The night did not end, it thickened. Shadows clung to the world like oil, seeping into every fissure of the ruined battlefield.
The corpses of stone giants lay shattered, their marrow leaking silence instead of blood.
The flames that once raged across the horizon guttered as if smothered by unseen hands, leaving behind an oppressive twilight that was neither night nor dawn.
Sorin stood at the edge of it, every nerve taut, as if the world itself were holding its breath. The Silence Path whispered in his bones, threading its stillness into his veins.
Around him, the survivors shifted uneasily, their eyes darting to the horizon where a veil of shadow loomed, breathing like a living thing.
Then the temperature dropped.
It was not the cold of wind, nor storm, but a suffocating chill that pressed into the chest and stole the rhythm of the heart. Soldiers shivered, cursing under their breath.
Horses stamped, eyes rolling white. Even the ash in the air seemed to freeze midfall, suspended like glass beads.
The veil stirred.
It rippled once like a curtain brushed by an unseen hand and the battlefield moaned. The sound was not wind, nor earth, nor beast. It was deeper, older, as if the marrow of the world remembered its own suffering.
Men dropped to their knees, hands clutching ears, though the sound had no true source; it was not heard but felt.
Sorin's body locked. The resonance struck the core of his Silence Path, pulling at him like a tide dragging him toward an unseen ocean. For a heartbeat he thought he might dissolve into it, vanish into the vastness beyond.
"Do you feel it?" Zira's voice cut through, low but steady. Her hand hovered near her blade, but her eyes were not on the veil they were on him. "It's calling you."
The look lingered, weighted with more than fear concern, even something unspoken, softening her edge.
Toven spat, his bravado cracking. "That's no call it's a trap. Nothing living breathes in that darkness."
But he was wrong. Something did breathe.
From beyond the veil came the faint sound of inhalation. Slow. Deep. Patient. Each drawn breath rattled the marrow of those who felt it.
And with each exhale, the veil swelled, stretching wider, straining against the fabric of the sky itself.
Fear rooted in the survivors. Some dropped their weapons, others prayed in forgotten tongues. One soldier broke and ran, his scream swallowed almost instantly by the pressing quiet.
Sorin's silence deepened. He did not move, did not tremble. The world roared within him and yet, in its center, he was still.
The veil loomed higher, but within its folds he saw not only shadow. Flickers of light shimmered faintly as if stars drowned in ink, struggling to breathe.
They were not stars.
They were eyes.
And as they blinked open one by one, the veil began to tear.
It did not split like cloth nor shatter like glass it peeled, layers of reality curling back upon themselves. A thin fissure of void light leaked through, pale and searing, like a wound cut into existence.
The silence sharpened into agony, pressing against the skull until soldiers collapsed, blood seeping from their ears.
Through the fissure, something vast pressed forward. Its outline was indiscernible, its enormity betrayed only by the way shadows bent around it.
A claw or perhaps a hand, or both slid across the tear. Its surface shimmered with patterns that writhed like living script, glyphs of a tongue older than stars.
The veil screamed. Not in sound, but vibration the bones of the world rebelling. Horses toppled lifeless without a wound. Men wept openly, their faith and courage scattering like ash.
Sorin did not break. The pull on his Silence Path was unbearable, but he stood, bound to it. The tear recognized him not as intruder, but as kin.
His stillness wavered, his silence threatened to unravel. Zira's gaze anchored him, silent words lingering between them, a tether in the storm.
Then the veil ripped wider.
A single eye vast, lidless, burning with a dark fire forced itself through the rupture. Its gaze swept the battlefield, and wherever it lingered, reality itself shuddered.
The survivors screamed, but their voices were dust before a storm.
The eye turned. It fixed on Sorin.
And in that instant, the veil collapsed inward, folding the battlefield into a darkness that was no longer night, no longer shadow, but something hungering.
The tear had opened. And the world would never close it again.