The descent into the spiral left time behind.
There were no torches, yet the air glowed faintly blue. The walls around Liora pulsed with veins of light—like living stone filled with starlight. Her footsteps echoed in slow motion, and her breath sounded distant, as though she were underwater or dreaming.
Still, she kept going.
The deeper she descended, the heavier her body felt—not physically, but emotionally. Memories—hers and not hers—pressed in from all sides. Whispers slithered through the veil between worlds, some in ancient tongues, others in voices she recognized.
Her mother.
Her father.
Jaeyun.
And… Eliara.
"Don't trust the light," one voice said.
"You are the blade and the wound," said another.
"They are watching you," came a third, colder one. "The Court never stopped."
At the base of the spiral, the passage widened into a chamber unlike anything she had imagined.
It was circular, vast, and carved from obsidian that shimmered like still water. In the center stood a pedestal—and upon it hovered a fragment of pure light, wrapped in swirling ribbons of shadow. The two forces danced together in a constant, fragile tension.
Liora stepped closer, heart thudding.
"This is it," she whispered. "The fragment of the veil."
The moment the words left her mouth, the shadows recoiled from the light, as if aware of her. The entire chamber trembled.
Suddenly, a shimmer took shape beside the pedestal—a figure, tall and androgynous, cloaked in robes of iridescent smoke. Its face was veiled, but its presence radiated ancient power.
"I am the Guardian of the Veil's Heart," it said. "You bear the blood of the First. You have passed the threshold. Speak your purpose."
Liora swallowed. "I came to find the fragment. To restore the veil. Or—if it cannot be healed—to understand it."
The guardian inclined its head. "All who seek the Heart must offer something. The veil does not give freely."
"What kind of offering?" she asked cautiously.
"A memory. One you hold dear. It will be erased. Taken. Forever."
Liora hesitated. Her mind flooded with moments—sunlight on her mother's face, the first time she laughed with Jaeyun, the sound of her father's old music box. She could feel each memory like threads tied to her soul.
"Why?" she asked. "Why must I give something to know something?"
"Because knowledge is weight," the guardian said. "To carry it, you must make room. The veil remembers everything. Mortals cannot."
She stepped forward slowly, her voice shaking. "Take it, then. Take my memory of… my first kiss."
The guardian's hand extended, touching her brow with a featherlight touch.
Suddenly the memory unraveled from her mind—warmth in the dark, laughter under falling snow, breathless closeness… gone.
She gasped, swaying. She remembered having a first kiss, but not who it was with. Not what it felt like.
In its place was cold clarity.
The fragment pulsed.
And then, for a breathless moment, Liora saw:
—The veil, whole and ancient, stretching across all of existence.
—Eliara's hands tearing it open to hide a child born under a cursed moon.
—The Shadow Court circling like vultures, sensing the wound.
—And herself—standing at a forked path. In one future, she reforged the veil. In another, she became it.
The light burned brighter, nearly blinding.
"Choose," the guardian said.
"To wield the fragment is to change the world."
Liora reached out—hand trembling—and touched it.
The moment Liora's fingers brushed the fragment, reality fractured.
Her body jerked as if struck by lightning, and her mind was pulled into a torrent of sensation. No longer standing, no longer herself—she became a thread in the weave of the veil itself. Everything she had known—the chamber, the guardian, her purpose—was pulled apart and reassembled inside a storm of memory and magic.
She saw through Eliara's eyes.
Snow fell gently over the ruined Temple of Threads. The sky above bled violet as rifts tore open between worlds. Eliara stood at the center of it all, a child wrapped in fire in her arms—Liora, only days old. Behind her, the Shadow Court advanced, dark figures wearing masks of bone, their voices raised in prophecy and threat.
> "Give her to us. The child is the knot. The stitch that must be undone."
Eliara's reply was a whisper of ancient power:
> "She is my blood. And I will tear the stars from the sky before I let you have her."
With her last breath, Eliara did the unthinkable. She opened the veil—not to escape, but to hide the child within it. A living secret. A soul encoded in shadow and light. In that moment, the veil changed… and began to bleed.
And Liora, even now, was still bound to that moment. A scar of Eliara's love.
---
She came back to herself with a violent gasp.
The chamber had gone silent. The guardian was gone. The pedestal now stood empty—the fragment no longer hovering above it.
Because it was inside her.
Liora staggered, gripping her chest. The fragment had fused with her soul. She felt it—coiled like a sun beneath her ribs, radiating truth, memory, and unbearable choice.
Her ring had melted into her skin.
From the edges of the room, voices began to murmur. Not illusions—presences. Spirits drawn by the fragment. Some whispered in awe, others in hunger. The boundary between the veil and the world had thinned with her transformation.
Suddenly—
A sound like thunder cracked through the chamber.
A tear ripped open in the air above the pedestal—black lightning searing the edges—and through it stepped a figure cloaked in red and bone. One of the High Marked. Not a soldier this time… a commander. His mask was carved from obsidian, shaped like a crow's beak, and his staff crackled with stolen power.
"So," he said, voice echoing like a bell rung underwater. "The veilborn awakens at last."
Liora drew herself up, though every fiber of her being screamed from the overload. "You're too late."
"I think not," he replied, stepping forward. "That fragment inside you… it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the Court. It was ours before your ancestors learned to walk upright."
"And yet," Liora said coldly, "none of you were worthy enough to touch it."
He snarled and raised his staff. The chamber warped—gravity shifted sideways, and waves of shadow coiled outward like snakes. Liora threw up her hand instinctively, and to her shock, the veil itself responded.
A shield of light burst outward from her fingers, cracking the floor and halting the oncoming shadow.
The High Marked recoiled, eyes narrowing behind the mask.
"So," he said, voice taut with fury. "You don't even understand what you've become. But you will. And by then, it will be too late."
With a flash of cursed light, he vanished into the rift.
Liora stood panting, her veins burning, the fragment still glowing faintly in her chest.
Then, from the top of the spiral stair, footsteps echoed.
"Liora!" Jaeyun's voice, ragged, desperate. "Are you—?"
He froze as he reached her, seeing the aftermath—the cracked stones, the fading magic, the change in her.
She turned toward him slowly.
"I touched the fragment," she said. "It showed me everything."
His gaze dropped to the pulse of light in her chest. "And now?"
Liora lifted her chin. "Now I am the veil."