The name Avelrath clung to Kael like smoke. Not a memory—something older. A taste. A weight.
Even hours after they'd left the standing stone behind, it echoed through his skull like a curse waiting to rip itself free.
Thorne hadn't spoken much since Kael uttered it.
The road north narrowed into frost-bitten hills. Trees were fewer now, warped and leaning, with bark as pale as dead flesh. Though it was weeks from winter, the air bit cold, and the wind dragged whispers through the branches—too rhythmic, too knowing.
That night, they made camp near a ruined watchtower swallowed by black thorns. The structure had long since collapsed, its stones scattered like bones, but some parts still stood—a leaning wall, a half-rotted stair, and a weathered iron sigil nailed to a shattered beam.
Kael recognized it faintly. A sunburst crowned by a bleeding eye.
"The old Saint's Order?" he asked, gesturing.
Thorne nodded, grim. "Their border posts. This land was once guarded."
"What happened?"
Thorne poked the fire with a rusted blade. "They lost."
Kael sat cross-legged beside him, cloak drawn tight. "You said the name Avelrath wasn't one you knew, but feared. Why?"
Thorne didn't answer immediately. He took a slow breath and tilted his head back, watching ash rise into the cold night.
"Names have weight," he said. "The oldest ones are anchors. Before the Saints came, before the Veil was sealed, names were power. Not metaphor—real. If you knew the true name of something, you could unmake it."
"And Avelrath?"
Thorne looked at Kael. His eyes were shadowed.
"There are old records—burned scrolls, half-lost runes. The name comes up only once in the Warden Codices. In a warning. No details. Just a single line."
He closed his eyes and recited:
"Avelrath, the Thorn-Devourer. Lost to name, bound by wound. Let none speak him unblooded."
Kael felt the weight of it settle over his chest like cold iron.
He glanced at the Codex, wrapped tight in cloth and bound to his pack.
"I said it without bleeding."
Thorne didn't move. "I know."
They let silence fall after that.
The fire cracked. Distantly, an owl gave a garbled cry—if it was an owl at all. The stars overhead looked unfamiliar, or perhaps just older. Kael drifted to sleep with the Codex at his side, feeling the ache of the mark beneath his skin.
The dream came without warning.
He stood on red stone, beneath a bleeding sky. Great towers loomed in the distance, made not of bricks but stacked skulls, fused and fossilized. A wide bridge stretched before him, ending in a gate of black bone.
At its base stood veiled figures. Silent. Hooded in ash-white robes. They moved in slow ritual, drawing glyphs on the stone with knives made of thorn.
A procession advanced across the bridge. Chained figures, gaunt and eyeless, carried a great black crown atop a blood-drenched altar. The crown was twisted, carved from living bramble, each thorn long as a dagger. As Kael watched, it bled.
Then one of the veiled priests turned to him.
He could not see its face, only the suggestion of one—hidden behind a veil that seemed to be made of moving ash.
But it knew him.
It raised one hand. A long, gnarled finger extended.
"Are you the vessel that returned?"
Kael tried to speak, but his mouth filled with salt.
The sky darkened. The towers crumbled. And in the bloodied air, a name was whispered, not by one voice but a thousand—
Nyrrh. Nyrrh. Nyrrh.
Kael woke gasping.
His hands were stained red.
He flung back the cloak and stared—no wounds. No injuries. But the blood was fresh, wet, and it was not his.
The fire was out. Thorne was gone.
He rose on shaky legs, heart pounding, and grabbed his dagger. The Codex lay beside him, now glowing faintly from within the cloth. The mark on his arm pulsed like a second heartbeat.
Kael looked around. The air was still.
Too still.
And then he heard it—no, felt it.
A distant tremor, deep in the bones of the earth. A groaning sigh that made the ground shiver. The trees did not sway. The wind did not move. But something was coming.
Something ancient.
Thorne reappeared from the dark, breathing hard. His eyes locked onto Kael's hands.
"You saw it."
Kael nodded. "I bled, but I didn't cut."
Thorne stepped close, inspecting the blood. "It's not yours."
"I know."
Thorne glanced toward the north. "Something's moving. Something's awake."
Kael opened his mouth to ask what—when the forest split.
With a screech like tearing bone, a creature burst through the treeline—lurching on four malformed legs, skinless, dripping black fluid. Its head was that of a stag, but the antlers were fused with iron nails, and its eyes—
Its eyes were human.
It bellowed—a sound like a crying infant crushed under stone.
Kael froze.
Thorne didn't.
He moved with brutal speed, blade flashing, dodging low as the beast lunged. The creature's hooves shattered the stone where Kael had stood seconds earlier. He rolled aside, dagger drawn, but it was useless against something like this.
The beast turned toward him.
Kael's mark burned white-hot.
The Codex unwrapped itself.
He didn't mean to reach for it—but he did.
Blood still coated his hands. As he touched the Codex's thorny cover, it drank from his palms, and the pages inside turned like a storm caught in ink.
Symbols rose from the parchment—burning, writhing, living.
Kael screamed.
The symbols leapt into the air, forming a glowing circle between him and the beast.
The creature halted mid-charge, sniffing the air as if confused.
Then it howled.
Black flames erupted from the sigil, lashing out in tendrils that wrapped around the beast's legs. It fought—screeching, kicking—but the fire ate it, not like normal flame but like memory. It peeled away flesh and sound, reducing the thing to a hollow shape before it crumbled into ash.
Kael collapsed.
The fire vanished.
Thorne stared at the smoldering remains.
"That," he said slowly, "wasn't supposed to be possible."
Kael wheezed, shaking. "I didn't do anything. It just—"
"The Codex answered you."
Kael looked at his hands again. The blood was gone.
Thorne approached the ash pile cautiously, then plunged his blade into it. He pulled out a bone—still warm, still twitching.
"Veil-born," he said. "Warped by exposure. But this one was bound to something. Something that wanted you dead."
Kael looked up at him. "Who would bind something like that?"
Thorne's jaw tightened. "Someone who knows you're more than a marked boy with a stolen Codex."
They burned the remains in silence.
As dawn broke, Kael sat at the edge of the ruined tower, staring north.
The horizon was still empty.
But now, he felt it.
Something was waiting.
And he was no longer sure if he was meant to stop it—or become it.