Chapter 31

  The Shattered Veil

  The chamber moans—a deep, resonant sound that

  shudders through Selene’s bones. Obsidian walls rupture, veins of raw magic

  glowing molten-white as cracks spider outward. Then—collapse. Entire sections

  disintegrate into the abyss, swallowed by a starless void that churns and

  writhes. The earth trembles beneath her boots before fracturing, stone

  platforms ripping free like shards of shattered glass, frozen midair.

  Selene staggers, heart hammering. The air

  pulses—alive, watching—as tendrils of darkness slither through widening gaps,

  coiling, stretching, tasting the sudden chaos. Across the broken chasm, Elara

  clings to a jagged ledge of floating debris, her crimson cloak snapping in the

  unnatural wind.

  “Elara!” Selene’s voice barely cuts through the

  groaning stone and the Automaton Royal Knights’ metallic shrieks. Elara’s

  platform tilts dangerously, breaking from the main structure like an ice floe

  adrift at sea. The distance yawns, impossible.

  Elara’s sharp green eyes lock onto Selene’s. A

  silent understanding sparks—years of shared streets, whispered promises beneath

  smog-choked skies, stolen bread, bruised knuckles.

  She was their anchor once. Elder sister, not by

  blood, but by survival. Selene and Lyra had clung to her in those early

  orphanage years, shadows tucked beneath her outstretched wings. But that bond

  had cracked the day Magister Merlin marked Elara as gifted.

  Selene remembers it too well—standing outside the

  grand hall, fists clenched tight, while inside, Elara was offered a life beyond

  the slums. Adoption. Legacy. Power.

  Elara had refused.

  “Not without them,” she’d told Lady Merlin, voice

  steady, unyielding. “I’ll go where you take me, but Lyra and Selene come too.”

  It was the first time Selene had seen magic as

  more than a distant dream. The first time she knew Elara would break the world

  for them—if she had to.

  Now, the world was breaking around them.

  “Elara, jump!” Selene’s fingers twitch with

  unformed spellwork, but the distance is too wide, the magic too volatile.

  Elara flashes a reckless grin, eyes burning with

  that same defiant fire. “I’ll find my way back, little star,” she calls. Then,

  the stone beneath her gives way.

  She vanishes into the abyss.

  Selene screams. A void tendril lashes out—slick,

  pulsing—but Lyra yanks her back, grip bruising. The chamber groans again,

  floating platforms lurching.

  “Elara’s gone,” Lyra breathes, voice cracking.

  No.

  The ground lurches again, trembling beneath

  Selene’s boots. Stone slabs shear away, torn free as if gravity itself has

  given up. The shattered fragments hover, weightless for a breath—then the void

  swallows them whole, devouring them like an unchained beast.

  “It’s expanding!” Lyra’s voice rips through the

  chaos, sharp with panic.

  Selene’s breath catches. The void isn’t just

  consuming—it’s spreading, bleeding across the chamber like ink spilled on

  parchment. Obsidian walls groan under the strain, webbed with fractures. Molten

  veins of raw energy pulse through the cracks, bright against the dark stone.

  Then—

  A fissure splits open to her left, jagged and

  violent. Then another. Three in total, each one blooming like fresh wounds in

  the world’s fabric. A foul wind howls from them, thick with rot and arcane

  decay.

  And from within, come.

  Figures in tattered robes drift forward, their

  skeletal frames half-hidden beneath shifting layers of ethereal cloth. Hollow

  eye sockets burn with cold blue fire. They don’t look at Selene or the

  mercenaries trapped on floating wreckage. Their attention is fixed on the void.

  They raise their bony hands, tracing sigils

  through the air. Arcane symbols spark and linger, glowing against the dark—each

  one precise, deliberate. The air thickens, heavy with old magic.

  Selene it—pressure, like the void is

  pushing against an invisible wall. The Riftbound’s magic holds it back. For

  now.

  “Undead,” Lyra whispers, jaw tight.

  Selene doesn’t flinch. She knows what they are.

  Not mindless revenants. Not echoes. These are —keepers of

  fractured spaces, guardians of broken worlds. Bound by duty, by ancient oaths.

  “They’re containing it,” Selene murmurs, watching

  the elegant precision of their spellwork. No chaos. No waste. Just cold,

  perfect control.

  But the void writhes harder now, testing its

  cage.

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  Selene swallows. The ground keeps crumbling

  beneath them. If the Riftbound fail—

  “We need to move,” Lyra urges, grabbing Selene’s

  wrist.

  She’s right. If the void breaks free, it won’t

  stop at this chamber. It will spread. Consume. Erase.

  But Selene yanks her hand free.

  “What are you doing?” Lyra snaps.

  “We have to help them!” Selene’s voice shakes

  with urgency.

  “Are you mad?” Lyra’s eyes go wide.

  “Lyra...” Selene grabs her sister by the

  shoulders, forcing her to meet her gaze. “The Magister sent us here. This is

  what she trained us for.”

  “But... Elara—” Lyra’s voice falters, grief raw

  at the edges.

  Selene’s chest tightens, but she draws in a deep

  breath. That makes Selene the eldest—by five

  years. The weight of it settles heavy on her shoulders. She cups Lyra’s face,

  thumbs brushing away the grime.

  “Elara will be back,” Selene says softly. “She

  comes back.”

