The dust in the old scriptorium settled differently now—thicker, slower, as though the air itself were reluctant to move. Kael sat cross-legged in the alcove behind the restricted archive, his cloak drawn tight against the chamber's unnatural chill. The lantern's light flickered, stretched thin by the veilsigils etched into the stone.
Across from him, Liris knelt beside a ruined ledger—its pages warped by fire, its ink half-scoured. The cover bore no name. But within, the truths spilled like open wounds.
"It's called the Ash Ledger," she said quietly, brushing soot from a scorched page. "It wasn't supposed to survive the purge."
Kael leaned in. "What purge?"
Liris looked up. Her eyes were harder now—older, somehow, though they'd trained together just a season ago. "There was a schism among the Whisperers. Decades ago. Before we were born. They erased it from the annals, sealed everything tied to it. But I found the seals on this one breached."
"Breached by who?"
"Maybe the same ones watching you now."
She turned the page.
The text wasn't easy to decipher—scrawled in a ciphered dialect that shimmered in and out of legibility under the lanternlight. But Kael could read enough. Names. Events. Executions.
"They culled their own," he whispered.
"Not just any," Liris said. "Veilbound. Those who began… changing."
Kael's pulse quickened.
He saw the words again—veilsight rupture, tenebric interference, resonant contagion.
"They feared it would spread," Liris continued. "A collapse of will. A tearing of identity. Those closest to the Veil were… unraveling. Or evolving. Depending on who you believe."
Kael closed his eyes, and Tenebris pulsed faintly in his chest, like the flick of a blade against glass.
"This isn't just about me anymore," he murmured. "They've seen this before."
Liris nodded. "And if the same signs are returning—if you are the echo of what they buried—then they'll try to end it again."
Back in the sparring ring, Kael kept his silence.
The others sensed it—an invisible rift that had grown between him and the rest of the students. Even Tovrin, who had once mocked him behind turned backs, now gave him a wide berth.
The match that morning was a dull rotation—blunted veil-weapons and controlled strikes. Kael moved through it half-present, his body obedient but his mind locked behind the ciphered words still scarring his thoughts.
He caught Eline's eyes across the ring only once. No nod. No smile. Just a long, quiet look—and something unreadable in her expression. Not distrust.
Not yet. But a kind of readiness. Like she expected him to break soon.
Later, Kael returned to the Watchers' Arc. This time, alone.
The tomes in the deeper alcove held fractured narratives—diagrams, failed bindings, veils that spoke and wept in the dark. One parchment described a "resonant host" that had gone too far. The phrase "Veilheart inversion" returned again and again, scrawled in a different ink, by a different hand.
And then, he found a name.
Not a Whisperer.
Not a recruit.
But a child.
Eline d'Verin.
He froze.
The note was sparse—buried in a side margin, referenced only in relation to an event labeled "the Dimming." There were no details, no outcomes, only a question beside her name: witness or catalyst?
Kael stared at it for a long time.
He tried to recall the image from his dream—the younger Eline, speaking to the shadowed figure. "We'll watch him."
What had she known? What had been hidden from even her?
And why was her name linked to the Veilfracture?
Liris met him again in the hollow alcove behind the Sigil Labyrinth. She looked gaunt. Tired.
"You're changing," she said. "It's not just Tenebris anymore. I can feel it."
Kael didn't deny it.
"It's like I'm remembering… something that was never mine."
Liris glanced over her shoulder. "They're closing ranks. I overheard two handlers arguing—one wanted you tested again. The other said you've already passed the point of containment."
"Containment," Kael echoed.
Liris placed a hand on his shoulder. "You need to decide. Soon. You have allies still. But they'll choose sides eventually."
"Even you?"
Liris didn't answer.
That evening, a storm rolled across the cliffs.
Kael sat alone in the observatory tower, watching the sky fracture with silver. Tenebris was quieter than usual—brooding, as though it too read the Ash Ledger and remembered the old silence.
A knock at the door broke the stillness.
Eline stepped inside.
Her cloak was wet, and she looked older than she had before—like the years had caught up with her in the span of a week. She said nothing at first, only crossed the room and stood beside him, staring into the storm.
"I know you found it," she said finally.
"The Ledger?"
She nodded. "I watched the seals break. I didn't stop you."
Kael turned toward her, surprised.
"You knew?"
"I've always known," she whispered.
He waited. The air held its breath.
"When I was a child, they made me watch someone lose themselves to it. Not to Tenebris, but to what you're becoming." She turned her face slightly, enough that he could see the truth flickering in her eyes.
"That someone was my brother."
Kael flinched. "Eline…"
"They bound him. Contained him. And then they erased him. Not his name, not his memory—him. Like he'd never existed."
A long silence fell between them.
"That's why I was sent here," she said, voice low. "Not just to train. To watch. To see if it happened again."
"And has it?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she looked down at his hands—still faintly pulsing with the echo of Tenebris—and said, "You haven't lost yourself. Yet."
Kael stepped closer. "Then help me not to."
"I can't," she said.
"Why?"
Her answer was soft.
"Because it may not be my choice."