Step beyond the veil, where whispers linger and secrets stir—read from the beginning.
Elara’s breath caught.
The veil trembled between them, exhaling in slow, rhythmic pulses, as though it had lungs, as though it had breath. The air thickened, curling against Elara’s skin like unseen hands pressing her forward, urging her closer, pulling her toward something that had long awaited her arrival.
The figure shifted.
Not in the way a man moves, not in the way something mortal resettles itself. His presence unfolded, stretching like ink spilled into water, unraveling like the sky before a storm. The space around him did not contain him—it bent to accommodate him.
He was not flesh, not quite shadow. His form shimmered, shifting between deep blue and violet, a body of fluid light edged in darkness. The colors rippled through him, thick as storm clouds, luminous as the reflection of the moon on restless waters. Fragments of his essence broke away in slow, curling wisps, dissolving into the air before reforming, an endless cycle of unmaking and return. He was neither solid nor incorporeal—something in between, something forgotten by time.
His eyes held her still.
They were twin voids, ringed in shifting hues of cobalt and dusk-lit amethyst, vast and knowing. They did not flicker, did not blink, only burned with an unsettling stillness, as though they had seen the rise and fall of entire civilizations and never once turned away.
For anyone else, he would have been little more than mist—nothing tangible, nothing real.
Elara saw him.
He knew.
The air grew unbearably still.
No step forward. No words right away. He only watched her, studying the shape of her, the truth of her, his swirling form stilling for the first time in an eternity.
"You can see my true form."
His voice did not come from his mouth—not in the way human voices did. It reverberated through the space between them, a sound both near and impossibly far, threading through her bones like the echo of something lost.
Elara barely found her voice. "I—"
His gaze flickered, dropping lower.
To her eye.
Something in him fractured.
"No."
The word came soft, barely spoken, filled with a terrible, undeniable certainty.
The shifting hues of his form darkened, a storm brewing beneath the surface of something unraveling. His tendrils of light curled inward, withdrawing from the space around him.
"It cannot be."
Her heart slammed against her ribs. "What? What can’t be?"
No answer.
He only looked at her, looked through her, and for a moment, she thought he might vanish entirely—fold back into the veil, erase himself from the moment, from her.
"You are Magiri."
The words pressed into her, sank beneath her skin, curled into the spaces between her ribs.
She felt herself shaking. “That’s not—” She stopped, exhaling sharply. “That’s not possible.”
His expression did not shift. His form pulled tighter, his colors darkening like a sky moments before a storm breaks.
"And yet, here you stand."
Her fingers curled into fists.
He was silent for a long time. His voice, when it came, was quiet, a thing carved from the weight of knowledge she did not yet hold.
His stance shifted, his form unraveling slightly at the edges, a thread fraying under unseen strain.
"You should not be here."
Elara squared her shoulders. “Why did they call me?”
The veil shuddered.
"They should not have."
Something broke in his form, something frayed, as though he had unraveled one too many times and now nothing remained to stitch him back together.
"I searched for them," he murmured, voice raw. "When the Magiri fell, I looked. I found where they had been taken. I thought—" His tendrils flickered, shifting in restless patterns. "I thought I could free them."
The deep hues of his form twisted, streaks of rich sapphire breaking into darker shades.
"It takes more power than I possessed to open the veil to D’Veen." His voice wavered, just slightly. "I did not free them. I did not bring them home. I only—"
His form flickered, caught in the weight of his own grief.
"I only became trapped."
The words hung between them.
A silence deeper than anything Elara had ever known stretched through the space between them.
His gaze, burning and unblinking, flickered with something old and aching.
"And I was not alone in the cost."
A pause.
"Eternum Savantis bound me to Aaermont the Undying. My tether across all things. We were never meant to be separated, never meant to exist apart. Yet, I am here. And he is lost to me."
His fingers clenched, his swirling form trembling beneath something unseen.
"I feel him reaching for me, pulling at the edges of my soul, calling across something I can never cross. The tether pulls. The bond frays. But I cannot answer."
The words scraped against the air, the weight of them pressing into her chest, curling in her lungs like smoke.
Elara felt something achingly familiar in the way he spoke, in the way his grief took shape around him, silent and consuming.
She took a breath.
Her feet moved forward.
The veil recoiled, unwilling to let her closer.
"If these are truly my people," she said, voice steadier than she felt, "I want to save them."
He did not move.
Something unreadable flickered through his expression.
Her hands curled into fists. "I have never felt connected to anything. To anyone. This?" She exhaled, unsteady. "I feel it pulling at me. Calling me home. If I can bring them back—I will. I have to."
The mist around him stilled.
The space between them remained unbearably silent.
His form shifted, stretching, reforming. The vastness of him settled, his eyes burning with something unreadable.
