The glove drifted ahead of him like a saturated petal on the tide. Jaka slowly followed it as the current kept it just out of reach. The sun had already dropped behind the ridge; the water took on that strange, metallic sheen that came before nightfall.
He waded knee-deep through the reeds, boots sucking against the mud, his breath shallow and even so he couldn't hear anything.
The lake was too still. No Crickets, no frogs, no wind breezing through brush. Only the soft slosh of his steps and the whisper of fabric brushing against the cattails.
He told himself he followed the glove because it might lead to Kai. However, the truth was simpler, he couldn't let go of the last thing his brother had touched. The glove snagged against a half-sunken branch, he caught it, wrung the water from it, and stared at the initials stitched into the cuff. KT.
The sight made his throat tighten. He placed the glove back in the water and continued to follow it through the current. Farther out, the mist gathered low over the shallows, pale threads winding between reeds. The air had turned warm and heavy, thick with the scent of salt and moss. He moved slower now, not because of fatigue but because the night itself was watching him.
A ripple crossed the surface behind him. He spun, hand to his knife. Nothing, only moonlight smearing the water.
This was uncharted territory for Jaka. A place he always felt at unease to travel through.
Instead, he lit a small torch and climbed onto a half-rotted dock, its planks whispering underfoot. From there he could see the open reach of Theryn Lake, black as ink and perfectly flat.
The glove drifted just beyond his reach, its pale shape sliding through the dusk like a ghost's hand. Quickly, Jaka darted after it sloshing through the water. Every time Jaka thought he'd caught up to it, a soft current twisted the reeds and carried it farther away.
He'd followed it since sunset, trudging through the flooded fields that stretched between the old docks and the open shallows. The water came up to his knees now, cold where the moonlight touched it, warm where it had been still too long. Each step stirred the silt, minnows darted through the trails his boots carved. He tried to move carefully, the way his grandfather had taught him, always slow enough not to break the reflection. He didn't want to alter the course of the drifting glove.
Sometimes it seemed to move out of rhythm with him, lagging a breath behind, as if something else were interfering with it.
He could only think of Kai's last words, "Follow the current, come find me!"
What did his brother see, he must of saw a vision and trusted it in those last moments. Every time he remembered, his chest clenched like it was filled with water.
There had been warning, only that tearing sound and the flash of darkness that sucked Kai into nothing.
The horizon bled from copper to violet. The light was fading fast now, and the fog thickened along the lake's belly, crawling toward the reeds in slow coils. Shadows would appear as if being watched, but as he focused they would reveal that they were just that. Shadows from trees, or brush or the cattails swaying.
Jaka crouched and dipped his hand into the water; the chill bit his skin.
He whispered a habit-prayer out of instinct "For those who drift, may you never be lost."
He wasn't sure he still believed in the old rites, but it was something to fill the silence. A frog croaked somewhere in the distance.
Then the sound died.
His torch sputtered as the mist reached it, thick and dense poking at the flame. The moon was rising anyway, swollen and low, painting the water with a shimmer that turned every the surface into a vast mirror.
He stood still, letting the wind touch his face.
Something flickered beneath the surface. At first he thought it was a fish, just a quick dart of silver, but it glowed faintly blue, pulsing once before fading. With a quick gust flame of his torch went out.
He could hear it, like faint whispers moving through the cattails, half a heartbeat ahead of his own. When he turned, the reeds swayed though there was no wind. He knew he wasn't alone.
There, between the reeds, a shadow moved against the current. Tall, fluid, silent. Not the way a person walked, more like the moonlight itself had decided to stand.
It stayed at the edge of sight, watching.
Jaka's hand went to the knife at his belt. He waited.
The reeds parted just slightly, enough to show the glint of metal and something pale behind it, a face, half-veiled, eyes catching the moon like shards of ice.
He took one step back, and the figure mirrored it forward.
He didn't run, He couldn't. Some instinct older than fear kept him still, breath locked, pulse thundering in his ears. He'd seen predators before, the lake had plenty, but this felt different.
This presence was deliberate, patient, and, somehow, curious. A faint voice broke the silence, soft as mist brushing skin.
