Kael's dream began in firelight. Eline stood at its edge, her eyes more shadow than ember, voice a silent thread he could not follow. The woods around them whispered—not with leaves, but language. Words unspoken brushed his cheek like mist.
He stepped forward in the dream, trying to call her name. The air bent around his voice. She turned—not to face him, but toward something else. Behind her, the forest split open, not with branches but with black, glistening folds of twilight. From within it came the echo of his own voice, older, colder, broken with knowledge.
"You are not Kael," it said. "You are what was promised."
When he awoke, the walls of his dormitory pressed in close. The slit of a candle's flame barely held the dark at bay. He sat upright, drenched in sweat, and Tenebris stirred at the base of his spine like an echo waiting to rise. But Kael didn't summon him. Not yet.
There was something growing in the gaps of Kael's mind—too much exposure to the Veil, too many dreams half-remembered. And something else: the memory of Eline in the field infirmary days ago, her skin greyed from strain, her expression hollow but alert. Watching him. Always watching him.
Why? Why him? Why not Bran, or Whitmer, or any of the others who bled to serve the Duskveil cause? She watched him with those pale, indifferent eyes not as a soldier, but something else.
The dream had felt like a crack in the surface of the world.
He stood and lit the other candles slowly, one by one. The room filled with muted gold, pushing shadows into the corners—but they lingered longer than they should. He dressed in silence and reached for the strange coin again, the one he'd been given two days before. It had no seal, no surface etching, only a cold weight and a sense of… gravity. He'd found it slipped beneath his pillow. No name. No mark. But he could hear the faintest call when he touched it: not in sound, but in blood.
He brought it to the Archive that morning.
The chronicler on duty was a mild-eyed man named Tareth who had once taught Kael the origins of Whisperbinding. He barely glanced at the coin.
"Not Academy-issued," he muttered. "Might be Gloamkin silver—some traders use melted fragments. Could be pre-Veilfall. Dangerous to keep."
Kael hesitated. "Do you want it for study?"
Tareth shook his head. "No. It called to you. Keep it."
That was what frightened Kael the most. The absence of curiosity. As if those sensitive to the deeper truths of the Duskveil already knew what not to ask.
He spent the next four hours in an empty hall, attempting to focus on prescribed sigil exercises. But as his hand moved, his mind drifted. Shapes emerged that were not part of the Whispercraft curriculum—spirals of jagged runes, ink-black curves that bled into one another. They felt correct in a way his formal diagrams never had.
Tenebris watched from within. There was no voice, no words spoken. But Kael felt a... leaning. Not a command, but an invitation. As if Tenebris too were bound by limits it wanted him to question.
By dusk, he was outside the chapel, standing under the narrow spire where Veilbound relics were kept. He should not be here. Recruits were not permitted without clearance. But the coin in his hand warmed slightly when he crossed the threshold.
Inside, moonlight diffused through latticed crystal. The relics lay in shallow water trays, inert and cold, veiled in layers of ceremonial cloth. Kael walked slowly, breath catching. He had no idea which one had drawn him.
Then one shimmered faintly.
A narrow shard of duskglass, curved like a sickle, lay untouched beside a statue of the First Whisperer. Kael reached toward it.
His fingers didn't touch it—but his shadow did.
The flicker was brief. The relic pulsed, just once. Every candle in the room guttered as if exhaling at once. Kael yanked his hand back, heart pounding.
Tenebris whispered then—not in words, but memory.
He saw a battlefield. Himself, or someone like him, standing in silence while armored Whisperers fell around him. His arm rose—and shadow rippled forth like an ocean.
He gasped and staggered away from the relic. The vision faded.
When he returned to his quarters, Eline was waiting.
She did not speak as he entered. She sat on the edge of his bunk, posture too still, gaze on the door he'd left open behind him.
"You're being watched," she said finally.
"I know."
"Not by the Whisperers."
Kael's throat tightened. "Then by what?"
She turned to him slowly. For a moment, the shadows on her face shifted unnaturally.
"I don't know," she said. "But it sees you even when you think you're alone."
Kael sat across from her. "What do you know about the coin?"
Eline's eyes narrowed, unreadable. "What coin?"
"Don't pretend."
She didn't answer, but neither did she deny it.
For a long moment, silence stretched between them. Tense. Unresolved. The sort of quiet that hung between truths not yet shared.
Kael finally leaned forward. "Why do you keep showing up like this?"
She looked away. "Because you're the only one here who doesn't lie to themselves about the Veil."
Then she stood, brushing past him as if the conversation had never happened.
When she left, Kael looked at the coin once more and then at his reflection in the candlelight. The edges of his shadow had changed. Finer. Hungrier.
That night, he did not try to sleep.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, the coin in one palm and his other hand resting over his chest. Whispered sigils formed on his breath. Each one brought a flicker of pain and understanding. This wasn't Whispercraft. It was older. The shape of power that came before knowledge.
The Veil didn't need words. It only needed intent.
And in the heart of his silence, Kael felt something open.
Not in the world.
But in him.