The path narrowed until Kaelen had to press his shoulder to the cliff wall to keep from tipping into the pale nothing below. Every so often, a gust of wind tore through the pass and sent loose shale skittering off the edge, vanishing before it struck anything solid.
They had been walking in silence for hours, but Kaelen's thoughts were anything but quiet. Orien's words kept replaying in his head: Before it recognizes you.
He wasn't sure what unsettled him more—it, or the fact that she said it could recognize him.
The wind shifted.
No, not the wind—something beneath it.
A low hum threaded through the cliff face, so faint he might have dismissed it as his imagination if it hadn't shaped itself into syllables he didn't understand. The sound wasn't in his ears. It was inside the stone. Inside him.
Kaelen froze, pressing his palm to the rock. It was warm. Breathing.
"…Kaelen."
He jerked his hand back. His own name. This time the voice was clear—deep, slow, and impossibly old. It rolled through him like the memory of thunder.
You have carried my shard for too long.
He swallowed hard, glancing toward Orien, but she was still walking, oblivious. Or—no. She was too still. Too deliberate. She knew.
"What is this?" he demanded, quickening his pace to catch up.
"You hear it now," she said without looking at him. Not a question. A statement.
"It's—what is it? In the cliff? In my head?"
Orien's jaw tightened. "It's neither. And both."
"That's not an answer—"
The ground shook again, harder this time. From somewhere beyond the curve of the pass, a stone spire collapsed into the mist, shattering into dust before it vanished into the Veil's slow rise. The voice in Kaelen's head swelled, pressing at the edges of his skull.
The others are waking.
Orien turned to him sharply. "Don't answer it."
"I wasn't going to—"
Her eyes cut into him. "Kaelen. Don't think at it."
And suddenly, he realized she was afraid. Not of the Veil. Not of the collapse. Afraid of him.