"You shouldn't be out here in the dark."
The voice rippled through the air, low, melodic, and laced with something sharp.
Jaka's throat tightened. He scanned the mist, knife raised.
Then she stepped forward.
The moon caught first on her hair, a dark halo threaded with silver, and then on her eyes, faintly luminous, pale as frost. She didn't look real. More like something carved from moonlight and given just enough warmth to move.
Jaka's pulse jumped. He told himself to run, but his body ignored him.
"Who are you?" he managed.
She tilted her head, amused.
"No one you're ready to meet."
Another rustle came from behind. Before he could turn, a second figure emerged, a woman shorter and leaner, with dark hair bound back, eyes burning faint purple beneath the hood of her cloak. She moved like someone who'd already measured the distance to his throat.
Instinct surged. Jaka lunged sideways, knife flashing. The taller woman didn't flinch, the other blurred behind him, impossibly fast.
"Stay back!" he barked.
A soft laugh. Low but dangerous. "If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead already."
The certainty in her tone hit harder than a threat. It wasn't arrogance, it was truth.
Jaka froze mid-step, knife trembling in his grip.
The smaller woman's voice came from behind him, smooth and taunting.
"He's got spirit. Maybe we should keep a piece of him."
He spun, blade up, straight into the grin of the second one.
Her teeth were faintly pointed, eyes glinting with predatory delight. She didn't even blink.
The first woman, Catalina, sighed softly. "Sera, enough."
That single word carried authority that cut through the night like a bell. Sera stepped back, though her grin stayed.
Jaka's heartbeat pounded against his ribs, ragged and loud.
Catalina's gaze slid back to him.
"Put the knife down, Theryn."
He hesitated.
"You know my name?"
"I know by the smell of your blood." She said it quietly, like it was nothing more than a fact. "I smelled it before you even reached the dock."
Jaka's grip tightened. "If you know my blood, then you know who I'm looking for."
"Your brother," she said. "Kai. The one foolish enough to follow the Echorin's call." She took a slow step closer.
"I told you, Theryns never learn."
He stepped back, half in water now. Every instinct screamed to run, but his curiosity tethered him where he stood. There was something magnetic about her, something that made fear feel like fascination.
"You speak like you know us," he said, struggling to keep his voice steady.
"I knew your kind before you were born." A faint smile. "Before your great grandfather thought he could guard what can't be kept."
Sera's eyes flicked between them.
"Enough stories. He shouldn't even be this close."
Catalina didn't answer. Her gaze never left Jaka. It wasn't the look of a hunter anymore, it was appraisal, searching for something beneath his skin.
"If you really want to rescue Kai," she said at last, "prove it."
He frowned. "Prove it? How?"
Her hand rose slowly in front of her face. A slender blade slid from her sleeve, small, curved, silver edged. Before he could speak, she drew it across the inside of her wrist.
Dark blood welled, shimmering faintly silver beneath the moon.
She held it out to him. "Drink."
Jaka stared at her, horrified.
"What?" "You heard me." Her tone was calm, almost casual.
"Drink, and the Veil will answer. If you're Theryn, it will not kill you."
"That's insane." He took a half-step back. "Why would I—"
"Because if you're unworthy," she interrupted softly, "I'll end you now before the water can remember your name."
Sera's grin widened. "It's been too long since someone tested the old ways."
Jaka scoffed. "You think I'm afraid of dying? Theryns can't die."
Catalina's eyes narrowed, her smile fading into something older, wearier.
"Every soul can die, Jaka Theryn. Some just take longer to learn how."
She stepped closer, close enough that he could smell the faint trace of rain on her skin.
The blood dripped from her wrist into the water, each drop sending ripples across the surface that glowed faintly before fading.
"Drink," she whispered, "or I'll make you wish you could."
He met her gaze, heart hammering. She didn't blink. The calm there was absolute, dangerous in its serenity.
He didn't understand what compelled him then. Maybe it was pride. Maybe curiosity. Maybe the way her eyes caught the moon.
