Grimpel's POV
The moon was at its highest. Not merely above Darswich, but within it. Its light filtered down like blades, touching everything sacred and profane. It spilled through the broken dome of the observatory, kissing the runes beneath my feet.
Beneath the observatory was a festival full of life and children, celebration. I mean why shouldn't they celebrate, after tonight, everything will change for the better.
This festival would be a different one.
This festival would forever alter the future and I will be the one to cause it.
The circle thrummed.
I stood in its center, breath slow, palms open to the sky. The ley-lines sang beneath the stone, awakening like something long-starved. Blue fire coiled around the sigils I'd carved, pulsing with deliberate rhythm. The mathematics of magic made sense here—where everything outside the city was breaking, here I could build.
I endured the pain as I conducted the ritual knowing I am uniting the town, and I will see her once again.
"Locus aligned," I whispered, heart steady. "Veil density... decreasing."
Thorne stood to my left, just beyond the outer ring. Orien to the right. Their robes were ceremonial now, but the symbols they wore weren't from the Arcanum.
I didn't ask.
I didn't want to fight before something this sacred.
"Prepare the chant," I said.
Thorne nodded.
I thought I saw something strange in his eyes, just for a moment. A flicker. Like sorrow. Or hunger.
The first words passed my lips.
The runes blazed white.
This ritual was never meant to raise the dead. I knew better. The soul wasn't some thread to be pulled back through the veil like a puppet's string.
No.
This was about anchoring.
The shard—a piece of what once might have been a god—lay buried beneath the ley-lines. It distorted the boundary between life and death, spirit and flesh. It leaked hunger. I had felt it since I returned from abroad, since the nightmares began.
Master Ilyra Vaen had warned me: *"Magic that seeks to heal what fate has chosen will always demand payment."
She was right.
But she didn't understand that grief was a currency I never stopped spending.
Tonight I would stabilize the Veil. Bind the shard. Silence the whispers beneath the Loud Moon.
And maybe—if the spell bent kindly—I would see her again. Just for a moment. Just to say goodbye.
"Initiating layer two," I breathed, lifting my left hand. The energy surged. My hair stood on end.
The second ring flared.
That's when it started to go wrong.
The energy spike was too sudden. A second pulse – not from the ley-lines I had aligned – throbbed through the circle. For a moment, it felt like another heart was beating inside my chest.
I staggered.
"What was that?" I murmured.
"Flux echo," Orien said quickly. Too quickly.
I glanced at him. Sweat beaded on his brow, but his hands were steady.
Was I imagining it?
The third sigil ignited. The circle shrieked.
The observatory trembled. Dust drifted from the rafters. The wind howled outside, but the trees didn't move. The world shifted, the way it did in dreams.
"Final veil layer... opening."
I reached for the locket at my chest.
"Almost there. Just hold together a little longer..."
And then I heard her.
"Grimpel."
A whisper. As soft as breath against the skin.
I looked up.
In the center of the circle, where the energy thickened like fog, a shape emerged.
Feminine. Floating. Her hands clasped before her chest. Her hair curling like black smoke. Her voice...
It was hers. Ilyra Vae.
My mentor, the one who my stupid mistake killed.
"No," I whispered. "You can't be—"
She smiled.
My legs nearly gave out.
The Veil wasn't just thinning. It was bleeding.
Behind her, a dozen more figures flickered. Shapes I didn't recognize. Twisted. Stretching. Some reaching for her. Others... for me.
Thorne shouted something. I couldn't hear him.
The runes beneath me began to change. Twisting, warping into new configurations. Ones I hadn't written.
"Stop!" I cried.
The shape of her blurred. Then reformed.
But the smile she wore now was not hers.
It was too wide.
Too cruel.
"Please," I begged. "Not her. Don't take her face."
A rumble answered. The air itself groaned. Lightning split the sky inside the observatory.
The Veil split.
A crack opened in the air like a wound. The fabric of reality trembled.
My locket shattered in my hand.
And from the wound...
Something began to crawl through.
I took one step back.
Just one.
And in that moment I knew:
This wasn't healing.
This was summoning.
Thorne and the conclave of restoration used me to create something evil, open something that should never have been touched by mortals.
And I had been the one who opened the door because of my grief and naivety.
Wow, I really will alter the future and not in the way I thought I would, these folks don't know what is behind this veil.
What they've used me to unleash.
And I hope we all perish.