Eryndor did not awaken gently.
Its ruins breathed with a restless pulse, every cracked stone and shattered window humming with an energy that felt older than language itself. The streets were no longer silent; murmurs drifted through them—snatches of voices that echoed far too long, as though the city were trying to speak through the remnants of the living.
Lyra felt it immediately.
A pressure behind her ribs.
A tremor beneath her skin.
A whisper threading itself through her pulse.
Something had changed.
Not just outside, but within her.
Kael noticed it too. He always did.
"You're hearing it again," he said, falling into step beside her as they crossed the broken plaza that once housed the Council's marble fountain. "Your expression shifts every time the Veil pulls at you. Don't deny it."
Lyra didn't deny it—not this time. "It's not the same whisper as before. It's… clearer. Like someone's trying to push a memory into my mind. Something that isn't mine. Or wasn't supposed to be."
"That's how the Blood-Claimed begin their corruption." Kael's jaw tightened. "They twist memory. They mimic familiar voices. They seed doubt until you can no longer tell what's truth and what's been fed to you."
Lyra stopped.
Not because of what he said.
Because the voice was back.
This time it wasn't a whisper.
It was a name spoken with startling clarity.
"Lyrianna."
Her breath hitched, the sound stabbing through her chest like a shard of glass. Only one person had ever called her that—only one had used the full name she had never spoken aloud since the night her world burned.
But the voice wasn't him.
It was wrong.
It carried a hollowed echo, as if dredged from the bottom of a well.
Kael turned sharply.
"You heard a name."
Lyra couldn't speak.
Even the air felt too thick.
Kael's eyes darkened. "Tell me."
She finally forced the word out.
"Lyrianna."
He stilled.
Not in confusion.
Not in surprise.
But in recognition.
"You've… told no one that name," he said quietly.
"I know."
"How does the Veil know it?"
"I don't know."
But she did.
Deep down, she knew exactly what was happening.
The Veil didn't just feed on power.
It fed on history.
On blood.
On the fragments of souls that lingered where tragedies had unfolded.
And Lyra's past—her true past—was soaked in tragedy.
They reached the northern quarter, where the buildings leaned dangerously and the cobblestones felt brittle underfoot. Cinders floated in the air, carried by no wind at all. Lyra paused at the entrance of a narrow street lined with hollowed facades. Some still bore scorch marks; others had collapsed in on themselves.
She knew this street.
Her heartbeat quickened.
Kael read her expression. "Lyra… what is this place?"
She swallowed.
Her throat burned.
Her hands trembled.
"This is where I lived," she whispered. "Before the Veil. Before everything."
Kael exhaled slowly, understanding dawning in his eyes. "This is where the memory comes from."
Lyra stepped forward as though pulled by an invisible thread. The ground felt unstable, not physically, but emotionally—each step weighed down by ghosts she had spent years outrunning.
She stopped before a charred doorway.
The remnants of a wooden frame clung stubbornly to its hinges. Inside, shadows writhed like smoke, refusing to let sunlight in. Lyra touched the frame, fingers tracing over the deep burn that carved the same jagged pattern she remembered from the night she fled.
The night she lost everything.
The night her world ended.
"What happened here?" Kael asked softly, though he already knew some of it.
Lyra didn't face him.
She let her voice fall into the hollowed ruin like a stone into a well.
"My family died here." She closed her eyes. "And I survived when I shouldn't have."
Kael's silence was not judgmental. It was protective, steady, and unyielding—like everything about him.
Lyra walked deeper inside. Dust rose with each step. The darkness swallowed her until the world narrowed into the broken memories that refused to stay buried.
A sudden flash of pain tore through her head.
Then—
Fire.
Shrieks.
Crimson skies.
A blade dripping with silver light.
A man with eyes like dying embers reaching toward her.
"Run, Lyrianna!"
Then nothing.
A void.
A scream she never released.
Lyra stumbled, gripping the crumbling wall for balance.
Kael caught her before she fell. "You're being pulled into a memory that isn't whole. You have to stop."
"I can't."
Her breath came ragged.
