"What happened yesterday?" Kaelith asked.
…
"Look, you're often quite weird—kooky, in fact," he teased, "but yesterday was different. You were in pain."
Riel looked up listlessly, his head slumped against the desk. His eyes were hollow, ringed with deep shadows that told the truth his lips refused to.
"Drop it."
"One day I'm going to uncover all your mysteries, you know," Kaelith said with a crooked grin. "So you might as well tell me now."
Riel didn't answer. His silence was heavy.
They sat in the temple, where their teacher was preparing them for the Veil, teaching them how to reach it, how to survive within it.
The Veil. A place where the Eternal Ocean of Silver reigned supreme, but open to all mortals who dared. It was here that ascension began, where mortals carved the divine into their very souls and gained power beyond imagination.
It was safe—safer than reality, at least but not harmless. Here, they would fight illusions, shadows drawn from the monsters that plagued Averith, the Umbral Reaches, and the Fractured Realms. Every horror slain by mortal hands lingered in its memory.
But defeat had a price. To 'die' in the Veil was to suffer grievous soul-wounds. The kind that lingered.
The class gathered in the backfield of the temple, buzzing with hushed excitement. Some whispered about what monsters they might face. Others bragged about their inevitable triumph.
Riel said nothing. He felt the weight in his chest, that familiar dread.
Their teacher stood at the center of a ring of moonstones, each one faintly glowing. She raised her hands, silver light blooming at her fingertips. With slow precision, she traced a sigil into the earth: a crescent moon dripping shadow into two open hands.
When the final stroke was complete, the symbol pulsed with divine radiance. Shadows leaked outward, coiling into a pool of blackness at the center of the circle until it became a void that seemed to devour the air around it.
Gasps rippled through the students.
"This is how you create a portal to the Veil," the teacher said, her voice carrying a weight of reverence. "In time, you will learn to step into it by meditation alone. But for now, you will enter through this gate."
Her gaze swept across them, sharp as a blade.
"Remember this: the Veil is not a game. Recklessness will scar your soul. Do not bite off more than you can chew."
A few students shuffled nervously. Others puffed their chests, eager to prove themselves.
"As disciples of the Eternal Ocean, the more gifted among you will one day slip in and out of the Veil as if it were your second home. But for now…"
She gestured to the roiling darkness.
"…step forward. Floor One awaits."
The class went quiet. The silence pressed down, broken only by the faint hum of the portal and the whisper of shadows curling in its depths.
Kaelith stepped closer, grinning with reckless confidence. "Come on," he said to Riel. "It's just illusions, right?"
Riel stared at the black pool. His stomach knotted. To the others, it was a trial. To him, it looked too much like home.
Kaelith stepped forward, first to walk towards the portal. First in the class to take their step to power. He was practically glowing with excitement.
How Kaelith of him, Riel rolled his eyes and began reluctantly following.
Phwmp.
Fog.
Riel froze mid-step. His stomach tightened, sweat pricking his forehead. No… it can't be. I was awake. I was awake—how am I in the nightmare?
A smack landed on the back of his head.
"Oi, what's wrong with you?" Kaelith laughed, turning in the mist. "Scared of a little fog already?"
Riel blinked, chest rising and falling in uneven breaths. But Kaelith was there. His voice was sharp, grating, alive. That wasn't the nightmare. He forced himself to breathe, to steady the pounding in his chest.
The fog swirled and parted. Light spilled across it—not sunlight, not moonlight, but something stranger. A silver that shimmered and shifted, as if it were alive. When it finally cleared, Riel's eyes widened.
They stood in an endless expanse of silver.
The ground beneath their feet wasn't stone, but glassy, liquid metal that rippled faintly at each step yet held their weight. Above them stretched a sky of black velvet, pierced by an eternal crescent moon. It hung impossibly close, so vast that its light painted everything in dreamlike radiance.
Around them rose colossal statues. Some were cracked, others worn smooth as if by ages of worship. Gods, demigods, forgotten heroes—figures carved in frozen silver, staring with eyes that glowed faintly. The air thrummed with whispers, echoes of prayers once spoken, voices long dead but never gone.
"This is…" one of the disciples gasped, unable to find words.
"The Eternal Confluence," their teacher's voice echoed, though she had yet to step through. "The heart of the Veil. From here, all paths unfold."
