### Chapter 9: Veil Theory 201 – The Lecture He Never Wanted to Give
Tuesday, 9:00 a.m.
Main Lecture Theatre, Arcane University
The theatre held three hundred and forty-two seats.
Every single one was taken.
Word had spread like wildfire through the university's crystal network: Kael Voss, the otherworlder who died on camera (literally), was presenting his own death for his Veil Theory make-up assignment. Tickets weren't required, but someone had still started selling glow-sticks in house colours outside the doors.
Kael stood backstage behind the heavy velvet curtain, palms sweating so badly the cue cards Lira had forced on him were starting to disintegrate.
His presentation title glowed on the massive floating screen behind the lectern:
**"Case Study of an Unscheduled Veil Transmigration: Personal Account"**
**Presenter: Kael Voss**
**Supervising Professor: Nyx of the Void**
Riven stood beside him, arms folded, looking like carved midnight. The bond thrummed with a low, constant reassurance (steady, steady, steady), but even that couldn't stop Kael's knees from shaking.
"You don't have to do this," Riven said quietly. It was the fourth time he'd said it since breakfast.
"I do," Kael answered, same as the previous three times. "Nyx gave me no choice. And… people deserve to know what actually happened. Not the memes."
Riven's jaw flexed. He reached out, thumb brushing the fresh scar on Kael's wrist—the one shaped like an eclipsed moon that still ached when the bond flared. "I'll be in the front row. If anyone makes this harder than it already is, I will end them."
Kael managed a shaky laugh. "Romantic."
"Practical," Riven corrected, but his eyes softened.
Professor Nyx's voice floated in from the stage, smooth and depthless. "Please welcome our guest lecturer, Mr. Kael Voss."
The curtain swept aside.
The theatre lights dimmed to starlight. Three hundred and forty-two faces turned toward him at once.
Kael walked to the lectern on legs that didn't feel like his.
He set the ruined cue cards down—he didn't need them anymore—and gripped the edges of the podium until his knuckles went white.
Then he began.
"My name is Kael Voss. Twenty-three days ago, I was human. I lived in Seattle, Earth. I was crossing an intersection at 10:17 p.m. on November third when I was murdered."
A ripple went through the audience. Someone in the back dropped a glow-stick; it rolled under seats with a clatter.
Kael didn't flinch. He clicked the remote. The first slide appeared: grainy security-cam footage from a traffic light. Rain. A lone figure in a black hoodie. An SUV with no plates.
He narrated it like a crime-scene report—detached, clinical—because if he let himself *feel* it yet, he would break.
He described the alley.
The way the shadows had blocked his retreat.
The exact moment the headlights pinned him.
The first impact—how it felt when his ribs exploded inward.
The second impact—how his pelvis turned to gravel and his spine severed with a soft, wet pop.
He did not cry. He couldn't. Not here.
But his voice cracked on the part where the shadows tried to shield him and failed.
The theatre was dead silent now. No phones. No whispers. Just the low hum of the projection and the sound of three hundred and forty-two people breathing in unison.
Slide twenty-three: a close-up of the eclipse tattoo burning itself into his wrist in the moment of death.
"That was the exact second the veil chose me," Kael said. "Not when I died. When I *refused* to stay dead."
He clicked again. A new image: the void. No photo existed, of course, but he had asked Jude to illustrate it from his description. A endless black laced with crimson hooks. A single figure falling, memories peeling off him like burning paper.
"I lost pieces of myself in there," he continued, softer. "My mother's laugh. My father's voice. The way my old apartment smelled on Sunday mornings. I still don't have them all back."
A tear slipped down his cheek. He didn't wipe it away.
Then the final slide: the moment he landed in Elyria. Moss. Two moons. And in the foreground, blurred but unmistakable—Riven Thorne stepping out of the shadows, crimson eyes wide with shock.
"I didn't cross alone," Kael said. "Something—someone—was waiting on the other side. The bond snapped into place before I even took my first breath here. I didn't choose it. I didn't choose any of this."
He looked straight at Riven in the front row.
"But I'm not sorry."
The silence held for one heartbeat. Two.
Then the theatre *exploded*.
Students surged to their feet—applause, cheers, some openly crying. A group of fourth-years in the balcony unfurled a hand-painted banner: **WE LOVE YOU KAEL** in glowing eclipse-purple.
Professor Nyx allowed it for ten full seconds before raising one star-speckled hand. Silence fell instantly.
"Questions?" she asked mildly.
Hands shot up like arrows.
Kael pointed to a trembling first-year in the third row.
"Did it… hurt?" the girl whispered.
"More than anything I can describe," Kael answered honestly. "But living without answers would have hurt worse."
Another hand—Soren, grinning like a wolf. "On a scale of one to ten, how much did Thorne freak out when you landed on his lawn covered in your own blood?"
Riven's voice cut through before Kael could answer, low and lethal. "Eleven."
Laughter rippled, tension breaking like a wave.
The questions kept coming.
- "Do you still have the hoodie?"
(It was in his dorm drawer, blood-stained and irreparable. He wore it when nightmares came.)
- "Did the cult target you specifically?"
(He didn't know. Not yet.)
- "When you crossed, did you feel the exact moment the bond locked?"
Kael glanced at Riven. "Like someone poured molten metal into my soul and called it love."
Riven's eyes flared crimson. The bond sang so loudly Kael was sure the entire theatre heard it.
Finally Nyx stepped forward. "That will be all. Mr. Voss, full marks. You are dismissed."
Kael stepped away from the lectern on legs that barely held him.
He didn't make it two steps before Riven was there—crossing the stage in a blur, wrapping arms around him so tightly the world narrowed to just the two of them.
"You did it," Riven whispered against his hair. "I'm so proud I could burst."
Kael buried his face in Riven's shoulder and let the tears come—silent, shaking, but no longer alone.
Behind them, the screen faded to black, the final slide lingering for one extra second:
**Thank you for listening.
I'm still here.
And I'm not going anywhere.**
The applause started again, softer this time. Respectful.
Kael clung to Riven and, for the first time since dying, believed the words he'd just spoken.
**End of Chapter 9**