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Chapter 31
The Shattered Veil
The chamber moans—a deep, resonant sound that
shudders through Selene’s bones. Obsidian walls rupture, veins of raw magic
glowing molten-white as cracks spider outward. Then—collapse. Entire sections
disintegrate into the abyss, swallowed by a starless void that churns and
writhes. The earth trembles beneath her boots before fracturing, stone
platforms ripping free like shards of shattered glass, frozen midair.
Selene staggers, heart hammering. The air
pulses—alive, watching—as tendrils of darkness slither through widening gaps,
coiling, stretching, tasting the sudden chaos. Across the broken chasm, Elara
clings to a jagged ledge of floating debris, her crimson cloak snapping in the
unnatural wind.
“Elara!” Selene’s voice barely cuts through the
groaning stone and the Automaton Royal Knights’ metallic shrieks. Elara’s
platform tilts dangerously, breaking from the main structure like an ice floe
adrift at sea. The distance yawns, impossible.
Elara’s sharp green eyes lock onto Selene’s. A
silent understanding sparks—years of shared streets, whispered promises beneath
smog-choked skies, stolen bread, bruised knuckles.
She was their anchor once. Elder sister, not by
blood, but by survival. Selene and Lyra had clung to her in those early
orphanage years, shadows tucked beneath her outstretched wings. But that bond
had cracked the day Magister Merlin marked Elara as gifted.
Selene remembers it too well—standing outside the
grand hall, fists clenched tight, while inside, Elara was offered a life beyond
the slums. Adoption. Legacy. Power.
Elara had refused.
“Not without them,” she’d told Lady Merlin, voice
steady, unyielding. “I’ll go where you take me, but Lyra and Selene come too.”
It was the first time Selene had seen magic as
more than a distant dream. The first time she knew Elara would break the world
for them—if she had to.
Now, the world was breaking around them.
“Elara, jump!” Selene’s fingers twitch with
unformed spellwork, but the distance is too wide, the magic too volatile.
Elara flashes a reckless grin, eyes burning with
that same defiant fire. “I’ll find my way back, little star,” she calls. Then,
the stone beneath her gives way.
She vanishes into the abyss.
Selene screams. A void tendril lashes out—slick,
pulsing—but Lyra yanks her back, grip bruising. The chamber groans again,
floating platforms lurching.
“Elara’s gone,” Lyra breathes, voice cracking.
No.
The ground lurches again, trembling beneath
Selene’s boots. Stone slabs shear away, torn free as if gravity itself has
given up. The shattered fragments hover, weightless for a breath—then the void
swallows them whole, devouring them like an unchained beast.
<i>Is it growing?</i>
“It’s expanding!” Lyra’s voice rips through the
chaos, sharp with panic.
Selene’s breath catches. The void isn’t just
consuming—it’s spreading, bleeding across the chamber like ink spilled on
parchment. Obsidian walls groan under the strain, webbed with fractures. Molten
veins of raw energy pulse through the cracks, bright against the dark stone.
Then—<i>another rupture.</i>
A fissure splits open to her left, jagged and
violent. Then another. Three in total, each one blooming like fresh wounds in
the world’s fabric. A foul wind howls from them, thick with rot and arcane
decay.
And from within, <i>they</i> come.
Figures in tattered robes drift forward, their
skeletal frames half-hidden beneath shifting layers of ethereal cloth. Hollow
eye sockets burn with cold blue fire. They don’t look at Selene or the
mercenaries trapped on floating wreckage. Their attention is fixed on the void.
They raise their bony hands, tracing sigils
through the air. Arcane symbols spark and linger, glowing against the dark—each
one precise, deliberate. The air thickens, heavy with old magic.
Selene <i>feels</i> it—pressure, like the void is
pushing against an invisible wall. The Riftbound’s magic holds it back. <i>For
now.</i>
“Undead,” Lyra whispers, jaw tight.
Selene doesn’t flinch. She knows what they are.
Not mindless revenants. Not echoes. These are <i>Riftbound</i>—keepers of
fractured spaces, guardians of broken worlds. Bound by duty, by ancient oaths.
“They’re containing it,” Selene murmurs, watching
the elegant precision of their spellwork. No chaos. No waste. Just cold,
perfect control.
But the void writhes harder now, testing its
cage.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Selene swallows. The ground keeps crumbling
beneath them. If the Riftbound fail—
“We need to move,” Lyra urges, grabbing Selene’s
wrist.
She’s right. If the void breaks free, it won’t
stop at this chamber. It will spread. Consume. Erase.
But Selene yanks her hand free.
“What are you doing?” Lyra snaps.
“We have to help them!” Selene’s voice shakes
with urgency.
“Are you mad?” Lyra’s eyes go wide.
“Lyra...” Selene grabs her sister by the
shoulders, forcing her to meet her gaze. “The Magister sent us here. This is
what she trained us for.”
“But... Elara—” Lyra’s voice falters, grief raw
at the edges.
Selene’s chest tightens, but she draws in a deep
breath. <i>Elara is gone. For now.</i> That makes Selene the eldest—by five
years. The weight of it settles heavy on her shoulders. She cups Lyra’s face,
thumbs brushing away the grime.
