Chapter 22 – Nylessa's POV
The silence was the first thing I noticed.
Not peace. Not quiet.
Just—
Absence.
The observatory was no longer screaming. The Veil had closed, the magic gone, the pulse of ancient hunger finally still. The circle at the center of the room no longer glowed. Just soot. Just dust. Just the echo of what had once been.
And me.
Alone.
My knees ached where they pressed into the stone. My palms were bloody, torn from the way I'd clawed at the ritual lines. The sigils had burned me, hissed under my touch like I didn't belong.
Like I wasn't fast enough.
I looked up.
There was no sign of him. Not a speck of ash. Not a scrap of cloth.
Not even his scent remained.
The center of the circle was empty. Utterly, cruelly empty.
My brother was gone.
My scream had no voice left to ride. It died inside my chest, like everything else.
I reached out again, like I had the first time. My fingers trembled. There was nothing to touch. Only cold. Only fading heat.
Grimpel was gone too.
Ash drifted in the corners of the room where his robes once trailed. I recognized pieces of him, the fragments of spellwork etched into the floor in his hand, the signature stroke of his glyphs—now broken.
Gone.
Both of them. Just gone.
I stayed like that for a long time. Minutes? Hours? The moon had long since fled the sky, leaving behind only black. The walls of the observatory were cracked, split open from the inside. Cold wind slipped through the fractures. It whispered through the glass.
Not a Veil whisper. Not anymore.
Just wind.
Just emptiness.
A part of me wanted to lie down and become stone. To forget the sound of his voice. To forget how he smiled like he didn't belong in a world of war.
But the curse of Shade Walker blood is memory.
I closed my eyes.
And there he was.
"Stop looking at me like that," he'd grumble, covering his face with a pillow. "I look stupid with these braids."
I had laughed, yanking the pillow away, threading another black ribbon into his braid.
"You look dignified. Like a high priest."
"I look like a pigeon fell asleep on my head."
We'd laughed then. Back when our mother was still alive. Back when the world still had mornings.
Another memory rose, slow and sharp.
We were children.
He had climbed the southern tower of the old watch-hall and screamed my name from the top, just to get my attention. I was furious. He slipped and fell the last few feet, hit the dirt with a yelp, then laughed even through his scraped palms.
"Told you I could fly."
"Idiot," I'd said. "One day you're going to break something."
"Then you'll have to carry me forever."
My lips trembled.
I didn't want these memories. Not now. Not like this. They felt too cruel. Too bright.
I hugged my knees.
The wind whispered again. And for just a moment, I thought I heard his voice.
"Lessa."
Soft. Barely more than a breath.
I looked up.
No one was there.
My breath hitched. I covered my mouth. My ribs felt like they were breaking.
"I have to stay," he had said before the circle took him.
But I hadn't listened. I was too late.
The ritual had been too far gone.
I dragged myself to my feet. The room tilted. My knees buckled once, but I caught myself.
The circle had faded completely. A shallow scorch mark was all that remained. A circle of nothing.
I stepped over it.
My boot kicked something small.
A fragment of chalk.
I bent down and picked it up. Grimpel's handwriting still lingered faintly on it—the tail end of a ward glyph.
He had known what would happen.
He had accepted it.
My grip tightened around the chalk until it snapped.
I stood there, surrounded by ghosts.
Then I turned.
The door had been blasted open in the chaos. The stairs leading down were littered with rubble, charred stone, twisted remnants of spell glass.
Each step I took down the tower felt like a betrayal.
Leaving that room.
Leaving them.
I reached the base. The great metal doors had been thrown wide open. The winds carried in the scent of smoke and blood. I paused.
Then I stepped outside.
Darswich was broken.
The sky was pale now, no longer bleeding. The fires had dimmed. The monsters were gone. The Veil was sealed.
But what remained...
Streets cracked like old bones.
Houses caved in.
Bodies.
So many bodies.
Not all human. Not all whole.
Non-humans had paid the highest price—beastfolk torn open in the streets, moonborn hanging from broken balconies, water-kin burned to bone by magic they didn't cast.
Our kind had been the ones hunted first. Because we were different. Because we were Veil-touched.
And now... the city belonged to humans.
Already, I could see them emerging from the ruins. Building walls. Setting fires to the remnants they didn't understand.
And I knew—deep in my marrow—that fear would do the rest.
The surviving non-humans would leave. Those that stayed would fade out, hunted, forgotten, or forced to become something smaller to survive. Within a generation, our kind might be gone from Darswich altogether.
Extinct, not because we failed to fight—but because we fought too well, and the world saw what we could do.
I reached the old square. The fountain was shattered. The place where the first creature had stepped through.
And I stopped.
I turned to look back at the tower. The observatory stood crooked. The last temple of a world already gone.
The last place I saw them both.
A wind moved through my cloak.
My brother's voice was gone.
But I carried it now.
And I made my vow.
I would bury the dead.
I would find the ones who remained.
I would learn what the Conclave feared enough to start a war.
And if anything like this ever rose again—
I would be the first to meet it.
No more running.
No more watching.
Let the moon hang loud and cold above me.
I would not flinch.
Not again.
But first... I had one last task.
My boots turned toward the east. Toward the broken hills. The place where my mother's body lay, unmourned.
I walked for hours, past claw-slashed doors and fire-pitted roads, until the ruins of our old home came into view.
It was barely a frame now. Smoke still curled from one corner. The earth beneath the collapsed walls had been scorched black.
I found her beneath the tree she used to braid our hair under.
She had been torn apart—her body thrown like a broken doll, one arm missing, her eyes still open.
I knelt.
And for a time, I said nothing.
Then I closed her eyes. I bound her wounds with the last of my cloak. I dug into the scorched soil with my hands.
I buried her beneath that tree, stone by stone, fingers blistered and torn.
When it was done, I sat beside the mound.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm so sorry."
I pressed my forehead to the earth.
And I made another vow.
I would be a better guardian.
Not just of Darswich. Not just of the city or its people or even the shrines.
I would guard the Veil itself.
Because now I had seen it with my own eyes—its power, its hunger, its beauty, and its cruelty.
The Veil was not a wall. It was a living thing.
And someone had to keep it from being broken again.
Even if I was the last one left to do it.
Even if no one remembered our names.
Even if the world turned its back on us—
I would remain.
Because that's what it means to be a guardian.
Not to be thanked.
Not to be praised.
Just to endure.
So I rose. Bruised. Bloodied. Alone.
And I returned to the city I no longer recognized.
Because I had a duty.
And I would not run from it.
Not now.
Not ever.