They led Kael through the eastern wing of the old observatory—past rooms rarely spoken of, much less entered. The corridors here smelled of damp parchment and lightning-split stone. Candle sconces were lit too far apart, so shadows clung to the walls like draped veils, flickering in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Eline walked beside him in silence.
Neither of them spoke of what she'd done—what she'd risked by placing herself as his guardian. The Whisperers had accepted it publicly. But Kael knew eyes still watched from behind the veiled glass of the upper balconies.
He felt them.
No, Tenebris felt them.
And the thing inside him was no longer content to remain hidden.
They arrived at a tall door sealed in obsidian runes.
Kael stopped.
He knew this place.
Not from training.
Not from dreams.
From before.
Eline didn't try to explain. She stepped aside and gestured to the Whisperer who waited behind them. A gaunt man, face etched by years of silence and judgment, stepped forward with a crystal key no larger than a thumbnail.
He pressed it to the seal.
Light fractured across the obsidian like shattering glass—but no sound followed.
Then the door opened.
And Kael stepped into the past.
The room was circular and windowless. Its walls were mirrored, floor to ceiling, but none showed Kael's reflection. Instead, they shimmered with fragments—images that came and went as he moved. Not illusions. Not memories.
Possibilities.
Each panel held a different Kael—some younger, some cloaked in unfamiliar armor, others marked by scars he did not yet have. One bled from a wound across his chest. Another burned with Veilfire in both eyes.
The furthest mirror showed a version of him kneeling before a throne of stone—his wrists bound, Tenebris flickering at his back like a chained shadow. Another version stood alone before a blackened sky, mouth open in a soundless scream, surrounded by corpses with Whisperer tattoos.
"I don't like this place," Kael muttered.
"It wasn't meant to be liked," Eline said from the threshold.
"Then what was it meant for?"
"To show what happens… when restraint fails."
Kael looked back. "Mine? Or theirs?"
Eline didn't answer.
As he moved toward the center of the room, the mirrors began to respond—shifting images, darkening, deepening. One cracked as he passed, spiderwebbing out until it resembled the sigil etched into his palm during his first bonding.
He reached toward it.
And Tenebris spoke—not aloud, but directly into his bones.
"Not this one."
Kael paused. "Why?"
"That path is woven in betrayal. You would become a weapon. Not a will."
Kael lowered his hand.
"You've been here before," he whispered.
Tenebris pulsed. "In echoes. In pieces. The first Veilheart stood here and chose the wound that would become the Fracture."
Kael turned. "You said the Veilheart died."
"She did. But death is not the same as disappearance. Her echo became the Veil. Her memory became law."
Kael's breath caught.
"And I carry that echo?"
Tenebris stirred slowly. Not denial. Not affirmation.
"You are the only one it sings to now."
At the center of the room stood a singular structure—unlike the mirrors, this was not glass but polished veilstone. Smooth, featureless. No reflection.
Until Kael stepped before it.
Then—without warning—it lit with a single image.
Kael.
But not him.
This version wore the full mantle of a Whisperer Commander—robes dyed in star-dark weave, sigils glowing with internal light. His eyes bore no color, only silver. Behind him stood rows of bound creatures—shadow-formed, chained, silent.
And on his chest—etched in the armor—was the crest of the original Veilheart.
Kael reached toward the mirror.
And his reflection moved first.
The image leaned in, hand pressing to the inside of the stone as if trying to reach out.
Then it spoke.
Not aloud.
But in Kael's voice.
"When you choose, they will call it betrayal. But it is memory that commands you, not treason. Do not forget what they made you to forget."
Kael staggered back. His breath caught in his throat. The mirror's surface rippled and then stilled—going blank once more.
"What did it say?" Eline asked softly, stepping beside him.
Kael didn't answer.
Not fully.
"It said I have a choice."
As they left the mirror-chamber, Kael became aware of a subtle presence just beyond the torchlight—a movement that didn't belong to either of them. He paused near a stairwell.
Eline reached for the blade at her side.
"Don't," Kael whispered. "It's one of them."
"A Whisperer?"
Kael shook his head. "A Watcher. One of the ones not bound to the spiral. One of the old ones. The ones who never swore fealty after the Fracture."
Eline's hand dropped.
"Why would they be here?"
Kael stepped into the shadow.
And the figure revealed herself.
A woman, perhaps in her sixties. Pale-eyed. Her robes bore no crest. No colors. But her voice rang with the clarity of someone who had seen too much and survived it.
"You saw it, didn't you?"
Kael studied her. "Saw what?"
"The version of yourself that remembers."
He didn't answer.
The woman smiled faintly. "Good. Then we can begin."
Eline stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The woman turned to her. "The one who watched the first Veilheart die."
They left the chamber in silence, but something in Kael had shifted.
Not broken.
Not grown.
But reawakened.
He now knew—without doubt—that the Veil had never been a natural barrier. It had been a choice. A sacrifice. And everything the Whisperers feared in him was not his potential for destruction—but his right to memory.
He wasn't just carrying Tenebris.
He was walking in the echo of the one who had first shaped it.
Back in his chamber, Kael sat beside the unlit candle on the floor, staring at the mark on his palm.
The Whisperers would not protect him from what was coming.
Eline could only shield him for so long.
And Tenebris was no longer content with silence.
He had seen what lay ahead.
And worse—
He had seen what he might become to survive it.