Chapter Fourteen
"Even the stars tremble when old names are spoken."
"War," Veylen said again, quieter this time—less a warning, more a truth.
The Nephilim's eyes stayed locked on him. "And who started it?"
Veylen didn't answer.
The Fae woman's gaze softened, though her posture remained tense. "You smell of old blood and ancient silence, Veylen Graveblood. You're steeped in it. The Choir is not your kind… and yet, they are drawn to you."
His voice was even. "I don't serve them."
"Perhaps not willingly," the Nephilim said, lowering his hood. Pale scars traced his jaw. "But you have sheltered them. Red Choir blood stains your threshold. Some have passed through your gates. Some… remain."\n
Veylen narrowed his eyes. "You're watching my outposts?"
The Fae gave a single nod. "We are watching the rot. And she is at its center."
"She?" Zhada asked, her tone sharp and skeptical.
The Fae's lips parted, and her voice fell into an almost reverent hush. "Lilin. First-born of Lilith. Cloaked in hunger. Birthed in rebellion. She commands the Choir not as a mother, but as a queen."
Zhada scoffed. "So you're saying one of the ancient vampiric arch-bitches is trying to make a comeback, and her little songbirds are flapping around to prepare the nest?"
"Crude," the Fae admitted. "But accurate."
Veylen looked to the ground, considering. "And you think I'd help her? Aid her rebirth?"
The Nephilim's wings flared slightly again. "We think you're on the edge of something. We don't know which way you'll fall."
There was silence.
Then the Fae stepped closer. "Your outpost has red choir has joined your fray at teh outpost. We came to watch it, to see what theyre up to... what you're up to."
Veylen's brow twitched. "I had nothing to do with that. That's why i'm here." His thoughts spiraled back to Thae. Had one already slipped in? Had she sensed it? Was she in danger now?
Zhada exhaled sharply beside him. "We don't have time for this prophecy crap. Thae's out there, undercover, maybe alone, maybe surrounded—and you two are just flapping your riddles."
She turned on her heel, cloak snapping behind her as she stepped into motion—
TWANG.
The Nephilim's bow was up again in an instant, another arrow crackling with luminous red energy notched and pointed directly at her back.
"Do. Not. Move."
Zhada froze.
Only for a moment.
Then she pivoted slowly, raising one brow. "You don't know me if you think that tone works."
Veylen's power surged before anyone else could speak. The ground beneath him cracked, blood markings flaring beneath his boots like an old language breaking free from the soil.
"Point another arrow at her," he said darkly, "and I will bleed your shadows dry."
The Nephilim didn't flinch, but the arrow trembled slightly.
The Fae, sensing what was coming, stepped back. "Don't—"
But it was too late.
Veylen raised his hand. A spiral of crimson magic burst outward, coiling like a viper with teeth, lashing toward the archer in a streak of jagged sigils. The Nephilim barely twisted in time, wings shielding him as the spell struck and sent him sprawling sideways through a half-dead tree.
Zhada exploded into motion. Fire licked up her arms, her body already brimming with combat instinct. "Finally!"
The Fae inhaled sharply and sent a gust of faelight toward her, the wind shimmering with glinting blue threads, but Zhada rolled through the blast and countered with a fiery arc from her heel, searing the air.
The forest became a battlefield in an instant.
And in the chaos, Veylen's mind flashed again—not just with fury or strategy—but with Thae's face, steady and calm, now possibly in the midst of monsters.
He needed to get there.
Now.
Thae moved with calculated silence through the lower corridors of the outpost, her steps ghosting over stone. The further she descended, the more she felt it—the offbeat thrum beneath her boots. Like the low hum of power resonating behind the walls. Something wasn't right.
She had attempted to send her magical transpondence to Veylen again that morning—her fifth try in as many days. Each one had vanished into nothing, swallowed before the message could even reach the threshold of distance. No echo, no return. Just… silence.
The only conclusion was interference. Magical, intentional, and local.
Someone didn't want her reaching him.
She pressed two fingers to her temple and whispered a brief incantation under her breath. A flicker of lavender-blue light shimmered between her knuckles as her tracer spell activated, a dart of sigil energy flying out like a will-o'-the-wisp, twisting through the air. She followed.
The tracer darted through several hallways, twisting through a corridor she hadn't yet explored. This part of the outpost was marked for storage, mostly disused. Yet the energy pulling her deeper was far too deliberate to be coincidence.
The tracer paused before a heavy wooden door near the far end of the corridor. Carved into the stone above was a symbol she didn't recognize—part arcane, part sacrificial—but disturbingly similar to some of the Red Choir markings she'd sketched earlier.
She reached for the handle.
Locked.
No matter.
She pressed her palm against the seam and summoned a small series of runes along her wrist, flickering gold and green. The lock clicked, and the door creaked inward with a reluctant groan.
It wasn't a storage room.
It was a stairwell.
Descending.
Cold air greeted her, metallic and still. She followed the winding steps downward, and the moment her boots touched the lowest floor, she knew she'd found the source.
The basement chamber pulsed with red light.
At its center stood a towering construct—somewhere between sculpture and altar. A lattice of dark metal and obsidian veins spiraled upward in jagged formation, humming with unstable magical energy. Embedded in its center glowed a sigil: intricate, ancient, and unmistakably part of the Red Choir's mythos.
It was a sigil tower. A nexus. A root system of control and communion.
Thae approached slowly, eyes narrowed. She could feel it before she was within arm's reach—static, like her skin was trying to crawl away from her bones. She reached for the small satchel at her hip and removed a rolled parchment of her own etched runes, unfurling it like a scroll.
With a muttered command, her irises shifted—sigil sight. Layers of the construct unraveled before her vision: a mesh of sigils tied together by threads of dark blood magic and corrupted resonance.
This thing wasn't just a transmitter. It was alive.
She took a cautious step forward, adjusting her lens of sight to scan its internal patterning, trying to trace its source, maybe find a weakness. And then—
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Thae's blood ran cold.
She turned sharply, eyes flaring with layered magic.
A woman leaned against the wall just beyond the glow. Young—perhaps mid-twenties by appearance—but her eyes said otherwise. Too deep. Too knowing. Her lips were curled in a devilish grin, her posture loose and predatory.
"Who the hell are you?" Thae asked, stepping back subtly toward the tower while readying a sigil at her side.
The woman tilted her head, as though amused. "You've been sniffing around quite well. Veylen trains his pups thoroughly."
Thae's breath caught for half a second—but she didn't flinch. "I said… who are you?"
The woman stepped forward into the red light. Her skin shimmered faintly as if veiled in some glamour. And when she smiled, her teeth were too perfect.
Too sharp.
"I'm what happens when you follow songs you weren't meant to hear."
Thae's pulse spiked.
"Let me guess," the woman murmured, brushing a strand of red-black hair from her cheek, "you thought you were the hunter down here. Sweet thing. But you're standing in our web."
The sigil tower pulsed once more—bright and slow, like a heartbeat.
Thae tightened her stance, cloak stirring behind her. "If this is your nest," she said, "you should know—I burn nests for fun."
The woman laughed—light, lyrical, echoing just a little too long in the enclosed space.
"Oh, good," she purred. "That means this is going to be… entertaining."