A long pause.
No hesitation.
"Very well."
The air between them pulsed, thick with the weight of something old and unspoken. The veil had stilled, but the silence left in its wake was vast, an expanse of unanswered questions stretching between them.
The figure—watched her for a long moment, his form shifting in slow, deliberate currents, as if the very act of holding himself together required effort. The deep blues and violets of his being rippled, his edges dissolving into the air before reforming in an endless, restless motion.
"You wish to fight for them."
Elara’s fingers curled at her sides. “Yes.”
The pause that followed felt eternal.
"Then you must understand the cost."
His words did not waver, did not rise or fall with the cadence of speech. They existed, vast and heavy, pressing into the space between them.
The cost.
This was not a fight won with steel and flame, not a battle of swords or spells. This was something greater, something more terrible.
Still, she did not step back.
The figure regarded her for another moment before he inclined his head, a gesture more habit than necessity, something that belonged to the ghost of who he once was.
"I am Ratwana Darswin, former member of the High Council of the Magiri. And now…" His form flickered, colors dimming, his voice dropping lower. "Now, I am little more than a penance, atoning for misdeeds too great to name."
The words scraped against the air, heavy with regret that stretched beyond the years.
"I was there when the world believed the Magiri were gone. I was there when they turned on us, when they saw what we had created and thought we had destroyed ourselves with it."
His gaze, sharp as a blade, locked onto hers.
The weight of his confession pressed into her ribs, a silent thing that settled between her bones.
Elara’s breath stilled. "You… you let them think you had all died?"
"No." His voice carried no anger, no defensiveness, only the raw edges of something broken. "I was already imprisoned before I knew the truth. I believed it too."
The veil sighed, a slow and aching sound, as if the space around them remembered his words, remembered the weight of his failures.
"The Magiri did not perish from their own power. They were not consumed by the magic we dared to wield."
His form shuddered, his colors shifting toward the edge of darkness.
"They were taken. Banished. Not into death—but into a cage woven from magic itself, trapped within the veil, hidden from the world that feared them."
The space between them shook, not with force, not with fury, but with something deeper. A sorrow so thick it had weight, pressing down on every breath, every heartbeat.
Elara’s voice came softer now. "And you? What did you do?"
His form dimmed, his colors shifting into the hollow shades of dusk.
"I searched for them."
His tendrils curled, flickering between shapes, memories pressing against the edges of his form.
"I did not know what had happened. I only knew that the Magiri had vanished, and that D’Veen had sealed their names away in history, erasing every trace of them. I did not accept it."
The deep hues of his form shattered for a moment, breaking into tendrils of violet light, his edges fraying before reweaving themselves.
"I found this place, the fracture between worlds where the veil is weakest. I thought if I could reach beyond it, if I could tear it open, I would find them."
A silence stretched between them, heavier than before.
"I did not find them."
The words cut through the air like a blade.
"The veil did not hold them, only the remnants of their existence. The cage that binds them is something deeper, something hidden within the fabric of the veil itself. I became trapped."
His form flickered, the mist of him curling into itself, his very presence unraveling at the edges.
"The veil cannot be broken. The prison they are in cannot simply be torn apart. It must be unraveled, thread by thread, undone from within."
Elara shivered, her body recognizing the weight of his words before her mind could fully grasp them.
She had expected a battle. A war of will, of defiance. Not… this.
Not the undoing of something woven into the fabric of existence itself.
"Then how?" Her voice barely rose above a whisper. "How do we free them?"
Ratwana was silent for a long time.
His gaze, burning and unblinking, studied her again, deeper this time, as if he were searching for something not yet spoken.
"The magic that binds them is ancient, built not to shackle bodies, but to silence an entire people. The only way to undo it is to call them back—to awaken what has been lost."
The mist curled at his fingertips, shifting in slow spirals.
"And you—" His voice dipped lower, something almost reverent laced within it. "You are the first to hear the call."
A chill crawled up Elara’s spine.
"You are the first to answer."
The air pulsed around them, the veil quivering, sensing the weight of what had just been spoken.
Her heart thundered. "What does that mean?"
Ratwana exhaled, his form shifting, colors curling into something unreadable.
"It means, Elara, that you were never meant to stand outside of this. You were never meant to be separate. You are woven into the same magic that binds them."
His voice lowered, thick with something unreadable.
"You are the key."
Elara’s pulse pounded, a deep pull forming in her chest, a thread of something that had always been there, waiting.
The veil trembled.
"And if you choose this path, there will be no turning back."
Elara did not hesitate.
“I will do whatever it takes.”
Ratwana stilled, something shifting in the depths of his gaze.
"Then we begin."
The air shook, the veil rippling outward, a deep and distant sound humming through the space around them.