The first omen came with the wind.
It wasn't natural—the way it blew against itself, spiraling in twisted, jagged gusts that howled like dying beasts. The battlefield was a graveyard now, and yet the earth refused to rest.
Liora stood at the center of it all, blood staining her torn cloak, her soul-forged blade now cracked and pulsing weakly.
The masked soldier had vanished.
Coward, she thought grimly. Or maybe he had simply been smart enough to flee before the real consequences arrived.
Because they were coming.
Fast.
The first crack split open the sky.
A jagged tear, leaking violet mist and the scent of burning stars, stretched from one end of the horizon to the other.
And through it… figures emerged.
Not spirits.
Not men.
Something worse.
Veilborn—but corrupted, mutilated beyond recognition. Creatures that had been twisted by centuries of hatred and isolation beyond the world's light. Their bodies were stitched together by sorrow and vengeance, and their eyes… their eyes were hollow portals to a cold, endless hunger.
They didn't speak.
They didn't have to.
Their arrival was a statement in itself:Balance was broken.And now something had to pay.
Liora braced herself, channeling what little energy she had left.
Pain screamed through her veins. Her vision blurred. The Heartstone, once a source of bottomless power, was now no more than a cold lump against her ribs.
"You wanted power," her father's voice whispered from some long-buried memory."Power always has a cost."
The corrupted Veilborn moved faster than thought, flickering toward her on broken wings of shadow.
Liora didn't hesitate.
She became her magic—wild, raw, imperfect. She let it tear through her, consuming what was left of her fear and her hesitation.
She fought.
And for a while, it was almost beautiful—the dance of survival, the rhythm of violence, the fire singing in her blood.
She killed the first one with a soul chain wrapped tight around its throat.
The second fell to a reckless burst of necrotic fire, its body crumbling into dust and regret.
But they kept coming.
Endless.
Relentless.
Somewhere between the third and fourth death, she realized something terrifying:
She wasn't just fighting them.
She was feeding them.
Every spell, every death, every ounce of magic she expended—they absorbed it. Fed on it. Grew stronger.
Liora stumbled back, breathing hard, heart hammering like a caged bird.
If she kept fighting like this, she wouldn't just die.
She would birth something far worse than the titan she had slain.
Panic clawed at the edges of her mind.
Think, Liora. Think.
And then—a memory surfaced. Faint. Fragmented. But enough.
The sanctuary.
The one Alric had spoken of, buried beneath the ruins of the Veil Priory, forgotten even by the White Circle.
A place of sealing.
A place of undoing.
She didn't even hesitate.
With a raw, broken shout, Liora tore open a portal—half-formed, barely stable—and threw herself into it just as the corrupted creatures lunged.
The world twisted inside out.
Pain.
Darkness.
The taste of ash.
And then—
Silence.
When Liora stumbled out the other side, she collapsed onto cold stone, coughing up blood.
The sanctuary wasn't what she expected.
It was alive—pulsing with ancient magic, the walls breathing softly as if the structure itself still remembered the hands that had shaped it.
Lanterns of ghost-light floated in the air, illuminating a vast, domed chamber carved entirely from obsidian.
At the center was a dais.
Upon it, a relic.
A mask, smooth and featureless except for the faint etchings that shimmered when she squinted.
The moment her gaze locked onto it, something deep inside her soul answered.
Not in words.
In hunger.
She barely heard the footsteps behind her.
Barely reacted when she felt the cold kiss of steel against the back of her neck.
"You shouldn't be here," a voice murmured—female, lilting, almost kind.
Liora tilted her head slightly, catching a glimpse of the newcomer.
A woman dressed in white, her hair a tangle of silver threads, her eyes two pits of endless black.
Not White Circle.
Something worse.
A true Daughter of the Veil.
A relic of the old wars.
"The Sanctuary doesn't welcome your kind," the woman said softly, pressing the blade harder. "But perhaps... you are not entirely lost yet."
The mask on the dais pulsed, reacting to Liora's presence.
The woman noticed. Smiled thinly.
"Or perhaps you are exactly what it was waiting for."
Outside the sanctuary, the corrupted Veilborn clawed at the edges of the portal she had left behind, shrieking in frustration.
And in the hidden citadel of the White Circle, a figure stirred.
Mavrek.
Watching.
Waiting.
His plans were nearly complete.
And Liora, poor, brilliant Liora, was falling right into his hands.