyes searched Kael’s face. “So… why didn’t you leave me behind?”
Kael looked away. “I don’t know.”
Aeryn didn’t believe that for a second. But he didn’t press. Not yet.
Instead, he lay back on the mossy ground and looked up at the strange sky. The clouds above shifted slowly, pulsing like veins, casting the forest in eerie, changing light.
The longer he stared, the more wrong it felt.
Not just unfamiliar—wrong. As if some deep part of him, some ancestral memory, rejected it.
“This sky doesn’t belong to me,” he whispered.
Kael glanced over.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”
---
Sleep did not come easily.
Even when exhaustion dragged him under, Aeryn’s dreams were strange. Not nightmares—but not comforting, either.
He saw a vast hall of obsidian mirrors. Each reflected a version of himself: young, old, broken, monstrous. In one, he had wings of light. In another, eyes of flame. In the last, he stood beside Kael, both wearing crowns of shadow and stars.
Then came fire.
He woke up with a gasp, heart racing.
The fire in the clearing had burned low. Kael still sat, perfectly still, his blade drawn and resting across his knees. He didn’t look tired.
“You don’t sleep?” Aeryn asked.
Kael shook his head. “Not anymore.”
Aeryn pulled himself up. “Are you even human?”
Kael looked at him then—truly looked. There was something sad in the way he tilted his head. “Once.”
The answer chilled Aeryn more than any wind could.
---
By morning—if it could be called that—the sky turned from green to a dim violet, still bruised and strange but slightly less threatening.
Kael led the way, weaving through the trees with ghost-like precision. Aeryn followed, stumbling more than once, but slowly growing used to the terrain.
The forest changed the deeper they went. The trees bled sap that glowed faintly blue. Stones whispered when he passed them, in a language he couldn’t understand. At one point, they passed a skeleton half-buried in moss—too long-limbed to be human.
“What happens if I stay here too long?” Aeryn asked quietly.
Kael didn’t look back. “You change.”
“Into one of those… Hollowed things?”
“No. That only happens if you're consumed.” He paused. “But the Veil leaves its mark. It twists even the strong.”
“Has it twisted you?”
Kael stopped walking.
He turned, slowly. “Would it matter if it had?”
Aeryn swallowed. “I don’t know.”
Kael studied him, unreadable. Then turned again and kept walking.
---
Hours passed.
They came upon a stone path, nearly overgrown. A shrine sat at the end of it, cracked and crumbling, moss coating its pillars.
Kael approached it carefully.
“This used to be a place of warding,” he murmured. “Long ago.”
He stepped aside so Aeryn could see.
Inside the shrine, there was a statue—two figures standing side by side. One wore a crown of feathers. The other held a blade to the sky.
Aeryn stepped closer, staring.
“I’ve seen them,” he whispered.
Kael’s head turned sharply. “Where?”
“In my dreams. Last night.”
Kael moved to his side, looking at the statue again. His jaw was tight.
“The Veil moves through dreams,” he said. “But only for those with old blood.”
“What does that mean?”
Kael didn’t answer.
Instead, he knelt at the base of the statue and placed his hand on the stone.
The air shifted.
A glyph burned into the moss, glowing bright gold. It pulsed, and suddenly, Aeryn felt his knees buckle. Not from pain—but memory.
Something ancient stirred in him. A song half-remembered. A promise long broken.
Then it was gone.
Kael stood. “We keep moving. We’re not far from a Watchpoint. You’ll be safer there.”
“Will I?”
Kael met his eyes. “Safer. Not safe.”
---
As the forest thinned, and the wind changed direction, Aeryn walked just behind Kael, trying not to let the thousand questions racing in his head distract him.
But one thought wouldn’t leave him.
Those storm-gray eyes.
They had stared at him as he lay dying. As if Kael had been there—before.
Before this life.
Before this world.
And the strangest part?
Aeryn didn’t feel afraid of him.
He felt like he’d come home.
***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***
Download
Like this story? Download the app to keep your reading history.
Comments