Dawn broke over the Veilwood like a wound.
Kael stood at the forest's edge, watching pale sunlight struggle through mist that clung to the ancient trees like a living thing. The woods were exactly as the stories had described—twisted oaks with bark that looked like frozen screams, branches that reached down instead of up, and a silence so complete it felt like the world had stopped breathing.
No birds sang here. No insects buzzed. Even the wind seemed reluctant to disturb this place.
The mark on his arm pulsed steadily, a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. Or maybe it was setting the rhythm, and his heart was following. Kael wasn't sure anymore where he ended and this new power began.
He'd walked through the night, putting as much distance between himself and Thornhaven as his legs could manage. Every time he'd stopped to rest, he'd seen Torven's face—the fear in the old man's eyes, the resignation as he'd pushed Kael toward the door.
The sounds of that final fight echoed in Kael's memory. He didn't know if Torven was alive or dead, and that uncertainty gnawed at him like a rat in a cage.
But he couldn't go back. Not now. Maybe not ever.
Kael took a deep breath, tasting the Veilwood's air—damp earth, rotting leaves, and something else. Something metallic and sharp, like blood or rust or ancient magic gone sour.
The Gray Witch. He had to find her. She was his only lead, his only hope of understanding what he'd become.
Steeling himself, Kael stepped into the forest.
The change was immediate.
The temperature dropped twenty degrees in an instant. The mist thickened, wrapping around him like cold fingers. And the silence—gods, the silence became absolute. Kael could hear his own heartbeat, the rush of blood in his ears, but nothing else. Even his footsteps made no sound on the leaf-strewn ground.
It was like walking into a tomb.
The mark on his arm began to glow, faint at first but growing brighter with each step. The shadows between the trees stirred, reaching toward him with what almost felt like curiosity.
Kael walked for what felt like hours, though the light never changed. Time seemed wrong here, stretched or compressed or simply irrelevant. The trees all looked the same—gnarled, ancient, wrong. Occasionally he'd see movement in the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look, there was nothing.
Nothing he could see, anyway.
He was beginning to think he'd made a terrible mistake when he heard it: a sound that shouldn't exist in this silent place.
Laughter.
Child's laughter, high and clear, echoing through the mist.
Kael's hand went to the sword at his hip—the weapon Torven had given him. He'd never been much of a fighter, but the familiar weight was comforting nonetheless.
"Hello?" he called out, then immediately regretted it. His voice fell flat in the dead air, swallowed by the forest's unnatural quiet.
The laughter came again, closer now. Kael turned in a slow circle, trying to pinpoint the source, but it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Lost, are we?"
Kael spun toward the voice. A figure stood between two twisted trees—a woman, or something that looked like one. She was tall and thin, dressed in a patchwork cloak of what looked like leaves and spider silk. Her face was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at, with features too perfect to be real. Her eyes were solid black, like pools of liquid night.
"Who are you?" Kael demanded, hand tight on his sword hilt.
The woman tilted her head, mimicking the gesture the shadow-thing had made in the forge. "I am the Keeper of the Eastern Edge. I am the Watcher of the Threshold. I am she who counts the bones of the lost."
She smiled, revealing teeth that were just a bit too sharp.
"But you may call me Fen."
Kael didn't draw his sword, but he didn't relax either. "I'm looking for someone. The Gray Witch."
Fen's smile widened. "Many seek her. Few find her. Fewer still survive the finding." She circled Kael slowly, her movements too smooth, too fluid. "But you—you're not like the others. You carry the old blood. I can smell it."
The mark on Kael's arm flared hot, and shadows writhed around his feet.
"Shadowborn," Fen breathed, her black eyes gleaming. "I haven't smelled your kind in three hundred years. I thought the Church had culled you all like diseased cattle."
"I don't understand what I am," Kael said through gritted teeth. "That's why I need to find the witch."
"Oh, she knows you're here. She's known since you crossed the threshold." Fen stopped circling, standing unnaturally still. "The question is whether she'll let you reach her. The Veilwood is her domain, and she does not suffer trespassers."
"I'm not trespassing. I was sent—"
"You're trespassing." Fen's voice lost its playful edge, becoming cold and hard as winter iron. "Every step you take here is uninvited. Every breath you steal from this air is theft. The forest knows. And the forest remembers."
As if in response to her words, the trees around them began to move.
Not swaying—moving. Their roots tore free of the earth with wet, tearing sounds. Branches reached down like grasping hands. The mist thickened, taking on shapes that might have been faces, might have been claws.
Kael drew his sword, the steel singing as it left the sheath. "I don't want to fight."
"Then you'll die quickly." Fen vanished, dispersing like smoke.
The forest attacked.
Roots erupted from the ground, lashing toward Kael like whips. He dodged, slashing with his sword, but the blade barely scratched the wood. A branch caught him across the shoulders, sending him sprawling. He rolled, barely avoiding another root that would have impaled him.
Panic clawed at his chest. This was nothing like the guards in the alley. This was nature itself, twisted and angry, and he had no idea how to fight it.
The mark on his arm burned like fire.
And the shadows answered.
They poured out of him like water from a broken dam—tendrils of living darkness that wrapped around the attacking trees. Where shadow touched wood, the trees recoiled, their aggressive movements becoming confused, disoriented.
Kael felt the power flowing through him, vast and terrible and hungry. Part of him wanted to unleash it fully, to let the shadows consume everything, to show this cursed forest what it meant to attack a Shadowborn.
But another part—the part that was still just Kael, the blacksmith's apprentice—remembered the guards. Remembered how easily the shadows had killed them. How good it had felt in that terrible moment.
With tremendous effort, he pulled the power back, reining it in. The shadows retreated reluctantly, leaving him gasping on the forest floor.
