The iridescent mist of the Veil didn't just hang in the air; it breathed. To the people of Elysara, it was a mother's embrace, a divine shroud that kept the terrors of the Abyss at bay. But to Kael Voss, as he stood on the wind-swept observation crag of Sector 4, the mist felt like a gag wrapped tight around the world's throat.
Ten years, Kael thought, his hand tightening around the hilt of his standard-issue Veil-blade. Ten years since those shadows crawled out of the dark and tore my life to pieces. They tell us the Veil is our salvation, but every time I look at this fog, I just feel like a rat in a cage waiting for the cat to find a way in.
"Eyes up, Voss! If you spend any more time staring into space, the Abyss won't even need to kill you—boredom will do the job for it," a gravelly voice barked.
Kael snapped out of his monologue, looking toward Carson. His mentor was a man built like a siege wall, his face a map of scars earned from twenty years of holding the line.
Carson's Aether-lamp swung from his belt, casting a steady blue glow that pushed back the encroaching fog.
"I'm awake, Carson," Kael muttered, his blood beginning to simmer. "Just thinking about how quiet it is."
"Quiet is a gift, kid. In this job, silence is the only mercy you get before—"
Carson never finished the sentence.
A sound like the world's spine snapping echoed through the valley. The sky above the Veil, usually a soft, shimmering violet, suddenly bruised into a sickly, necrotic black.
A jagged tear appeared—a rift that looked less like a hole and more like a weeping wound in reality.
No... not again. Not like this, Kael's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
From the black maw of the rift, they came. They weren't just animals; they were nightmares given form. Shadowy, tentacled horrors with too many joints and eyes that glowed with a hateful, pulsating crimson. They didn't fall; they poured, screaming a sound that bypassed the ears and grated directly on the soul.
"RIFT! WE HAVE A BREACH IN SECTOR 4!" Carson screamed into his communication crystal, drawing his heavy broadsword. "Voss! Draw steel! Form the line or die where you stand!"
Kael didn't need to be told twice. The sight of the creatures triggered a primal, white-hot heat in his chest. This was the face of the enemy that had turned his childhood into a graveyard.
"You bastards," Kael hissed, his vision tunneling. "Come and get it!"
He charged. The first beast, a spindly thing with scythe-like limbs, lunged at him with a hiss of acidic bile. Kael dived, the grass beneath him sizzling as the spit missed his shoulder by an inch. He rolled, came up, and swung. His blade, infused with a faint blue Aether glow, bit deep into the creature's flank. Instead of red blood, a thick, tar-like ichor sprayed across his visor.
"Die! Just die!" Kael roared, hacking at the limb until the creature collapsed into a heap of dissolving shadow.
Around him, the patrol was descending into a slaughterhouse. He heard the sickening crunch of bone as a beast's maw closed over a recruit's torso. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, burnt meat, and fear.
"Voss! To my back!" Carson shouted.
Kael scrambled toward his mentor. They stood in the center of a swirling vortex of teeth and claws. Kael tried to tap into his Aether training, reaching for the spark of power the Elders said lived in every citizen. He focused on his rage, trying to manifest a barrier.
"Aether Shield... manifest!" he gasped.
A flickering, translucent wall of blue light appeared for a fraction of a second. But as a hulking, multi-mouthed abomination slammed its fist into the ground, the shockwave shattered Kael's shield like cheap glass. The backlash sent him reeling, his lungs burning.
Useless! Kael cursed himself, his mind a whirlwind of self-loathing. All that training, all that hate, and I'm still just a pathetic child playing soldier while men are dying around me!
The massive abomination—a tower of muscle and shifting eyes—loomed over them. It swiped a massive claw, batting Carson aside like a ragdoll.
"Carson!" Kael screamed.
He lunged forward, but the beast was faster. It pinned Kael down with a heavy, crushing limb.
Kael struggled, his face pressed into the dirt, smelling the rot of the Abyss. As he looked up, he saw the beast's many mouths peel back in what looked like a grotesque grin.
But then, he felt it.
Deep in his chest, near the jagged scar he'd carried since the day his parents died, something pulsed. It wasn't the steady, calm blue of the Veil's Aether. It was dark. It was violent. It felt like a cold fire spreading through his veins.
Give it to me, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. Give me your rage.
"I'll... I'll kill you all!" Kael screamed, his voice breaking.
A shockwave of violet energy erupted from his body. The pressure was so intense the ground beneath him cracked. The beast pinning him was blown backward, its limbs disintegrating into ash as the Abyss Echo tore through its defenses.
Kael stood up, his eyes glowing with an unstable, flickering light. With a guttural cry, he thrust his hand forward, and a bolt of raw, dark energy pierced the abomination's central core, turning it into a fountain of black mist.
The power vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving Kael gasping, his vision blurring. He stumbled toward where Carson lay.
The big man was impaled on a shard of obsidian rock that had erupted from the rift. Blood—bright, terrifyingly red—stained his silver armor.
"Carson... hang on, I'll get the medics, I'll—"
Carson grabbed Kael's collar with a strength born of desperation. He pulled Kael close, his breath smelling of copper.
"Kael... listen to me," Carson wheezed, his eyes wide and unfocused. "The Elders... they lied. All of it... a lie."
"What are you talking about? Save your breath!" Kael cried, tears blurring his vision.
"The Abyss... it's not a wasteland," Carson coughed, blood bubbling at his lips. "It's... it's a prison. We aren't the survivors, Kael. We're the—"
His hand went limp. The light left his eyes, leaving Kael holding a cooling corpse in the middle of a battlefield.
A lie? Kael's mind reeled. What could be a lie?The monsters are real! The blood is real!
A piercing whistle drew his attention back to the rift. The few remaining beasts weren't killing the survivors anymore.
He watched, frozen in horror, as a winged creature snatched up a screaming girl from the logistics corp. It didn't tear her apart. It tucked her under a wing and flew straight toward the closing rift.
"No! Stop!"
Kael forced his trembling legs to move. He sprinted toward the rift, leaping over the bodies of his fallen squadmates. He reached the edge of the tear just as the last beast vanished inside. For a split second, the veil of black mist parted.
Kael stopped dead.
Beyond the rift, he didn't see a landscape of fire and ash. For a heartbeat, he saw a horizon. He saw the shimmering lights of a massive, metallic city reaching toward a sky that was clear and blue—a sky without the Veil. He saw structures that defied logic, glowing with a golden light that put the Elders' crystals to shame.
Then, the rift snapped shut.
The Veil mended itself with a hum of holy energy, leaving the meadow silent once more. The only sound was the crackle of burning grass and Kael's own ragged breathing.
He stood alone in the wreckage of his life, his hands stained with Carson's blood and the black ichor of the "monsters."
That city... that wasn't the Abyss, Kael thought, his heart turning into a cold stone in his chest. That girl wasn't being eaten. She was being taken. If the Abyss isn't a wasteland... then what have we been fighting for all these years?
He looked up at the iridescent mist of the Veil, the "last bastion of humanity." For the first time in his life, he didn't see a protector. He saw a wall.
"You lied," Kael whispered to the empty air, his voice trembling with a new, terrifying kind of rage. "Everything is a lie."