The news arrived at the palace before dawn, the courier’s lips trembling as he spoke.
A line of prisoners, meant for Verdana’s gates, never arrived. Their guards were found sprawled on the roadside, throats cut clean, the work too precise to be anything but deliberate. The prisoners - thirty in iron - were found not far from the city, laid out on the steps of an abandoned shrine, as if someone had left them there for a reason.
By morning, whispers crept through the palace corridors, thick as mold. Servants muttered prayers, voices barely above a breath. Nobles pressed holy symbols to their lips, whispering Hollow Veil as if the words themselves might call something dark into the light.
Elara listened, holding herself still, though unease pressed tight beneath her ribs. She had dreamed of that shrine before. In her dreams, the stone bled, and chanting rose until the ground itself trembled.
“Stay here,” Caden told her, his voice firm enough to break stone. “This is not for you.”
“It is.” Her reply was quiet but unyielding. “If the symbols I dream are carved upon those stones, then the gods - or whatever lives behind them - are speaking to me. I must see it.”
“Elara - ”
“No.” She stepped closer, fire flashing in her gaze. “You cannot keep me behind silk curtains while Verdana burns. I am queen. If this is darkness rising, I will not face it from afar.”
For a long moment, silence clashed between them. Then he swore softly, almost inaudibly, and ordered the horses.
They rode through the gates at noon, the sun high overhead. The air should have been warm, but it carried only the stench of smoke and rot.
Beyond Verdana’s walls, the countryside told its own story. Fields lay fallow, weeds choking the last thin stalks of grain. Abandoned cottages leaned together, roofs sagging, doors open to nothing but dust and silence.
Those who hadn’t fled to the city huddled in rags along the road. Their eyes were hollow, lips split from thirst. Children with swollen bellies stared as the queen passed, their gazes fever-bright and empty.
One woman clutched at Elara’s stirrup, her voice a rasp: “Mercy, my queen. Bread. Water.”
Caden told the guards to move them along, but Elara’s hands tightened on her reins until her knuckles turned white.
This is what they hide behind silk and ceremony. This is what mercy should reach, or Verdana will rot from the inside out.
The farther they rode, the worse it grew. Where hunger ruled, ignorance festered. Superstition filled the cracks left by faith. In one ruined village, they passed a crude effigy nailed to a tree. Its eyes were sewn shut, straw spilling from its belly, blood smeared across its chest - a warning, or maybe a call for something to answer.
The guards muttered prayers, crossing themselves.
“Dark Ages,” Caden said grimly, eyes scanning the road ahead. “This is what it feels like. Lawless years, when the crown was weak and priests demanded blood to buy rain.”
Elara shivered. “And when mercy was drowned beneath zealotry.”
He didn’t answer. His silence said enough.
By dusk, they reached the shrine.
It waited at the edge of a ravine, columns cracked, roof sagging in on itself. Moss crept up the stones, slow and thick. On the wide steps, the thirty prisoners lay, their chains gone.
Their bodies were set in neat rows, heads turned toward the shrine doors. Their skin was pale, lips tinged blue, as if whatever had taken them had stolen warmth instead of blood.
The guards dismounted first, swords drawn, but Elara slid from her horse, boots crunching on gravel. The air was thick, metallic, sweet in a way that made her stomach twist. She moved forward anyway, each step heavy, as if the ground wanted to keep her from the shrine.nd itself tried to hold her back.
And the symbols were carved deep into the wood, lines raw and fresh. They glowed with a faint, sickly gold, pulsing like something alive. Her breath caught. She knew these marks. She knew them.
She had seen them in every dream - the circle broken by flame, the spiraled eye, the knives arrayed like stars.
Her vision blurred. The shrine faded into shadow, torches flickering at the edges. Hooded priests circled, chanting. The air trembled with their voices.
Children cried out, their voices muffled by cloth.
And above them all, her ancestor’s voice: Choose. Spill blood, or break the chain.
“Elara.”
A hand closed around her arm, pulling her back. She gasped as the vision broke, the shrine snapping back into focus in the fading light. Her knees buckled, but Caden caught her, his arm strong around her waist.
“Easy.” His voice was low, rough with fear. “Breathe. Breathe.”
Her hands twisted in his tunic, searching for something solid. "I saw it," she whispered. "The same symbols. The same chanting. It’s the Veil. It keeps happening."
“Then it is mine to face.” His grip tightened, fierce. “Not yours. This isn’t your fight, Elara. It’s miShe pulled back enough to meet his eyes. They were wild, caught between anger and fear. Fear.
“You cannot keep me from it,” she said. “The Veil is already in my blood, in my dreams. If it is yours, it is mine. We cannot sever them.”
His jaw clenched. “I will not see you broken. Not by this.”
“And I will not see you walk into darkness alone.”
For a moment, silence pressed between them, thick with everything neither could give up.
At last, he cursed under his breath and pulled her close, his arms tight and shaking. For a moment, there was no shrine, no dead, no burning marks - only the strength of his hold, as if he could keep the darkness away by sheer force.
When he lifted her onto her horse, his hands lingered. His grip was more than protection. It was fear.
Fear that no matter how tightly he held on, the Veil had already slipped inside.
They rode back in silence.
Night bruised the sky, streaks of violet and black swallowing the last light. Behind them, the shrine waited, its marks fading but not gone, like embers waiting for air.
Elara’s gaze fixed on the horizon, but her thoughts churned with what she had seen.
The rot in the fields. The hollow-eyed children. The effigies were nailed to trees.
This was more than hunger. It was the start of the collapse.
If the Veil gained ground, Verdana would return to that ancient age - the dark centuries when ignorance ruled, when priests demanded sacrifice for rain, when kings and queens were nothing but puppets to gods cloaked in shadow.
A kingdom sunk in poverty. People stripped of learning, of hope. A land eaten by fear and superstition, until even the idea of mercy felt like a joke.
And I am meant to break it, she thought, her throat tight. Or be broken by it.
Beside her, Caden rode with shoulders set and jaw clenched, his eyes fixed on shadows that no torch could banish.
Neither spoke.
Words, in the thick silence of night, felt too thin to hold back the darkness that followed close behind.