From stories older than this ancient turtle, children were taught that darkness is a place where things hide. We forgot to tell them that sometimes, darkness is not a shroud, but a lens.

  Mortals believe that to cast light is to conquer the dark. But they forget: the brighter the flame, the deeper the shadows it casts. True mastery is not in bringing the fire but in learning to read what the fire refuses to illuminate. Because once you have seen with the eye that hides, the light sometimes becomes the blindfold.

  Light, after all, only reveals what it chooses to touch.

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  The Veil broods — 11 months before The Convergence

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  "You felt it," Hortew said, his voice as hollow as the room.

  Grex didn't answer immediately. He just walked toward the Supreme Grand Meister.

  At Hortew's flanks waited two wolves, his constant, silent, and unnerving sentinels, more honest in their hunger than the castle guards outside his chamber.

  Snow, the white dire wolf creatively named by Hortew himself, lifted her head as Grex approached, her tail giving a single, subtle wag of recognition. Dielo, the smaller gray one, remained motionless, his yellow eyes tracking Grex with patience.

  "The whole forest did," Grex finally replied, stopping a few paces from the table. He looked at the scattered parchments, then at the man who seemed to be wilting under the weight of his own title. "What was it?"

  "It's the axe." Hortew exhaled, his hand rested on the table's edge. Parchments lay scattered across it. "It threw Iakob airborne and slammed him against the wall… Knocked him out cold."

  Grex went still.

  "He's—"

  "Fine." Hortew said quickly. "No need to worry, Loti's with him. Might still be dreaming by now. But the axe…" Hortew paused "It has never reacted like that. Not in twelve years."

  Grex moved closer. His boots crossed over symbols etched into the stone floor—circles within circles, lunar phases rendered in silver inlay. Oracle markings. "Something probably reached for it… or through it."

  "Or something woke it." Hortew picked up one of the parchments—scanning its ink absently. “The Convergence is still eleven months away. Nothing should be stirring yet.”

  "But something is."

  "Something is." Hortew’s tone matched the echo, quieter, grimmer. He set the parchment down. “And when it did… Headhunter answered.”

  Grex stared at the scattered documents, processing. "If there's a slight tear in the Veil, shouldn't it be visible?"

  "We'll have men look for even the slightest tear." Hortew answered.

  He turned toward the window. With a look of concern, he gazed at the sky outside.

  "The relic in the axe… Sometimes I wonder if we went too far. Tying it with the Moon Eater's scale himself… Binding that kind of hunger to a young innocent boy."

  There was something tender in Hortew's tone of regret. Even he fell to that ancient trick of disguising hubris to look like duty. The belief that if one names the storm, it will obey. Some, of course, do. His sister Mathilda could. But storms don’t forget their summoners. They only wait for the right wind to turn. And when it did, there would be Hortew—with the burden of both oracle and hindsight—one eye on what's coming and one on what can't be undone.

  Grex saw Hortew's fragile expression, something not seen in Council meetings. "It was a good idea then. And passing it to Iakob early—that was for protection... And obligation."

  Hortew let out a sigh, the kind that carried more memory than air.

  "We all carry different burdens. Some, the moment they're born. Whether it’s a name, a duty, or a weapon—how does anyone escape from that kind of inheritance?” Grex's voice was steady. "Iakob will endure. How much does he know?"

  Hortew’s silence lingered, heavy as the stone around them. “Enough to wield it,” he said at last. “But not enough to understand what it makes him, the power it holds, or the kind of danger lurking. Especially now”

  Grex's eyes darkened. "If the enemies force him to unbind Headhunter..."

  "Or worse…" Hortew murmured, still watching the golden light shift across the hills. “He should be able to protect himself. He’s been trained for that much, at least.”

  “I’ll watch over him,” Grex said. His voice softened, almost a promise. “Closer than before.”

  Hortew’s reflection in the window gave a faint nod. “That’s why I called you.” The tension in his shoulders easing just slightly—acknowledgment, perhaps gratitude, or maybe relief.

  A pause settled between them, weighted with what neither wanted to voice aloud. Hortew's gaze drifted from the window back to the table, where among the scattered reports lay. Two scrolls bore lunar sigils—Cedran's seal.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "The raven that we lent Cedran arrived before dawn," Hortew unrolled a scroll. "Carrying research… Delicate… Very delicate and deeply concerning."

  "Evelyn is already handling the matter," Hortew continued. "Quietly." His fingers traced the edge of one scroll.

  "The Voidcallers' network is wider than we thought. If they could reach someone like Cedran..." He didn't finish. The implication hung heavy in the air between them.

  Even in silence, the air changes when it carries the name of the dead. It travels faster than ravens. Grex understood. Some truths are wordless, but they sting just as much.

  "Who else knows?" Grex broke the silence.

  “Just you. Me. Evelyn. And his wife.” Hortew’s tone was low, slow and deliberate. “Even whispers can feed the Voids. Best we keep this one hungry a little longer.”

  He moved his hand flat against the table’s surface. “Later, at the Council meeting, it’ll be the usual theater. I’m hoping for a substantive update on the Convergence preparations, but this… this is a step back. They don’t know about Cedran yet.”

  “You’re not telling them.”

  “Not until I understand what we’re dealing with.” Hortew’s monocle caught the light as he turned his head. “Anyone could be compromised now, Grex. The network’s grown too deep, too quiet. We’re living on borrowed time—stretching it thin—before politics strangle what little truths we have left.”

  The candles that were lined in the walls flickered. Their flames cast shadows in corners and stretched across the vaulted ceiling.

  "There's something else," Hortew said.

  Hortew turned toward Dielo. The gray wolf rose smoothly, ears pricked forward. Hortew spoke. "Umbra Adverte"

  Dielo slowly stepped backward into shadow.