"It wants me to remember. Someone wants me to."
He held her gaze.
His voice lowered.
"Then show me. Let me in."
She tensed. "Kael—"
"I'm not asking for trust," he said. "I'm asking to share the burden. You don't have to face this alone."
She hesitated.
Because memories were dangerous.
Because the Veil twisted them.
Because letting someone in meant letting them see the places where she was weakest.
But Kael had already stepped into her darkness without fear.
He'd already fought beside her while knowing she carried something that could consume them all.
Slowly, she nodded.
Kael touched her forehead.
His power brushed against her consciousness like a warm current, steady and controlled.
"Follow the thread," he whispered. "I'll anchor you."
She closed her eyes.
And the world unraveled.
The memory didn't unfold gently—it crashed down like a tidal wave.
Lyra found herself standing in her childhood home, but everything was slightly wrong. Colors muted. Corners distorted. Shadows too long.
Kael stood beside her, his presence solid even inside the memory. "The Veil is reconstructing what you buried."
Lyra walked forward.
Footsteps echoed unnaturally.
She saw herself—
a younger version, hardly more than a girl, kneeling by the hearth, laughing at something she couldn't hear.
Her father stood behind her, his face half-shrouded in shadow.
Her mother at the doorway, eyes bright with warmth.
Her brother chasing sparks of light in the air.
The image wavered.
Then—
The door shattered inward.
Figures in smoke-colored armor stormed through.
Blades sliced.
Screams tore the air apart.
Blood hit the walls in long crimson streaks.
Lyra's younger self froze.
Her father shoved her behind him.
And then Lyra saw something she never remembered—
a figure in a black mantle standing in the doorway, one gloved hand outstretched. The shadows bent around them like obedient hounds.
The figure spoke, voice layered with two tones.
"Bring me the child. The one who carries the spark."
Lyra's breath faltered.
She looked at Kael.
"That wasn't in my memory," she whispered. "I never saw that before."
Kael's expression darkened. "Because someone hid it from you."
The memory warped again—fast, frantic, as though the Veil was fighting her discovery.
Then she saw it—
Her father turning toward the figure.
His blade flaring with light.
A voice whispering from the shadows, not to him, but to her.
"Run, Lyrianna. They cannot have you."
The memory exploded into white light.
Lyra shot upright, gasping. She was on the floor of the ruin, Kael beside her, one hand gripping her shoulder.
He tightened his hold when she tried to stand. "No. You're disoriented. The Veil pushed you out."
She dragged air into her lungs.
Her heart pounded against her ribs.
"That wasn't a memory," she whispered. "That was a message. Someone wants me to know the truth."
Kael nodded grimly. "And whoever that cloaked figure was—they knew exactly what you were, even before the Veil awakened."
Lyra pressed a trembling hand against her temple. "They came for me. Not my family. Me."
"That means you were marked long before the chains appeared," Kael said. "Long before Eryndor began to fall."
A cold certainty formed in Lyra's stomach.
"And if someone went to such lengths to hide that memory…"
Kael finished the thought for her.
"…then that someone is still alive."
Lyra's pulse stopped.
Outside, the wind howled against the ruins.
The sky dimmed.
The shadows deepened unnaturally.
Kael stood, drawing his blade. "We're not alone."
Lyra rose beside him, the chains around her wrists tightening like armor.
From the cracked doorway, a figure emerged—
tall, wrapped in a black mantle, shadows curling like smoke around their feet.
The same silhouette from her memory.
The same presence that destroyed her life.
They stepped forward until only their eyes were visible through the veil of shadows.
Cold.
Ancient.
Knowing.
"Lyrianna," the figure said, voice unchanged by time, "you finally remember."
The chains around Lyra ignited with light.
Her blood froze.
Her breath vanished.
Because the voice was unmistakable.
It belonged to someone she knew.
Someone she trusted.
Someone she thought she lost.
Someone who should have been dead.
The figure lowered their hood.
And Lyra's world shattered.
------ Who stands before her? Why did they hide the truth? And why does the Veil react to them as though it remembers a master?