“Elara will be back,” Selene says softly. “She <i>always</i>
comes back.”
Lyra’s two fell hounds whimper at her sides,
pushing against her legs, as if urging her forward.
Lyra exhales, shaky but resolute. “Okay.”
Selene presses two mana stones into Lyra’s palm.
They hum with latent energy, their warmth seeping into Lyra’s skin. Without
missing a beat, Lyra threads her magic through the crystals, bending their
lattice with practiced ease. Violet light spills from her fingertips as the
stones crack, then reform, charged with raw enchantment.
She tosses one to each of her Fell Hounds. The
beasts lunge midair, jaws snapping around the stones. Instantly, their bodies
ripple—muscles thicken, limbs stretch, and the faint embers in their eyes flare
into blazing violet infernos. Dark fur bristles as they grow, the
transformation smooth, primal—like something ancient stirred awake.
By the time Lyra vaults onto the back of her
now-massive hound, a wicked grin tugs at her lips. “Selene?” she calls,
steadying herself as the beast shifts beneath her. “Where exactly are we going?
The void’s that way.”
Selene is already astride her own crimson-coated
mount, its deep growl vibrating through her legs, eager to run. “I know,” she
yells back, her voice cutting through the chaos. “We need to find Garik and the
rest of the AAC.”
Lyra frowns. “Why?”
“Because, dear sister…” Selene smirks, nudging
her mount forward, “what’s the point of having a bunch of problem-solving
scholars if they don’t, you know, problem-solve?”
“Ohhh,” Lyra muses, her grin returning as her
Fell-Mount leaps onto a floating slab of stone. “So, big problem?”
“Enormous,” Selene confirms. “And the AAC sent
some big brains.”
The Fell-Mounts spring from one drifting platform
to another, their massive paws gripping fractured stone with frightening grace.
Shattered chunks of the chamber float like islands in a storm, weightless and
unpredictable. The beasts navigate them with predator’s ease—one misstep, and
they’d plummet into the gnashing void below—but Selene barely spares a thought
for the risk. Her focus is razor-sharp, locked onto the thinning platforms
ahead.
“Garik!” Lyra shouts.
The grizzled scholar spins, disbelief flashing
across his weathered face. His battle-hammer, nearly as tall as he is, rests
against his shoulder.
“They’re closing the rifts!” Selene calls out,
her fox ears twitching as she watches skeletal mages strain to maintain their
fragile containment. “We have to help them—”
Garik’s jaw drops. “Stones in my beard. Help
them? Are you mad, lass?”
“If the rift isn’t sealed completely, we lose
everything inside!” Lyra chimes, eyes wide with urgency.
Garik exhales hard through his nose, gripping his
hammer tighter. His gaze sweeps over the battlefield—floating debris, the
pulsing void, the undead mages locked in their arcane struggle.
“And how, exactly,” he grunts, “do we help a
bunch of dead men cast spells?”
Selene’s amber eyes gleam. “We feed them aether.”
She digs her heels into her mount’s sides. “Hard and fast.”
Selene urges her Fell-Mount forward, its powerful
limbs propelling them across the fractured landscape. The rifts aren’t just
ruptures—they are wounds, raw gashes torn through existence itself. And
something, unseen yet insistent, is trying to stitch them shut.
Which means whatever lies beyond matters.
A gnawing unease coils in her chest. Some things
are sealed away for a reason. Ancient things. Forgotten things.
The void churns beneath her, an abyss of ink and
nothingness. She tamps down the cold shudder creeping up her spine. Hesitation
is a luxury she can’t afford.
The Fell-Mount lands hard atop a cracked
platform, claws skidding against weathered stone. Before it fully stops, Selene
vaults from its back, her boots kicking up dust as she rushes toward the
figures crouched over a wounded scholar.
Emeritus Pocket and Emerita Enoux—the
Consortium’s eldest, sharpest minds.
Enoux flinches as Selene lands beside her, her
fox-ears twitching at the sudden motion. Her eyes flick to the towering
Fell-Mount, and a sharp breath escapes her lips.
“Oh… Lady Wynn.” A hand presses to her chest.
“You startled me.”
Selene exhales through her nose. “Sorry.”
Pocket doesn’t even glance up, his gnarled
fingers deft as he ties off a bandage. Enoux, though, keeps her gaze locked on
Selene, surprise shifting into something unreadable.
“Madam Emerita—”
“Please,” Enoux cuts in, her voice gentle. “Just
Enoux.”
Selene nods, squaring her shoulders. “Then… tell
me everything you know about the Riftbound.”
Silence.
Enoux’s hands tremble. The bolt of bandages slips
from her grasp, unspooling onto the stone like a severed thread. Her wide eyes
dart between Selene and the pulsing black dome beyond, its surface webbed with
jagged violet fractures.
“What…?” The word is barely a breath.
Selene clenches her jaw. “A tear in reality has
been forced open.” She gestures toward the undulating void, its edges quivering
as if recoiling against unseen hands. As if something is struggling to hold it
open. “I believe three Riftbound have emerged to seal it.”
A shadow flickers through Enoux’s
expression—horror laced with understanding.
Pocket finally lifts his head, his milky eyes
narrowing. “Then we’re already too late.”