But he stepped forward. Her arm trembled slightly as he took her wrist. Her skin was cold, smoother than it should have been. He hesitated one last heartbeat, then lifted her wrist toward his lips.
The taste was metallic, sharp, and alive. It burned across his tongue, searing and electric, and for a moment he felt something crawl behind his eyes. The world around him shifted; the mist pulsed with color. The reeds bent inward as though the lake itself had leaned to listen.
Catalina took a deep breath in, tilted her head back just faintly and closed her eyes. Her hand pressed up against his cheek, nails digging in piercing the surface of his skin.
Then the heat hit. It spread from his mouth to his chest, then through his veins like fire spilled through oil. Jaka gasped and dropped her wrist, stumbling backward.
"What, what is happening?"
"Nothing the blood doesn't allow," she said.
He fell to his knees, clutching his chest. Images flashed behind his eyes, moonlight on stone, a city split by fire, faces screaming in silence. He felt the echo of a thousand memories that weren't his, beating inside his skull like drums.
Catalina crouched beside him, unhurried. She pressed her finger beneath his chin, forcing him to meet her gaze. "Now you feel it, don't you? The resonance. The truth humming in your blood."
His breathing came ragged, half fear, half awe. The pain began to subside, leaving a strange clarity in its wake. When he looked at her, he no longer saw just a woman, he saw an echo of something ancient, bound by light and shadow both.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
She smiled faintly, though it didn't reach her eyes. "Someone who should have died three centuries ago."
Her hand lingered on his cheek a moment longer before she stood, the wound on her wrist already healing shut.
"Now," she said, voice soft but cold, "let's see if you're worth the curse you carry."
He stood in the reeds, shivering though the air was warm. The lake had gone silent again, that heavy silence that presses on the chest like a hand.
Catalina watched him from the edge of the water, one arm folded across her knees, wrist already healed, the faint scent of her own blood still drifting on the air. She'd forgotten what it felt like to share blood with a Theryn. It had been centuries since she'd dared.
Jaka's eyes fluttered beneath their lids, caught somewhere between breath and dream.
When his pulse steadied, she whispered, not to him, but to the night itself.
"Three hundred years," she murmured, "and still the same silence."
Sera stood a short distance away, restless, her cloak catching the moonlight.
"You shouldn't have done that," she said quietly. "The old laws…"
"The old laws died when the world did," Catalina replied. "The blood remembers what it wants."
Sera didn't answer.
Catalina looked back to Jaka.
He stood up tall taking a deep breath in, eyes focused high into the sky. As he exhaled cold smoke came from his lungs. His eyes rolled back into his head and time froze.
It was night then, too. It was always Dark, at the end.
The cities burned on the horizon, their lights bleeding into the clouds.
The sky was torn open, split by endless thunder, and from it fell what people called the Echoes. Fragments of light that weren't light at all, pieces of something older than the sun, that clung to whatever it touched, A necklace pendant, an old pocket watch, a gold coin, a rusty dagger, a fishing hook, it seemed endless.
It rained down across Eloweth like ears, melting through stone and bone alike.
She remembered the screams, as the fragments clung to the people, the ones that didn't didn't make it to safety. The air hummed with resonance, and the world shook as if trying to shed its own skin.
Back then, she was still human. Still soft. Still foolish enough to think the world could be saved by love and courage. She had stood in the cathedral at Veyloran with her brother, the candles shattering one by one as the light outside turned red.
The priests had called it Judgment. The scholars called it Evolution.
But none of them had known what it meant when the sky broke open.
The first Bloodborn were born that night, those who stood too close when the Echoes fell, whose hearts absorbed more resonance than their bodies could hold.
Some burned from within. Some froze solid, blood turned to crystal. And a few, like her, lived. Changed, Forever.
She remembered the pain, her veins lighting like molten silver, her heartbeat turning to thunder. When she screamed, her voice didn't echo, it fractured. And when she opened her eyes, she could see everything, every soul, every thread of resonance tying the world together. She had never seen beauty and horror so perfectly entwined.
