The chapel door exploded inward with a brittle crack of wood.
The first Veilborn stepped through the splintered frame as if it had always belonged there. Its shape suggested a man, but everything about it was wrong. Limbs stretched too far. Its head angled unnaturally, as though it were listening to something beneath the floor. Frost sheathed its shadowy frame, clinging like armor.
And then Alaric saw its eyes—pale, milky disks without pupils, glowing faintly in the dark. They weren't looking at him. They were looking through him, as if measuring what was left of his soul.
The temperature in the chapel plunged. The air thickened, heavy with ice and old dust. Candles snuffed themselves out in quick, pitiful whispers.
Alaric's breath emerged in silver plumes. The moisture crystallized midair, drifting down like tiny shards of glass. He coughed, and the sound came back to him strangely muted, as though swallowed by unseen walls.
The Veilborn inhaled.
The air left the room.
It wasn't just wind or breath—it was life being pulled toward that thing. Alaric felt his lungs collapse in on themselves. His body screamed for oxygen. The edges of his vision dimmed. The heat fled his blood, leaving his limbs numb and useless.
Father Brenn stepped forward, talisman raised. "Stay behind me!" His voice cracked under the weight of the cold.
But Alaric's feet refused to move. Not because he was frozen in terror—though fear was a living thing in his chest—but because some iron weight deep in his core wouldn't let him back down.
The Veilborn's head tilted further, fascinated.
A spark of memory ignited.
The roar of a forge.The hiss of molten metal striking water.A hand on his shoulder—calloused, warm."The fire isn't in the torch, boy. It's in the hand that holds it."
He remembered standing barefoot on the forge stones, feeling heat lash at his skin… yet never blister, never burn. His father's approving nod. His mother's worried eyes.
That memory was the first warmth in the chapel's frozen air.
The Veilborn drifted closer, its movement like smoke folding in on itself. Frost bloomed on the hilt of Alaric's dagger. His hands shook violently. The creature inhaled again, deeper this time—trying to draw the last breath from him.
But something resisted.
It wasn't his lungs that fought. It was the stubborn spark in his chest, the coal that refused to die. The cold didn't smother it—it fed it.
The dagger's frost began to melt.
The Veilborn's eyes narrowed.
It attacked.
The clawed hand shot forward, jagged fingers aimed for his heart. Alaric moved without thought—dropping low, grabbing the dagger, and slashing upward in one fluid motion.
Steel met shadow.
There was a sickening hiss—steam erupted where the blade sank into its form. The Veilborn recoiled, a black fog pouring from the wound, writhing in the air before dissolving.
Father Brenn's voice cracked. "That… shouldn't be possible."
The Veilborn's head twisted unnaturally to one side, as though studying him from a new angle. Then it screeched—a sound like rusted iron tearing apart.
The walls of the chapel groaned. Frost spiderwebbed up the stone, locking them inside an icy tomb.
Alaric's instincts roared louder than the fear. He lunged forward. The dagger struck again, sinking deep—not into flesh, but into something brittle, ancient. Heat rolled off him in waves, turning the frost beneath his boots into puddles.
From outside, a distant howl rose, low and long, echoing through the trees. It was answered by another. And another.
Elira's muffled voice cried from beyond the back door. "Alaric!"
The Veilborn lunged, claws slashing toward his ribs. They struck—but instead of tearing him open, they sizzled. The shadowy talons burned against his skin as if he were the fire and they were the snow.
He shoved the creature back. Steam rose in thick clouds from where its hands had touched him.
"You're not taking another breath from Hollowmere," he growled.
The heat within him surged higher, wild and untamed. It wasn't like the forge's heat—controlled, steady. This was molten, raw, alive. His veins throbbed with it.
The dagger's blade glowed faintly red. The air between him and the creature shimmered like a summer road.
The Veilborn hesitated—its first real sign of fear. Then it lunged, desperate to finish him before the heat grew any stronger.
Alaric met it head-on. He drove the blade upward, through the shifting mass at its center.
For a heartbeat, everything went still.
Then the Veilborn shattered—its form breaking apart like glass struck by a hammer. The shards became black smoke, carried away by an invisible wind.
The silence afterward was deafening.
Father Brenn stared at him, talisman hanging loosely in his grasp. "Boy… what are you?"
Alaric didn't answer. His gaze went to the door, to the pale shapes now moving in the moonlit snow beyond Hollowmere's gate. Dozens. Maybe more.
The howls grew louder.
Shadow Interlude
In the frozen forest beyond the village, the tall, antlered figure watched the death of its kin. Its eyes glowed with cold intelligence.
"He resists the Veil. He carries the warmth."
From the treetops, a smaller, spider-like shape whispered: "Then the Eclipse stirs sooner than foretold."
The antlered one's voice was a crack in ice. "Bring him to me. Alive."
Back in the chapel, Brenn lit a single candle. Its flame flickered wildly in Alaric's presence, leaning toward him like a flower to the sun.
"They'll come for you now," the priest said. "You've drawn their eyes."
Alaric flexed his hands. Steam curled lazily from his skin. The warmth inside him hadn't faded. It was growing—slowly, steadily, dangerously.
He tightened his grip on the dagger. "Then I'll give them something to see."