The forest breathed in twilight.
Not night—never night. Shadefall did not know true darkness. The sky above the eastern canopies hovered in its endless state of half-light, painted in bruised purples and fading blues, as though dusk had stalled centuries ago and refused to move on.
Lysandra ran anyway.
Her boots tore across root and stone, cloak snapping behind her, lungs burning as she vaulted fallen trunks and slid down moss-slick inclines. Branches clawed at her arms and face. She welcomed the pain. It meant she was still alive.
Behind her, something screamed.
Not an animal.
Steel rang against steel. Shouts cut through the forest—sharp, disciplined, wrong. The sound of men who didn't belong here.
Assassins.
They had come quietly. Too quietly.
Shadefall prided itself on secrecy. On surviving by being unseen. For someone to breach the perimeter of the Twilight Enclave meant one thing only:
They had been betrayed.
Lysandra didn't look back.
She already knew what she would see.
---
The attack had begun with silence.
She'd been in the upper terrace of the enclave, reassembling a fractured Vein-lens beneath a ring of pale lanterns, when the alarms didn't sound. No warning hum. No pulse from the sentry stones.
Just the sudden absence of birdsong.
Then screams.
The first body had fallen from the canopy above—one of the Watchers, throat opened so cleanly it barely bled before he hit the stone.
Shadefall blood soaked into the moss.
That was when the killing started.
They moved like ghosts in matte-black armor etched with Sunbound sigils—anti-vision cloaks, dampeners humming softly to swallow sound. Professional. Surgical.
Someone had paid very well.
Lysandra had barely grabbed her blade before her mentor, Vaelor, shoved her toward the rear passage.
"Run," he'd snarled. "Do not stop."
"I can fight—"
"You are not to fight," he said, gripping her shoulders hard enough to bruise. "You are to survive."
Then he turned back toward the enclave, drawing his twin blades as the attackers flooded in.
She heard him die.
The sound followed her into the trees.
---
Now the forest blurred as Lysandra sprinted downhill, heart hammering against her ribs. Her muscles screamed for rest, but she pushed harder, faster, deeper into forbidden ground.
She knew where she was going.
And she hated herself for it.
The Veins.
Even Shadefall avoided them.
Ancient passages carved beneath the earth, where the world's old machine-heart throbbed faintly beneath stone and soil. Places where light behaved incorrectly. Where compasses spun. Where people went in and did not always come back the same.
Lysandra had sworn never to enter them.
But oaths meant nothing when death was close enough to hear breathing.
A bolt of energy scorched past her shoulder, exploding against a tree ahead. Bark shattered. The tree groaned and collapsed behind her.
They were close.
Too close.
She dove through a narrow ravine, slid down loose gravel, and landed hard at the base of a stone wall half-swallowed by vines.
The entrance.
A Vein access gate—ancient, half-forgotten, sealed by runes older than both Sunbound and Shadefall.
Her hands shook as she pressed them to the symbols.
"Please," she whispered, not knowing who—or what—she was begging.
The stone responded.
Light bloomed under her palms, blue and cold, tracing lines through the wall like veins beneath skin. The gate groaned, then split open just wide enough for her to slip inside.
Lysandra didn't hesitate.
She plunged into the dark.
---
The world changed the moment the gate sealed behind her.
The forest's distant noise vanished, replaced by a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through her bones. The air was colder here, metallic, carrying a faint scent of ozone and ancient dust.
Blue light pulsed faintly along the walls, illuminating a vast corridor carved with geometric precision. Not stone—engineered.
The Veins were awake.
Lysandra staggered, catching herself against the wall as a wave of dizziness washed over her. Her head rang. Her vision doubled.
She pressed a hand to her temple.
"Focus," she muttered. "Just keep moving."
The corridor stretched in both directions, branching into tunnels that curved impossibly, as though space itself bent around some unseen core.
She chose the left path at random and ran.
Her footsteps echoed strangely, not quite matching her movements. The walls shimmered as she passed, responding faintly to her presence.
She had been taught this in theory: the Veins reacted to genetic resonance. To certain bloodlines. Certain designs.
Shadefall myths claimed the Veins remembered everyone who touched them.
Lysandra had never believed the stories.
Until now.
A tremor rippled through the corridor.
She stumbled, barely keeping her footing as light surged brighter along the walls.
"What—" she whispered.
And then she felt it.
Not a presence.
An attention.
Like something far below had turned its face toward her.
---
Far above, at the sealed entrance, the assassins arrived.
They stood before the stone gate, weapons raised, breath steady. Their leader removed his helm, revealing a scarred face and cold, assessing eyes.
"She went into the Veins," one of them said. "Orders?"
The leader paused, listening—not to the forest, but to something else. A faint vibration beneath his boots.
His mouth curved into a thin smile.
"Good," he said. "That saves us time."
He raised his wrist and activated a communicator.
"She's inside," he reported calmly. "And the Veins just responded."
A pause.
Then:
"…Yes. Just like with the Sunbound boy."
The leader glanced at the glowing stone.
"Prepare the next phase," he said. "The cycle is moving faster than predicted."
---
Deep within the Veins, Lysandra collapsed against a pillar, gasping for breath.
Her body shook from exhaustion and fear, but beneath it all pulsed something else—an inexplicable sense of wrongness. As if the Veins weren't merely sheltering her…
…but guiding her.
The light along the corridor flared once, brighter than before.
For a brief, terrifying moment, Lysandra thought she heard a voice—not spoken, not heard, but understood.
You are not the one we seek.
She slid down to the floor, heart racing.
"Then why am I here?" she whispered.
The Veins did not answer.
But far away, in another city, beneath another sky, a relic bearing a boy's name pulsed in answer.
And the ancient machine beneath the world adjusted its calculations.