The trees had stopped moving. The mist had thinned.
And Fen stood before him again, looking at him with something that might have been respect.
"Interesting," she said. "You stayed your hand. Most Shadowborn would have razed half the forest in fury."
Kael struggled to his feet, sword still in hand. "I told you. I don't want to fight."
"No, you don't." Fen studied him with those unsettling black eyes. "That's what makes you different. That's why she might actually help you."
She gestured toward a path that definitely hadn't been there before—a trail of smooth white stones that glowed faintly in the gloom.
"Follow the Path of Bones. It will take you to the Witch's Hollow. But be warned, Shadowborn—she will test you. She will see into the darkest corners of your soul. And if she finds you wanting..."
Fen's smile returned, sharp and cruel.
"Well, the Veilwood is always hungry."
She vanished again, this time leaving no trace she'd ever been there.
Kael looked down at the glowing path. The Path of Bones. He really, really didn't like the sound of that.
But he'd come this far. And he had nowhere else to go.
Sheathing his sword, Kael stepped onto the path.
The stones were smooth beneath his boots, worn by countless feet over countless years. How many seekers had walked this path before him? How many had reached the witch? How many had left?
The forest pressed close on either side, but nothing attacked. The path seemed to create a bubble of safety, a corridor through the hostile woods. Kael walked carefully, keeping his eyes forward, trying not to think about what might be watching from the shadows.
After what might have been an hour or a day—time still felt wrong here—the path opened into a clearing.
At its center stood a cottage that looked like it had grown from the forest itself. Its walls were woven from living branches, its roof thatched with silver moss that gleamed like starlight. Smoke rose from a crooked chimney, carrying the scent of herbs Kael didn't recognize.
And on the cottage's porch, sitting in a rocking chair that moved without anyone touching it, was a woman.
She was old—ancient, even—with skin like weathered leather and hair the color of storm clouds. But her eyes were young, sharp and bright as a hawk's. They fixed on Kael as he approached, seeing right through him.
"Took you long enough," she said, her voice like gravel and honey. "I've been waiting three days."
Kael stopped at the edge of the clearing. "Three days? I only entered the forest this morning."
"Time is different here. Surely you noticed." The woman—it had to be the Gray Witch—stood from her chair. She was shorter than Kael had expected, barely reaching his shoulder, but she radiated power that made the air around her shimmer. "Come closer, boy. Let me see what you are."
Kael approached cautiously. As he climbed the porch steps, the witch's eyes fixed on his arm—on the mark that glowed beneath his sleeve.
"Show me," she commanded.
Kael hesitated, then rolled up his sleeve.
The witch drew in a sharp breath. Her hand shot out, grasping his arm with surprising strength. Her fingers traced the mark's intricate patterns, and Kael felt a shock of energy pass between them.
"Impossible," she whispered. "This is the First Mark. The original sigil. I thought it was lost when the last true Shadowborn fell."
She looked up at Kael, and for the first time since entering this cursed forest, he saw something other than hostility or hunger.
He saw fear.
"Boy," the witch said slowly, "do you have any idea what you carry?"
"No," Kael admitted. "That's why I'm here."
The witch released his arm and stepped back, regarding him with a mixture of wonder and dread. "That mark is a key. A bridge. A weapon. It's the reason the Eternal Rift was sealed three hundred years ago, and the reason it's breaking open again now."
Kael's blood ran cold. "What do you mean, breaking open?"
"The Rift between worlds was never truly closed, only contained. And every generation, that containment weakens. The Church hunted the Shadowborn to extinction because your kind could walk between dimensions—and in doing so, you weakened the barriers between them." The witch paced across the porch, her robes rustling. "But without Shadowborn to maintain the balance, the Rift is tearing itself apart. Already, the horrors of the Void are seeping through. Small breaches, for now. But growing."
She fixed Kael with a piercing stare.
"And you, boy, are the only one who can stop it. Or accelerate it. Depending on what you choose to become."
Kael felt the weight of her words settle on his shoulders like a physical burden. "I don't want power. I don't want to be part of any of this. I just want my life back."
"That life is gone." The witch's voice was not unkind, but it was absolute. "The mark has awakened. The shadows have claimed you. You can't go back to being an ordinary blacksmith's apprentice any more than a butterfly can return to its cocoon."
She gestured to the cottage door.
"But I can teach you to control what you've become. I can show you how to use the mark without losing yourself to it. And I can tell you the truth about the Shadowborn—the truth the Church erased from history."
The witch paused, her expression darkening.
"But first, you need to prove you're worth teaching. The Veilwood has many tests, boy. And you've only passed the easiest one."
Before Kael could ask what she meant, the ground beneath his feet began to crack.
Long fissures spread across the clearing like black lightning, and from them rose shapes that made Kael's soul scream in recognition.
Shadows. But not like the ones that had knelt to him in the forge.
These were corrupted, twisted things—malformed parodies of human shape with too many limbs and mouths that opened in silent screams. They stank of rot and madness, and the mark on Kael's arm pulsed with revulsion.
"These are shadow-spawn," the witch said, her voice calm despite the horror emerging from the earth. "Born from Shadowborn who lost themselves to the darkness. They are what you will become if you cannot master your power."
The spawn advanced, moving with jerky, wrong movements.
"Fight them," the witch commanded. "Control your shadows. Prove you're not just another monster waiting to happen."
Kael drew his sword, but he knew steel wouldn't be enough.
The mark burned on his arm.
The shadows answered his call.
And in that moment, standing in a clearing in a cursed forest, facing monsters that represented his own possible future, Kael made a choice.
He would not run. He would not surrender. And he would not become what these things were.
He would fight.
And he would win.
The shadows erupted from him like wings of midnight, and the battle for his soul truly began.