The Pale Citadel did not have corridors.
It had veins.
Liora walked through tunnels carved from bone marrow and glistening with translucent membranes. Every step echoed with ancient breath, like the fortress itself still lived, slumbering in cycles of silence and memory. The deeper she went, the more the air turned thick—not with rot or decay, but power. Ancient, dormant, waiting to be claimed.
The walls whispered in a language she didn't fully understand, yet something inside her answered. The soul fusion was adapting again, adjusting to the strange magic of the place. The whispers weren't sound. They were reminders—emotions imprinted into the stone, bones, and essence of the necromancers who had come before.
They were all still here, in a way.
And so was he.
Alric.
Liora didn't know if it was his soul still lingering, or if the parts of him she had absorbed were simply waking up. But his presence had grown louder, more conscious. Not dominant—she was still in control—but no longer passive either. It was as though a shadow had taken form, pacing her thoughts like a man pacing behind a mirror.
She stopped at a fork in the path. Both tunnels pulsed with opposing auras—one hot like blood, the other cold like ash. She didn't need to ask.
Left leads to power, Alric whispered. Right leads to truth.
Her fingers twitched.
She went right.
The hallway narrowed. The walls became cracked mirrors, and each reflection showed a different version of her—some crowned in bone, others broken and bleeding, one with hollow eyes and silver hair.
They all stared back. None blinked.
At the end of the hall was a room carved like a cathedral. A dais of polished femurs led up to a single object:
A coffin of white glass, floating above the floor, cradled in chains of light.
Within it, a woman.
She wasn't dead.
She was frozen, arms crossed, eyes shut, wrapped in dark silk and branded with hundreds of runes—each from a different school of necromancy. Some Liora recognized. Others she felt repelled by.
"Who is she?" she whispered aloud.
The air shivered.
The chains groaned.
"Your blood."
Liora turned—Kharon stood at the doorway again, no longer masked in fire. He looked… tired. Older than she realized. Like someone who had buried time itself.
"This is Syreena," he said. "The first necromancer. The one who made the Citadel. Your ancestor."
Liora's heart skipped.
That name was only whispered in forbidden texts. Syreena the Veil-Breaker. Syreena the Womb of Souls. Syreena the Curse Mother.
"She's… my family?"
Kharon nodded.
"You are her echo. The last surviving heir of her bloodline. That is why the Veil responds to you. That is why the Circle wants you broken."
Liora took a slow step forward. The air pulsed harder with every inch.
"Why is she asleep?"
"She isn't." Kharon's voice was a low, dangerous tremor. "She is sealed. If she wakes… the world ends."
Liora stared at the floating woman. Her skin was smooth, ageless. A rune beneath her collarbone pulsed faintly, in sync with Liora's own heartbeat.
"Why show me this?"
"Because you asked for truth."
Silence stretched like skin over a blade.
"Will I become her?" Liora asked finally.
Kharon didn't answer. Instead, he stepped aside and pointed toward a pedestal in the corner of the chamber. Upon it, a black book rested—a tome bound in stitched leather, glowing faintly.
Syreena's Grimoire.
The original Veil Codex.
Liora's hands trembled as she reached out and touched it.
Pain lanced through her spine like fire. Not physical pain—ancestral pain. A flood of memories not her own. Screams. Rituals. Bloodlines burning. Children raised from graves. Cities erased in exchange for eternal consciousness. The rise of the Circle from her own disciples. Betrayal.
And above it all, one phrase, repeated over and over in a hundred voices:
"The Veil hungers for sacrifice."
Liora fell back, gasping.
The book didn't burn her. It marked her.
On her palm, a new rune etched itself—glowing silver with a black core.
The mark of a Veilbound.
Kharon stepped forward, voice tight. "You took the first trial. More will come. If you survive them all, the Citadel will obey you. If you fail… you will become its prisoner."
Liora nodded slowly, still trembling.
"Let it come," she whispered.
But behind her eyes, Syreena smiled faintly.
And in the corners of the room, the shadows of the Circle stirred—unaware that the bloodline they thought extinct had returned.
And it would not be silent.