Her brother hadn't survived. He'd tried to pull her away from the cathedral steps, and the light had swallowed him whole. All that remained afterward was his shadow, burned into the marble floor. For weeks after, she'd wandered the ruins of Veyloran.
No food, no sleep, just the sound of her own blood humming in her ears. Every corpse she touched stirred for a heartbeat, whispering things they hadn't had time to finish saying.
That was when she met the first of the Theryns, guardians, they called themselves.
Men who carried the Echorin fragments in chains of silver and prayed they could contain what remained of the world's soul.
Tomas Theryn had been one of them, younger then, full of belief and arrogance. He had looked at her as if she were a riddle, not a monster. He'd told her the Bloodborn weren't damned, that they were the keepers of what humanity had lost.
He had been wrong, of course.
They all had.
The memory faded with the wind.
Catalina blinked, and the reeds came back into focus.
Jaka, had stopped trembling. He stared up at the stars as if they might explain what he'd just felt.
"You saw it," she said softly.
He turned his head toward her.
"I saw… everything. Fire, cities… you."
His voice cracked. "That was you, wasn't it?"
She nodded once. "The night the Echorin fell. The night the world decided it no longer wanted to be whole."
He pushed himself upright, unsteady. "Three hundred years ago. You don't look…"
"I don't look because time doesn't know what to do with me," she said, tone flat but not unkind. "The blood freezes it. Every dawn feels the same, every dusk heavier."
Sera spoke from the edge of the clearing.
"And still she watches for the next fool who thinks he can save what's already ash."
"Enough," Catalina murmured, not turning. "He's not a fool. Not yet."
Jaka looked between them, still dazed. "So what am I now?"
Catalina studied him. "That depends on how much of this world you want to save."
He blinked. "What does that mean?"
"It means," she said, standing slowly, "you'll start to hear things soon. Whispers. Memories that aren't yours. That's how the Echorin calls the ones who are bound to it."
He swallowed. "And if I don't want to hear them?"
"Then you'll go mad," Sera answered for her, voice dry. "Or worse, mute. Some Theryns choose that."
Catalina shot her a look, then turned back to him. "You won't have that choice. The blood opened you."
He rubbed his temples, trying to make sense of it all. "You said Kai's alive."
"He is," Catalina said. "For now. The Bloodborn who took him want the Hook. They think your line still hides it."
"The Hook?" he repeated. "I don't even know what that is."
Her lips twitched, almost a smile.
"Then perhaps you really are your brother's keeper."
The moonlight caught her eyes again, and for an instant Jaka saw the centuries inside them, every loss, every betrayal, every dawn she'd watched alone.
He felt the pull again, that inexplicable gravity that made fear and fascination blur together.
Catalina broke the stare first, glancing toward the horizon where the first hint of pale light was bleeding into the mist.
"We can't stay. The flux will fade soon."
Sera hissed softly. "You're bringing him?"
"He's Theryn, he's already part of this. The Veil won't let him go now." She looked back at Jaka. "Come if you want more answers, or stay here and let the lake take them from you."
She turned, water rippling around her boots, and started toward the deeper mist.
Sera lingered long enough to give Jaka a look halfway between warning and amusement.
"Don't fall in love, boy. She doesn't stay anywhere long." Then she followed.
Jaka sat there for a moment, breathing hard, the night pressing close again.
The water at his feet pulsed faintly blue, matching the rhythm of his heartbeat.
He looked down at water, the glove tied in the reeds, Kai's glove, and thought of the fire he'd seen in Catalina's memories, the same fire that had swallowed the world once before.
That was when the heat started. At first it was a prick against his chest, nothing more than the warmth of the night. Then it burned.
Light bled through the fabric, thin silver veins spreading from the pocket of his shirt. The hook he'd kept there since the lake, the one that last glowed when his brother was taken, was glowing, brighter and hotter with every heartbeat.
The water at his feet began to shiver in rhythm with it, pulsing like breath.
Across the reeds, Catalina stopped mid-stride. Her head turned, eyes narrowing, the reflection of that same silver fire flickering inside her pupils.
"Jaka," she whispered, voice sharp as the crack of ice, "What have you done?"
The glow flared white…