Leira stepped through the rift…
and the world on the other side hit her like a furnace.
Heat slammed into her face in a scorching wave, so sudden and violent it forced a breath from her lungs. The air was blisteringly dry, sharp enough to sting the inside of her nose like sandpaper. Her throat tightened instantly, as if she'd inhaled dust, but even harsher. Sweat didn't even have a chance to form; the heat devoured it the moment it touched her skin.
The land stretched before her in cracked, colorless desolation. The sky was a dying thing, it was a bruised gray land streaked with veins of burnt red, pulsing faintly as if the horizon itself struggled to live, struggled to exist. It hung low, far too low, heavy with an exhaustion that felt ancient. Everything here looked moments away from collapse.
Leira took a careful step forward. The ground fractured beneath her boots with a brittle snap, splitting like bones that had dried in sun for centuries. This realm's earth was a pale, ashy color, layered with jagged fissures that spiderwebbed outward endlessly. Nothing moved with natural rhythm here, no breeze, no birds, not even the hum of distant life.
Only the soft, sick rustle of things trying to imitate it.
Shadows shifted along the horizon, broken silhouettes dragging themselves through the dead land. Some slithered flat against the ground, some perched on tilted stone pillars, bodies jerking in glitching motions, limbs twisted into shapes a body should not survive. Their eyes, if they could be called that, glowed faintly with muted, hungry light. Not alive, not dead, and also not meant to be.
It was as if the realm had tried to sculpt life from scraps and failed, leaving the rejects wandering endlessly.
A cold pressure squeezed her lungs.
Something is wrong…deeply, terribly wrong. Her hand rose automatically to her chest, as if she was trying to feel for the Veil inside her, to check if it was still there because something felt different.
Its usual pulse, steady, warm, threaded through her bones, was gone.
In its place came a faint stutter, a flicker, a failing fire.
"What's going on… why can't I feel you?" she whispered.
No answer. It wasn't silence though, but it was much worse…hesitation, as if it feared something.
"What's happening?" And again, no response.
She centered herself, inhaled and exhaled, and shifted her panic into focus. She then took another step forward, and then another.
On the third, something hit her, it was like her mind was being attacked.
Agony ripped through her ribs, a violent, scorching pain that felt like claws digging between her bones. Her breath was stolen, snatched from her throat so sharply she choked on the empty air. Her legs gave way, and she fell to one knee, one hand braced against the fissured earth as her scream tore out of her involuntarily.
Light flashed behind her eyes, not the usual light from the Veil…but something darker, more invasive.
She saw Kael.
He was not standing, barely breathing, surviving on only his will.
She saw him convulsing, bound by shackles of shadow that dug into his skin like jagged teeth. She saw him arching back in agony, throat straining with a scream she didn't want to hear but couldn't escape. She saw a clawed hand tear down his spine, ripping light from his body like threads being yanked free.
Then his voice was raw raw, it was breaking, and echoing inside her skull:
"Leira!"
"No…no…" She clutched her head, nails digging into her scalp, as if she was trying to rip the visions out of her mind…but she just couldn't reach them. "STOP!"
But the flashes grew more violent.
Kael collapsing, gasping for breath that wouldn't come, his life flickering like a candle drowning in its own melted wax.
The chain around his neck was tugged violently, pressing against his throat by a hand she couldn't see.
"PLEASE—!" Her scream cracked as tears blurred her vision. "LET HIM GO!"
Then…it was gone. The visions ended so abruptly she nearly fell forward.
Leira panted hard, her breath was scraping her throat raw, her chest trembling with the aftershock of pain that didn't belong to her, but she felt it as if it did.
"They're killing him," she whispered, voice ragged. "Kael… he's dying…"
The words fell uselessly into the dead air, absorbed instantly by the barren land as if it fed on fear.
Her legs wobbled as she pushed herself upright. Every part of her felt shaky, unsteady , as if the vision had drained the strength from her muscles. But she refused to falter. She forced herself to breathe slowly, her palms were shaking as she wiped sweat and dust from her face. Tears filled her eyes, not just from the sight of Kael from her visions, but from frustration…anger…maybe even heartbreak. She tried to calm down but the panic had taken the place of the pain she was feeling and now, what was left was the unwavering determination to find him.
"I need your help…" she rasped, talking to the Veil "tell me where to go. Show me anything. Give me a direction…"
And then finally, the Veil answered.
Its voice crackled through her bones like a broken signal.
"Leira…"
She stiffened.
The voice wasn't right. It sounded stretched, thinned, warped by the air around them.
"I cannot guide you here."
Her stomach dropped. "What? What are you saying…Why? What do you mean?"
The Veil inside her convulsed, a violent flicker thrashing through her veins. Pain spiked along her spine, sharp enough to make her wince.
"This realm rejects me," it whispered, its tone splintering. "My power fractures here. Light becomes unstable. Commands distort."
Leira shook her head, panic rising. "Distort how?! I need you…I can't…"
"If I try to call light to guide you," the Veil hissed, "it may emerge as shadow. If I try to shield you, I might rip this realm apart. Every spark, every flicker, is unpredictable. Dangerous."
Her heartbeat stuttered.
"You're saying if you help me… we could end up destroying this place?"
"Destroying it," the Veil murmured, "or destroying yourself alongside it."
Heat drained from her face despite the furnace around her. She swallowed hard, her hands curling into fists.
"Then just… help me sense Kael," she tried, voice trembling. "You don't have to cast anything. Just give me some kind of hint. Anything at all, whatever you can do…please…"
But the Veil crackled again, a harsh, fractured sound.
"I cannot see him. My sight is blind in this land. My reach is too strong for this land. I cannot touch Kael. I cannot touch anything without risking your life and his."
Leira's chest constricted painfully. She felt this daunting weight of helplessness.
She looked across the wasteland, at the crawling shadows, the deformed creatures jerking under the dying sky, the horizon was cracked open like a wounded mouth.
Then she placed her hand back on her sternum, not searching for the Veil, but for the raw, violent ache pulsing beneath it…their bond...she felt him, she just had to focus on that feeling.
"Then I'll follow this," she said softly.
The Veil went silent.
"…you feel him?" it finally breathed.
"Yes," she whispered. "Whatever connects us, whatever tether ties me to him, I'll follow it. It's the only thing that hasn't broken here."
The air quivered faintly. Even the land seemed to pause, as if it was listening.
For the first time since arriving, she felt the Veil tremble not with instability but with fear. It was incredibly cautious, it could sense things that Leira couldn't even begin to understand, and it knew the level of danger Leira could be in.
"…Leira," it murmured, "you must be careful. This land is alive. And it knows where you are… and worst of all, it feels who you are."
She lifted her chin, jaw tightening.
"Good," she said. "Then it should know that I am coming."
The heat pressed against her, relentless. The cracked earth groaned beneath her steps. And with Kael's pain still echoing in her ribs like a compass of agony, she stepped deeper into the dead land. Toward the place where the realm itself seemed to hold its breath.
Toward the shadows that recoiled as if recognizing her.
Toward the danger waiting to break her next…or the hope of reaching him before he broke completely.u
Leira was completely blinded by her relentless will to find Kael, she was not able to fully see where they were and what these creatures could do to her, she just wanted him back. They had been through so much together, and now she had become the Veil Keeper again, Kael was the only person she wanted to see, to show him that she did it, and all their struggles, pain and loss, over so many lifetimes, were not in vain. And she wasn't going to stop until she did just that.
Every step hurt, but every step mattered. And she did not stop.