Silence clung to Leira like frost. It wasn't the silence of peace… it was the silence of a world holding its breath. The silence after a scream. After a war. After a destiny had been carved into the bones of someone who never asked to carry it.
She stood…or floated…she couldn't tell anymore, in the center of a white expanse that pulsed faintly with life. The Veil's light still moved across her skin in thin silver veins, fading in and out like it was breathing with her.
Leira inhaled shakily.
The breath felt… wrong. It felt too full, it was too heavy, as if the air itself was trying to settle inside her ribs and make a home there.
She wiped her face with a trembling hand, and her fingers came away glowing…not damp with tears but actually glowing.
Her chest tightened in a quiet, helpless panic. Everything around her, everything happening, everything she was, was a mystery to her.
What am I now?
The Veil didn't answer her unspoken thought, but its presence stirred beneath her skin, cool, ancient, patient. It didn't speak, but she could feel it watching her, studying the shape of her thoughts, measuring the tremor in her breath.
She took a step forward but the ground wasn't solid, It wasn't even ground. It was light, condensed, softened, shaped into something the body could stand on. It rippled under her foot, like she'd stepped into the surface of a calm lake, except it didn't sink. It held her weight as if gravity only existed when the Veil permitted it.
Leira swallowed hard and tried again.
Another step…a deeper ripple.
Then the light steadied, adjusting to her, responding to her, as if learning her weight.
"Why does everything feel… different?" she whispered.
Her voice echoed unnaturally, repeating itself a second and third time like distant versions of her were speaking alongside her.
Because you are not just one voice anymore.
The Veil's answer shivered through her bones, not spoken aloud but carved quietly into the space between her heartbeats. As if it spoke into her conscious and not her ears. Leira gasped lightly, hand lifting to her chest as if she could press the foreign presence back into silence.
"Stop doing that," she whispered.
A soft hum vibrated through the space, amusement. Not cruel. But not gentle either.
She turned in a slow circle, taking in the wide and unending expanse. There were no walls, no ceiling, yet the space didn't feel open. It felt contained, like a sphere made of light stretching infinitely in all directions.
She wasn't trapped but she wasn't free either.
"Where am I?" she murmured.
Inside me, the Veil answered simply.
Her breath hitched. She was confused and surprised at the same time .
"This is… you?"
A slow pulse radiated through the space like the nod of a colossal being.
Leira's mind spun as the realization hit her that she was standing inside the consciousness of something that wasn't alive, wasn't dead, wasn't a god, wasn't human, wasn't anything she could put into a word.
The Veil was… existence. A boundary. A law. A watcher. A judge. And now… a partner. Or a captor, at this moment, she really wasn't sure.
A faint sting crawled beneath her skin. Her arms, her spine, her stomach, all of it thrummed with restless light that didn't belong to her. She rubbed her forearm as if she could wipe it away.
But the light didn't move. It pulsed back at her.
Her heart stumbled.
"Is this… normal?"
There is no normal for what you are now.
Leira exhaled slowly and sat down, letting herself lower to the shimmering floor. The light curved upward slightly, cradling her weight as if shaping itself to her presence. She drew her knees to her chest and rested her forehead on them.
She didn't cry, even though she felt like she should.
She felt like the person she had been hours, or centuries, ago would have cried until her body ran dry. But she wasn't just herself anymore.
There was too much space in her head. Too much stillness inside her chest. Too much silence where fear should've been.
She wasn't empty, she was… reorganizing.
Like her soul was learning how to exist with someone else inside it.
A whisper brushed her mind, not a command this time, not a threat, but a question.
Do you regret your choice?
Leira stiffened.
Regret?
How could she regret the one choice that might bring Kael back? A choice that could save him?
"No," she whispered. "Never."
The Veil hummed, faint, unreadable.
Leira raised her head. "But… I don't understand something."
The light surrounding her dimmed, encouraging her to continue.
"Why me?"
The question had been clawing inside her since the moment she said yes. It burned more fiercely now that her mind wasn't drowning in agony.
"There must have been other people," she said softly. "Older. Stronger. More trained. Why would you choose someone who didn't even know who she was? Why wait for me all this time?"
A long silence followed.
Then…
Because you did what even Keepers would not.
Leira's brows pulled together. "I broke your rule."
Yes.
"That shouldn't make me worthy."
It doesn't.
The bluntness hit her like a slap, and she looked down, heart squeezing in her chest…
…but then the Veil continued:
It makes you necessary.
Her breath faltered.
"Necessary for what?"
The light around her flickered gently, as if adjusting itself into the shape of an answer.
To change what must not continue.
Leira shook her head slightly. "But you said I'm not allowed to change anything."
You are not allowed to change mortals' fates, the Veil corrected.
But you will be the force that corrects what was never fate to begin with.
A shiver crawled across her shoulders.
"You mean the shadows."
The Veil pulsed in agreement.
"You mean the corruption."
Another pulse.
"And the Keepers who fell to it?"
The silence that followed was heavier.
Not painful, just truthful.
When a Keeper becomes corruption, they cease to be fate. They become abomination.
Leira's stomach turned.
"And you want me to hunt these…abominations?"
Yes.
"And actually kill them?"
If they cannot be reclaimed.
Leira exhaled shakily, gripping the hems of her own clothing.
"And you trust me to do this?"
No.
She went still. The Veil's presence pressed gently against her mind.
Trust is earned. You will prove yourself. To me, to the worlds, to the Keepers who feared what you became.
Her throat tightened at that last part.
Feared her.
Of course they did.
She remembered now, the way they recoiled when she tried to help, the way they whispered "she interfered," like it was a curse, like her compassion was a crime. And maybe it was. Maybe that was the point.
Leira leaned back on her hands and looked up at the glowing expanse above her.
"So what happens now?" she asked.
You feel the weight.
Her breath stalled.
You learn to stand beneath it.
The ground beneath her rippled, and suddenly the space deepened, stretching outward into a horizon of moving light. Faint shapes hovered in the distance, like outlines of worlds, floating orbs each glowing with a different color.
Leira stood slowly, drawn toward them.
"What are those?"
Realms.
She inhaled sharply.
"You're showing me… everything?"
Everything you are bound to protect.
Her heart thumped unevenly.
One orb glowed warm gold, peaceful. Another flickered violently, unstable. A third was dim, fading. A fourth shimmered with sickly black threads, corruption.
Leira's steps slowed.
"That one," she whispered, pointing at the corrupted sphere. "That world is dying."
Yes.
"Because of the shadows?"
Because something that should never have existed took root there.
Her hand trembled slightly.
"So you want me to go there?"
Not yet.
Her stomach dropped.
"Why not?"
Because you must first learn to survive the weight of seeing the worlds without acting on them.
Her heart twisted.
"You want me to watch them suffer again?"
Yes.
Her voice cracked. "Why?"
Because power without restraint becomes corruption.
The Veil's presence tightened around her like a cold embrace.
And I will not let you become what you hunt.
Leira's gaze dropped to the shimmering floor. Her fists curled slowly at her sides.
"I don't want to become that."
Then you will learn control. You will watch. You will endure. You will obey the boundaries of fate.
She swallowed hard.
"And after that?"
The Veil's voice lowered, resonant and final.
After that… you will cleanse them.
A pulse of light shuddered through the space. The realms flickered. The ground beneath Leira dissolved.
And she fell…
…straight down into a vortex of blinding white.
She didn't scream this time, she wasn't panicking, there was no need to. She only breathed once, steady, calm, as the Veil wrapped around her like a cocoon of light.
The last thing she heard before the world shattered around her was the Veil's whisper:
"This is the beginning, Keeper."
And then…
nothing but white.