The class spread out slowly, awe written on their faces. In the distance, silver pathways branched outward into arches of fog, each archway leading to a battlefield unseen. Some arches shimmered with icy tundras, others with blazing deserts, others still with writhing forests thick with shadow.
Riel's eyes widened.
There were no monsters.
The horrors that clung to him every waking moment, the whispering shadows, the grotesque shapes writhing at the edges of his vision, the suffocating presence that invaded even his sleep—they weren't here.
A strange stillness pressed down on him. For once, silence.
Then, a smile.
It bloomed across his face, wide—too wide. His lips split into a grin that felt unnatural, almost painful, as though the muscles had never learned the motion and now stretched too far. His eyes, those pools of obsidian, shimmered with a feverish light, like starlight breaking through the blackest night. For the first time in his life, he looked alive.
"You're being really creepy right now."
Kaelith's voice cut through the moment, laced with that ever-present teasing. A hand clapped against Riel's shoulder, grounding him.
"I've never seen you smile like that. Not once. Are you actually excited to grow stronger—with me?"
The words barely registered. That haunting grin still clung to Riel's face, impossible to force away. He didn't want to. The realization rang through his bones like a bell: I'm free.
"I might be," he whispered, and the smile stretched impossibly wider.
His classmates shifted uneasily. They were used to Kaelith's bravado, his reckless energy—but this? This side of Riel chilled them. They couldn't say why, but the image of that too-wide smile burned in their minds like something wrong, something unnatural.
"Ahem."
Their teacher's voice cut the tension, sharp and commanding. The sound snapped the class's attention back to her.
"The Eternal Confluence," their teacher repeated,"This place is the root. The hub. It connects all nine floors of the Veil, though only the first awaits you now."
"These arches," the teacher continued, "are paths. Each one leads to a battlefield where monsters roam. Shadows born of every horror slain in the history of our world. The deeper the floor, the more terrible the foes you face."
Kaelith leaned forward, squinting at one arch that rippled with fire and storm. "So we just… pick one?" His grin was reckless, eyes bright with anticipation.
"Not quite." The teacher raised her hand, and the silver beneath her feet swirled, forming another symbol—an echo of the ritual she had drawn in the temple field. This one pulsed like a heartbeat, threads of divine power stretching from the sigil toward a nearby arch. The fog inside the archway cleared, revealing a barren wasteland crawling with shadows of the ghosts and demons that fought there.
"To enter a battlefield, one must attune." She looked at each of them in turn, her gaze hard. "It is your intent that decides. Acolytes like you may only step into the lowest floor the training ground of monsters already slain countless times. Even so, remember this" her voice lowered, sharp as steel, "to fall here is not death, but your soul will suffer. Damage the spirit enough, and no healer, no god, no miracle will save you."
The disciples shifted uncomfortably. The silver light seemed colder now.
Kaelith, of course, only smirked wider. "So… don't die. Got it."
The teacher let out a weary sigh, her gaze sweeping over the silver expanse before turning toward the wavering vision ahead. Without hesitation, she stepped through it, her figure dissolving and reforming on the other side.
Riel and the others followed, the shimmer peeling away like a veil to reveal a barren wasteland stretched endlessly beneath a sunless sky. Jagged earth cracked underfoot, the air sharp and heavy with the scent of iron. Here and there, they saw other beginners—some flanked by watchful protectors and teachers, others alone, trembling with anticipation or fear. It was clear this place was no secret. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of teenagers stood here training, on the cusp of their ascension.
Their teacher led them deeper, away from the crowded entry point, into a quieter stretch of the wasteland where silence was broken only by the low, distant growls of monsters prowling at the edge of sight.
"Begin," the teacher said, her voice cutting sharp as a blade. "In teams of three, go out and train. Each of you carries a talisman, it will bring you back to me if you find yourselves in mortal peril. But unless death is certain, do not run. Fight. Grow stronger."
The words hung heavy in the air.
At once, the class broke into motion. Voices clashed, hands grasped, alliances were formed and broken in the scramble to form teams of three. Some students rushed toward their closest friends, others calculated and chose quickly, and a few were left glancing around in desperation, hoping not to be the ones abandoned at the edge of the circle.
And the wasteland leaned in, watching, waiting, for the moment the hunt would begin.