  Lyra’s two fell hounds whimper at her sides,

  pushing against her legs, as if urging her forward.

  Lyra exhales, shaky but resolute. “Okay.”

  Selene presses two mana stones into Lyra’s palm.

  They hum with latent energy, their warmth seeping into Lyra’s skin. Without

  missing a beat, Lyra threads her magic through the crystals, bending their

  lattice with practiced ease. Violet light spills from her fingertips as the

  stones crack, then reform, charged with raw enchantment.

  She tosses one to each of her Fell Hounds. The

  beasts lunge midair, jaws snapping around the stones. Instantly, their bodies

  ripple—muscles thicken, limbs stretch, and the faint embers in their eyes flare

  into blazing violet infernos. Dark fur bristles as they grow, the

  transformation smooth, primal—like something ancient stirred awake.

  By the time Lyra vaults onto the back of her

  now-massive hound, a wicked grin tugs at her lips. “Selene?” she calls,

  steadying herself as the beast shifts beneath her. “Where exactly are we going?

  The void’s that way.”

  Selene is already astride her own crimson-coated

  mount, its deep growl vibrating through her legs, eager to run. “I know,” she

  yells back, her voice cutting through the chaos. “We need to find Garik and the

  rest of the AAC.”

  Lyra frowns. “Why?”

  “Because, dear sister…” Selene smirks, nudging

  her mount forward, “what’s the point of having a bunch of problem-solving

  scholars if they don’t, you know, problem-solve?”

  “Ohhh,” Lyra muses, her grin returning as her

  Fell-Mount leaps onto a floating slab of stone. “So, big problem?”

  “Enormous,” Selene confirms. “And the AAC sent

  some big brains.”

  The Fell-Mounts spring from one drifting platform

  to another, their massive paws gripping fractured stone with frightening grace.

  Shattered chunks of the chamber float like islands in a storm, weightless and

  unpredictable. The beasts navigate them with predator’s ease—one misstep, and

  they’d plummet into the gnashing void below—but Selene barely spares a thought

  for the risk. Her focus is razor-sharp, locked onto the thinning platforms

  ahead.

  “Garik!” Lyra shouts.

  The grizzled scholar spins, disbelief flashing

  across his weathered face. His battle-hammer, nearly as tall as he is, rests

  against his shoulder.

  “They’re closing the rifts!” Selene calls out,

  her fox ears twitching as she watches skeletal mages strain to maintain their

  fragile containment. “We have to help them—”

  Garik’s jaw drops. “Stones in my beard. Help

  them? Are you mad, lass?”

  “If the rift isn’t sealed completely, we lose

  everything inside!” Lyra chimes, eyes wide with urgency.

  Garik exhales hard through his nose, gripping his

  hammer tighter. His gaze sweeps over the battlefield—floating debris, the

  pulsing void, the undead mages locked in their arcane struggle.

  “And how, exactly,” he grunts, “do we help a

  bunch of dead men cast spells?”

  Selene’s amber eyes gleam. “We feed them aether.”

  She digs her heels into her mount’s sides. “Hard and fast.”

  Selene urges her Fell-Mount forward, its powerful

  limbs propelling them across the fractured landscape. The rifts aren’t just

  ruptures—they are wounds, raw gashes torn through existence itself. And

  something, unseen yet insistent, is trying to stitch them shut.

  Which means whatever lies beyond matters.

  A gnawing unease coils in her chest. Some things

  are sealed away for a reason. Ancient things. Forgotten things.

  The void churns beneath her, an abyss of ink and

  nothingness. She tamps down the cold shudder creeping up her spine. Hesitation

  is a luxury she can’t afford.

  The Fell-Mount lands hard atop a cracked

  platform, claws skidding against weathered stone. Before it fully stops, Selene

  vaults from its back, her boots kicking up dust as she rushes toward the

  figures crouched over a wounded scholar.

  Emeritus Pocket and Emerita Enoux—the

  Consortium’s eldest, sharpest minds.

  Enoux flinches as Selene lands beside her, her

  fox-ears twitching at the sudden motion. Her eyes flick to the towering

  Fell-Mount, and a sharp breath escapes her lips.

  “Oh… Lady Wynn.” A hand presses to her chest.

  “You startled me.”

  Selene exhales through her nose. “Sorry.”

  Pocket doesn’t even glance up, his gnarled

  fingers deft as he ties off a bandage. Enoux, though, keeps her gaze locked on

  Selene, surprise shifting into something unreadable.

  “Madam Emerita—”

  “Please,” Enoux cuts in, her voice gentle. “Just

  Enoux.”

  Selene nods, squaring her shoulders. “Then… tell

  me everything you know about the Riftbound.”

  Silence.

  Enoux’s hands tremble. The bolt of bandages slips

  from her grasp, unspooling onto the stone like a severed thread. Her wide eyes

  dart between Selene and the pulsing black dome beyond, its surface webbed with

  jagged violet fractures.

  “What…?” The word is barely a breath.

  Selene clenches her jaw. “A tear in reality has

  been forced open.” She gestures toward the undulating void, its edges quivering

  as if recoiling against unseen hands. As if something is struggling to hold it

  open. “I believe three Riftbound have emerged to seal it.”

  A shadow flickers through Enoux’s

  expression—horror laced with understanding.

  Pocket finally lifts his head, his milky eyes

  narrowing. “Then we’re already too late.”