  And became it.

  The wolf dissolved slowly like smoke, his body unraveling into tendrils of darkness. Only his eyes remained—two points of gleaming yellow suspended in the air. Then he vanished without a trace, swallowed by the shadow.

  The chamber felt colder. The candleflames bent away from where Dielo had been.

  Seconds passed. The oracle symbols on the floor pulsed faintly. Then the darkness gathered again, coalescing near Hortew's feet. Dielo reformed in reverse—shadow solidifying into fur, into body, into the gray wolf who now sat with something clenched gently in his jaws.

  A booklet. Small, leather-bound, its cover marked with symbols that seemed to writhe in the candlelight.

  Dielo padded toward Grex and dropped it at his feet, then looked up expectantly—ears forward, tail giving the faintest wag. The wolf knew that his excellent service deserves recognition and a scratch behind ears.

  Grex crouched, caressed Dielo before the wolf move away and sit. Grex picked up the booklet carefully.

  The pages were worn, edges frayed and browned with age. Some sections had faded so badly the text was barely visible. Others showed damage and ghostly smears. Not the common script of conjurers, but something older—archaic symbols layered with meaning, each one dense and intricate.

  Along with the symbols is an image: a woman's face, her left eye rendered in white—pale, luminous, mysterious against the aged parchment.

  "Cedran found this," Hortew said quietly. "Or his assistant Vessa did. She's in hiding now—smart girl, Morvane blood. They were researching the Convergence, tracing the unusual cosmic pull when they found this."

  Grex's thumb traced the woman's face carefully, mindful of the fragile pages. "Her left eye," Grex said quietly, studying the pale ink. "It's white. Does it hold power, or the absence itself? A moon that sees, or one that's been taken? Like looking at a full moon and finding it hollow."

  "Who is she?" Grex asked, faced with the unknown.

  "We don't know. The text is in a script we cannot read." Hortew moved closer, studying the characters. "But whoever she is, she might be connected to something the Voidcallers are searching for."

  "The Voidcallers—do they know?"

  "Not yet. But they might be searching blindly for what we've just found." Hortew's gaze remained fixed on the woman's face. "Which makes us either very lucky, or very exposed."

  "Can you restore it, Grex? Enough to read what remains?"

  Grex examined the booklet more closely. Some pages were severely damaged, but others seemed deliberately resistant—as if the magic woven into them didn't want to be revealed. "Most of it, yes. Though some sections might fight back."

  Hortew raised his hand. With a subtle gesture, flames sparked life in the candles scattered throughout the chamber—some tall as a man's forearm, others barely stubs, in varying shades of white, cream, and deep amber. The chamber brightened, shadows retreating to the corners.

  But as the light strengthened, Grex noticed something odd. He tilted the booklet toward the nearest candle.

  The script began to fade.

  Not disappearing entirely, but shifting—becoming translucent, almost invisible in direct light. As if it was meant to be read only in shadow.

  "It vanishes in brightness," Grex said, angling the book away from the flame. The symbols regained their clarity. The woman's white eye seemed to glow faintly in the dimness.

  Hortew studied the fading script, adjusted his monocle. "Knowledge that refuses the light."

  Grex turned the page carefully. Below the book's ancient script, of characters flowing in careful, deliberate strokes, was a cramped handwriting:

  Let moonlight be your witness. Speak these words before you seek what darkness keeps.

  "Instructions," Hortew murmured, leaning closer. "Added later, by the look of it. Not in ancient script, not the same ink, not the same hand."

  "Someone figured out how to use it," Grex said.

  "Or what happens when you don't." Hortew's finger traced the edge of the notation.

  "But we can't read the original script." Grex said.

  "Yet." Hortew in a hopeful objection. "Whatever language this is..." He paused, studying the script more intently. "It's old. Very old. But not unfamiliar."

  Grex examined the text—the characters were unlike anything in the common conjurer's libraries. Flowing, circular, each symbol beautiful in its strangeness.

  Then something shifted within him: Syl's presence suddenly surged overwhelmingly—not words at first, just a rush of power and recognition. It was so immense, Grex struggled to catch his breath. His hand moved, palm pressing flat against the page.

  Grex. Syl's voice called his name. It trembled with something he'd never heard from her before. Not fear, but awe mixed with longing. I know these words. Speak them.

  He didn't understand the language, but Syl did—or some part of her recognized. Grex's lips moved, voice low, speaking what Syl gave him:

  "Mother of the Silver Veil,

  Keeper of the tranquil night,

  Hide us in your quiet tide,

  Where no sun may dare trespass.

  When the bright moon turns its face,

  Unseal the shadowed white eye

  And wake the sleepers with truth."

  The booklet warmed, gave a faint glow like a candlelight that flickered. It's not complete, Syl whispered. Without moonlight... it's like speaking only half the spell.

  Syl’s voice had grown faint again, but her words lingered. It wasn’t weakness he felt from her this time—far from it. Sorrow. The kind that ran a power vast and buried, the kind that remembered creation even if it could no longer name it. Whatever this prayer awakened, it reached into what Syl used to be—before the moons were eaten and before her kind bound to mortal will. Not broken. Just unfinished.

  And beneath the sorrow, there was something else.

  Longing. Fear. A quiet urgency that did not belong to her alone.

  It brushed past Grex and settled elsewhere.

  On Iakob.

  And Grex understood then—some weights were never meant to be carried alone, and some bonds were forged not by blood, but by the remnants of light that refused to die.

  If the tremor was a calling, it was his name the world was whispering.

  Iakob.

  If the tremor was a warning, it was meant for him—the boy he’d once sworn to protect now standing defenseless where storms gathered.

  And somewhere beyond Wolfpit’s walls, cloaks were already moving.