The first thing she felt was not her own pain.
It was someone else's scream.
Not loud. Not external. A scream held in the teeth of a woman who refused to let the dying know she was breaking.
Nyxia drifted.
She floated above a battlefield not her own. The sky was broken. The ground was soaked. And at the center of it all knelt a priestess—her robes tattered, soaked in blood and soot. Her hands glowed with holy flame, the kind that did not burn but mended, stitching wounds with gold light and whispered prayers.
The priestess moved from one broken soldier to the next, chanting between gasps.
"Blessed are the breathless... Blessed are the fallen... Return to us, child of the light..."
The light obeyed. Torn flesh reknit. Chests rose again. But their eyes never opened.
Nyxia felt the healer's hands tremble. Not from fatigue, but from grief.
This priestess had power—but not enough.
"I wasn't fast enough."The voice was not spoken aloud—it bloomed inside Nyxia's thoughts. Carried by the Veil.
"I could mend the body... but not the soul."
The holy flame guttered in the priestess's palm. One final soldier—barely more than a boy—lay before her. His chest didn't rise. His hand still clutched a shattered sigil.
The priestess screamed. Not aloud. Inside.
Then the world melted.
Ash and gold became parchment and bone.
Nyxia stood now in a place she should not know.
A chamber of ink-stained stone and tall, dark tomes. A library, perhaps, or a temple built for secrecy. Runes flickered on the floor, etched in the shape of a circle that pulsed like a slow, deliberate heartbeat.
And within it: a woman.
No—a warlock.
Her back was bare, scars crisscrossing her skin in careful patterns, each one lined with ink and ember. She carved into her own flesh with a curved blade, not in pain—but in reverence.
Nyxia couldn't look away.
The woman whispered as she carved:
"Power is memory. Memory is identity. Burn the lie. Burn the weakness."
With each line cut, her reflection in the mirror behind her faded further. Her features blurred. Her face, once elegant, dissolved into lightless abstraction.
But she smiled.
The blade clattered to the floor.
And then the warlock collapsed.
A circle of black fire flared up around her, swallowing the runes, the books, the very memory of the room. And for a heartbeat—just one—Nyxia could feel the warlock's breath in her lungs.
"I wanted to be more."
Nyxia cried out.
But only in the dream.
She stood now in a blank space. A space between.
There were no walls. No wind. Only the quiet rush of distant voices, a hum through the marrow.
And the Veil.
It didn't appear. It didn't speak.
It simply was.
A pressure behind the heart. A whisper just beyond language. A knowledge not yet earned.
Through it, she felt them—the priestess, still kneeling beside the dead. The warlock, curled in the ashes of her unmaking.
They didn't know her name.
But they felt her pain.
And she felt theirs.
Not in memory. Not in words.
In the soul.
Then, it spoke.
Not a voice. A presence.
A concept.
"You are bound by thread and shadow. You are not alone."
Something flared in her core—heat, like fire drawn from deep beneath the earth. Her tattoos burned. Her breath caught.
Another voice whispered through her:
"She will bring fire."
Nyxia's mind reeled.
"Flame that heals. Flame that breaks. Flame that remembers."
Then came the pain.
Real. Physical.
Her body burned—not in the dream, but beneath it. A searing line tore through her veins, like a brand being forced from her skin inward.
Nyxia screamed.
Back in the waking world, she convulsed.
Boo burst through the back door of the Broken Tooth and stalked into the alley, Nyxia slung over her shoulder like a dying war banner. Her breath fogged the cold, recycled air. Her boots struck the stone with urgency, each footfall louder than the last.
Nyxia's skin was ice.
Too cold. Too fast.
"Don't you dare die quiet on me," Boo muttered through gritted teeth, adjusting her grip. "Not after everything. Not from this."
She wasn't sure when it happened—sometime after the bounty hunter vanished. A scratch on Nyxia's arm. A flicker of stiffness in her jaw. Then the collapse. Her eyes rolling back. No warning. No time.
By the time they hit the lower quarter, Boo had tried three backdoor clinics and a potion vendor. All refused her the moment they saw the mark—or the limp elf in her arms.
The Veil-glow along Nyxia's arm had started to shimmer. It wasn't the cause. It was reacting. Responding to something else.
Poison.
Subtle. Precise. Professionally dosed.
"I need a cleanser," Boo barked at the next stall, slamming a pouch of coins onto the counter.
The robed draenei behind it took one look at Nyxia and recoiled. "That's Veil business."
"It's toxin," Boo snapped. "She was tagged by a bounty hunter—some back-alley bastard with a needle. You help her, or I burn this entire stall down with your body in it."
The draenei shut the curtain without another word.
Boo didn't scream. She just walked.
Six more stalls. Two back-alley temples. One priest who tried to charge her in relic-grade gems.
Nothing.
They all turned her away.
She passed a troll muttering over smoke-bowls. He glanced up and hissed, "She's cursed. Leave her for the fog."
Boo ignored him. Her arms were trembling now—not from weight, but from the gnawing panic building beneath her ribs.
Nyxia hadn't spoken in ten minutes.
She stopped at a slag pit near the forge lane, lowered her to a half-broken crate, and brushed sweat-slick hair from Nyxia's face.
"Come on, forest girl," she whispered. "You survived beasts, traps, the Veil itself. Don't let some alley rat's needle be your end."
Nyxia twitched once.
Then went still again.
Her pulse was shallow.
The shimmer along her tattoos flickered once, like a star behind clouds.
"Shit," Boo breathed.
"Rough night?"
The voice came from the smoke.
Boo spun, blades half-drawn.
A silhouette stepped from the haze—tall, muscled, wrapped in the scent of scorched stone and something volatile. Molten-orange fur. Glowing eyes like twin gold embers. His armor was plain but heat-darkened, bearing scorched sigils and faintly glowing dragon motifs.
Zhurong's presence was warmth. Not comfort. Power.
He looked at Nyxia.
"Veil mark?" he asked.
"No," Boo said quickly. "Toxin. Quick, alchemical. She's burning up inside—whatever it was, it's spreading."
Zhurong stepped closer, his aura radiating heat.
"Put her on the slab," he said.
"What—"
"Now."
Boo followed him into a deep chamber carved into the smelter shaft—a cavern of hissing pressure valves, arcane tubing, and softly glowing flame crucibles. He cleared a workbench with one arm and laid out tools she didn't recognize—some mechanical, some magical.
Zhurong lifted Nyxia like she weighed nothing and laid her down. His claws hovered just over her chest.
"She's still fighting it," he said. "Barely."
He poured a vial of reddish liquid into a stone basin, added a pinch of ash, then snapped his fingers.
It ignited in a gout of blue fire.
He dipped his claws in the flame, drew a sigil on Nyxia's chest, and pressed his hand to it.
The fire sank into her skin.
Nyxia jerked. Her tattoos flared bright.
Boo stepped back, wide-eyed.
"She's not burning," Zhurong said, voice low. "I'm dragging the poison out through her spirit's resistance. The mark helps. It wants her alive."
He muttered a word in draconic and ignited a ring of runes beneath the table.
Inside her own mind, Nyxia screamed—but began to rise.
Zhurong's arms trembled. His claws flared gold.
"Not yet," he muttered. "Come back, girl. We're not done with you."