The quiet came in the hour before dawn—the rarest kind. No drills. No patrols. No whispers thick as cobwebs in Kael's ears. Just the cold hush of stone corridors and the distant drip of condensation trailing from the Veil-worn arches above.
Kael sat upright in his bunk, spine aching, breath shallow. The dream still clung to him, sticky and sharp. It hadn't begun with darkness this time. It had begun with her.
Eline stood at the end of the corridor, half-turned away, veiled in soft firelight. Her expression unreadable, carved more from moonlight than memory. He could never quite reach her in these dreams, though she was always just a step ahead. Watching. Waiting. As if her silence knew something he did not.
In the dream, when he finally reached out—her eyes turned black.
Then came the shadow.
It peeled through the dreamscape like smoke, drawing his vision into a whirl of symbols he didn't understand, into something older than language. Something with weight.
And from it came the whisper: not Tenebris this time. Another voice. Lower, colder, female—yet ancient.
"Veilborn."
He had woken drenched in sweat.
Now, the remnants of that word clung to his chest as he moved through the dormitory halls. They weren't empty—never truly—but the hour offered solitude. A few other recruits stirred on the edges of the shared space. Most ignored him. One or two watched him just long enough to make sure he saw them looking away.
Kael slipped into his cloak and stepped outside. The training courtyard loomed beneath the battered sky. Early frost clung to the pillars. Statues of former Whisperers—some whole, some shattered—stood watch.
He didn't head toward the main barracks or the exercise yard. Instead, he followed the narrow, spiraling route down toward the Archive Vaults. He'd only been granted entry once, supervised and watched. But now something tugged at him. The name in the whisper. The symbol from the dream—three branching lines bent like roots beneath a single moon.
The Archives were sealed.
He stood outside the vault door for a long moment, the stone cold against his palm.
Then, from the side corridor, a voice broke the hush.
"Lost something?"
Kael turned.
Eline stood at ease against the far column, arms folded. Her usual calm had a different sheen in this early hour. Less polished. More raw.
"No," Kael said. "Just...thinking."
"That's dangerous around here." She didn't move, but her eyes flicked toward the door behind him. "They don't like curiosity."
"Why were you watching me last night?"
She blinked. "I wasn't."
"You passed my bunk."
"I was heading to the infirmary. Bran bruised a rib again."
The lie was clean, effortless. But she looked away too quickly.
Kael said nothing.
Eventually, she added, "What was it this time?"
He hesitated.
"A dream," he admitted. "You were in it."
Her brow lifted, only slightly. "Romantic?"
"Not really."
"Shame."
He met her gaze. "It called me something. Veilborn."
Something shifted in her face. Not surprise—no—but calculation. As if a name had snapped into place on a list she kept hidden.
"I'd forget it," she said softly. "Whatever that means to you—forget it."
"I don't think I can."
"Then don't say it out loud again."
Kael's hand drifted to his pocket. The coin was still there, warm despite the cold. Bran had passed it to him the day before, saying it had shown up in his bunk "by mistake." He hadn't believed that then—and didn't now. On one side, it bore the familiar seal of the Whisperers. But on the reverse, etched so shallow it could barely be seen without direct light, was that same symbol from the dream. The moon and the roots.
He showed it to her.
Eline's expression didn't change.
But she stepped forward and closed his fingers around it.
"Burn it," she said.
"I thought you didn't believe in dreams."
"I believe in patterns. And the Archive won't protect you from them."
Before he could respond, she turned and vanished back into the shadowed halls.
The rest of the day moved like smoke—unreal, slow.
Training resumed. Ser Whitmer called Kael out for one-on-one sparring, but dismissed him mid-bout with a frown, claiming he was "holding too much back."
In the mess, the silence around Kael had deepened. Even the recruits who normally shared wary nods with him sat farther away. Bran wasn't at his usual table.
Kael ate little. His appetite had started fraying days ago.
That night, the dream returned.
Not with Eline.
This time, it was the voice alone. A place of broken stone. Something like ruins or a temple, but fractured, drifting, unreality pressing inward like fog.
The voice said more this time.
"You are not made. You are remembered."
Kael tried to speak, but the air twisted his words to ash.
"Veilborn. Bound before breath. Marked by memory.
You belong to the silence before the first Whisper."
He woke choking, the coin in his palm though he had left it on the other side of the dorm.
Tenebris stirred then—not fully emerging, but tasting the edge of the dream.
That voice is not mine, it murmured. But it remembers me.
Kael sat upright until the window glowed with dawn. He didn't sleep again.
In the morning, Ser Whitmer announced another team deployment.
Bran's name was listed.
Kael's wasn't.
He asked nothing. Said nothing.
Eline stood near the gates as the squad prepared to depart. She wore the same indifferent expression as always—but Kael could see it now. A glance too long. A hesitation she buried in motion.
Their eyes met for the briefest second. Then she looked away.
He stayed behind.
Something old was waking, and it carried his name in whispers.