Wind brushed through the half-shattered sparring arena like a whisper carrying the breath of ghosts. Evening settled heavy over the training grounds, and though the others had long since dispersed, Kael remained, shirt clinging to him with sweat, shadow still licking at the edges of his boots.
His blade was planted in the ground beside him. He didn't need it anymore. Not for this.
He'd held back today—truly held back.
It should have been a victory.
The younger recruit, Daren, had come at him wild-eyed and reckless, pressing for dominance, perhaps even trying to provoke another slip like Kael had made weeks prior. But Kael had disarmed him. Cleanly. Efficiently. No damage done.
Yet when Ser Whitmer had called an end to the bout, Kael saw the look in Daren's eyes: not relief or respect. Fear. As if Kael was something uncontained, balanced on a blade edge of choice.
The same look had passed through Bran's face days ago, before he was sent on a mission to the southern glades. Bran hadn't said goodbye—only nodded. That silence echoed louder than most words.
Kael sat now in that silence, listening.
The Whisperer compound was never truly quiet. There were the murmurs in the stone walls, the occasional crackling of Veil seals embedded deep beneath the floor. But tonight, something else stirred—low, like a breath against his thoughts.
A whisper without a voice.
"You're unraveling," it seemed to say, though no lips moved.
Kael didn't flinch. He was growing used to the unseen, the press of shadow that curled just outside his periphery. But it was the absence that unsettled him now—the absence of Bran, the silence from Eline.
She'd watched his match today from the archway. Hadn't spoken. Hadn't looked away either.
Even now, he could see the faint silhouette she'd made against the torchlight—arms crossed, expression unreadable. Like she was waiting for him to do something. Or for something to happen to him.
He remembered the time she'd stood outside his quarters during his early days at the compound. A memory now so faint he wondered if it had really happened. But it had. She had lingered, uncertain, as if words had risen to her lips and died before they could form. They hadn't spoken about it since.
He exhaled sharply and retrieved his blade, sheathing it with more care than necessary. The whispering faded. Or perhaps it merely receded. It always came back.
Inside the hallways of the dormitory, candlelight flickered against the walls—long and wavering. Shadows danced in unnatural cadence. Kael passed three more recruits who kept their heads down, as if even eye contact with him might be risky now.
He couldn't decide which he hated more: the hostility or the fear.
At his door, he paused.
A folded parchment lay beneath it.
He picked it up cautiously and unfolded it. Only one line was written in a narrow, slanted hand.
"You're not the only one hearing it."
There was no name. No seal.
Kael stood there for a long time, heart beating with quiet, precise dread. The ink smudged slightly in the torchlight, as if the words were still sinking into the parchment. Or bleeding out.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
The night passed slowly.
By the time morning arrived, Kael was already seated at the Whisperers' small archive chamber, pretending to study rune alignments from an ancient veil-scroll. In truth, his thoughts were tangled in the note—its implications, its risk. It meant he wasn't mad. Or not alone in his madness.
He wasn't sure which was worse.
A few more pages in, he felt it again.
That feeling.
Not a presence—but the tension of one. Like something in the room was just out of phase. He looked over his shoulder instinctively.
Eline stood across the chamber, eyes scanning a ledger, unmoving except for the slow turning of a page.
Kael opened his mouth, then closed it again.
No words formed. There was nothing to say that wouldn't sound accusing or confused. And she didn't glance at him. She turned another page, her eyes flicking to the margin annotations as if he weren't even in the room.
She was colder now than she had been before their first mission. Not cruel, not dismissive—just remote, unreachable. As if something between them had closed. Or never opened in the first place.
Kael stood, tucked the scroll under his arm, and left before he could embarrass himself by trying to speak.
Later that afternoon, his private training session began with a sparring match orchestrated by Ser Whitmer—three on one.
A lesson in pressure.
Kael had expected it. What he hadn't expected was that one of the recruits—Lysa, a level-eyed Whisperer apprentice from the Eastern clans—spent more time circling him than striking.
Her words were low, muttered between blade feints and lunges.
"You hear them, don't you?" she said as her blade clashed against his. "You've seen the Veil move."
Kael's guard faltered. A blade grazed his ribs from another attacker. Pain bloomed.
He forced himself back into form.
Lysa pressed again. "Do they speak to you like they did the Old Veilborn? Do you dream of them?"
Kael's strike knocked her weapon wide. She grinned, blood on her lip. "Careful. If you don't answer, they might think you're hiding something."
He didn't answer. He couldn't.
He finished the match by knocking the last of them down with a shadow spike that barely skirted regulation. Ser Whitmer said nothing—only narrowed his eyes. Then nodded, almost grimly.
Kael left the ring breathless, heart thudding not from effort—but from fear.
Not of Lysa. Not of the others.
Of himself.
That night, sleep did not come. Dreams came instead.
He wandered through corridors made of ink and fog, where each footstep echoed like a scream underwater. The walls bled Veillight. Whispers slithered beneath the floorboards.
And at the end of a corridor stood Eline.
She didn't speak.
But behind her, shadows peeled away from the walls like wings.
He reached for her. The dream shifted.
Suddenly, she was gone.
And in her place: a mirror.
It showed him not as he was—but as he might become.
Eyes black with Veil-fire.
Hands outstretched in command.
Beneath his feet, the world cracked like glass.
He awoke with a gasp, drenched in sweat.
Outside his window, the Veil shimmered faintly in the far hills. Not shifting. Not waiting.
Watching.