They descended.
The air grew heavier, damper, thick with rot and something colder—older. The trees leaned in close, like they'd been waiting for someone to choose this way. Roots tangled around stone like knotted fingers. The mist turned silvery and thin, slinking low like it didn't want to be seen.
And then they saw her.
The woman stood between two trees like a statue half-swallowed by time. A night elf, pale and unmoving, veined with violet and crowned by a bloom that pulsed like a wounded heart. Her stillness wasn't peace. It was tension wound to the edge of breaking.
The bloom pulsed one last time—then fell still.
For a heartbeat, the marsh held its breath.
And then, with a wet, choking gasp, the night elf moved.
Her head jerked forward as if surfacing from drowning, limbs trembling like they hadn't felt the pull of gravity in years. Her eyes, glassy and vacant moments ago, snapped wide with a kaleidoscope of emotion—confusion, fear, grief… and something older than all of it. Recognition.
She stared at Nyxia like someone waking from a half-remembered nightmare.
"I…" Her voice cracked, barely a whisper. Her hand moved to the bloom in her chest but didn't touch it. "It stopped. The loop stopped."
Boo raised her pistol instinctively. "I swear to every loa and light-worshipping spirit, if she screams again I'm shooting it."
"No," Nyxia said, stepping forward. Her voice was firm, steady. "Wait."
The elf's eyes welled, but no tears fell. "I remember now," she whispered. "We were five. I was the last."
Zhurong moved to Nyxia's side, murmuring a ward under his breath. "She's lucid now. For how long, I don't know."
The elf turned to him. "Long enough."
Loque stood tense, but did not growl. The Veil-bloom nestled in the elf's chest had dulled, its once-luminous petals now a faint ivory. Still breathing, but dimmed.
"My name was Aelora," she said. "Priestess of Elune. Veil-marked. We were chosen—or cursed, depending on the year."
Nyxia nodded slowly. "What happened to your party?"
Aelora's breath caught. Her eyes lost focus for a moment, before she forced herself back to the present.
"We saw visions. Each of us," she said. "Of a war unlike any before. Of cities crumbling. Of titanic forces breaking free. But in every vision, there was a figure. A woman. Standing at the edge of it all with a silver beast at her side. She never fell. Not once."
Her gaze locked with Nyxia's.
"It was always you."
Silence took the grove. Boo let her pistol lower a fraction.
"I don't understand," Nyxia said. "Why me?"
Aelora shook her head. "The Veil doesn't explain. It shows. It calls. Sometimes it answers, but more often it just… pulls."
Zhurong stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "You said you were the last. What happened to the others?"
"They were strong. Braver than me," Aelora said, her voice cracking. "But we failed. One by one. Cut down, twisted, or simply… disappeared into the fold. The Veil gave us the path. But we weren't enough to walk it."
"And you?" Boo asked.
"I was left behind. Anchored to this bloom. It made me remember everything, again and again. Every failure. Every scream. Until she came." Aelora gestured at Nyxia, her expression softer now. "I think the bloom held on just long enough to pass the torch."
Nyxia stepped closer, slowly, carefully. "Then what is our next step?"
Aelora turned her eyes eastward.
"Stormwind."
Zhurong blinked. "The capital?"
Aelora nodded. "The dreams change when the Veil moves. But the threads always converge there. Something festers beneath its stones. The blooms are growing closer to its heart."
Nyxia exchanged a glance with Boo and Zhurong. "Stormwind's a long way from here. And not exactly a marsh."
"It wasn't always about the swamp," Aelora replied. "The Veil doesn't obey borders. It obeys consequence."
There was a pause, weighty and cold.
Nyxia's voice softened. "Did you… ever come across another Veil-marked? A man. Older. Wore a broken ring."
Aelora's expression shifted, an ache behind her eyes.
"I can't say," she said. "I don't remember names anymore. Not all of them. But…" Her brow furrowed. "The more the Veil touches someone, the further they're pulled in. You may not find answers on the surface."
Nyxia absorbed the words. "Pulled in?"
"To places others can't reach. Or shouldn't," Aelora said. "Sometimes in body. Sometimes… only in spirit."
A silence settled again. Not uneasy, but final.
Aelora looked down at the Veil-bloom in her chest, then to Nyxia.
"I am an echo now. A shadow stretched too far. My time is done."
Boo grimaced. "That doesn't sound like a peaceful retirement."
Aelora smiled faintly. "Peace isn't for us. But you—" she looked again to Nyxia, "—you may yet finish what we began. And if not you, someone beside you."
The bloom in her chest fluttered once, and the colors bled into white.
Aelora closed her eyes.
And then, like ash in the wind, she crumbled.
No scream. No flash. Just stillness. As if she had always been part of the grove.
The bloom remained, rootless and quiet, like a marker stone.
Zhurong exhaled slowly. "That was… less horrifying than I expected."
"She was already gone," Nyxia said.
Boo stepped forward, looking at the bloom. "You want me to burn it?"
Nyxia hesitated.
Then nodded.
Boo drew a match from her belt, lit it against her saber's hilt, and dropped it into the petals.
The bloom hissed—briefly, like breath drawn in surprise—then went dark.
Loque turned away first. The others followed.
No one spoke again until the trees thinned, and the forest floor began to harden.
The path toward Stormwind loomed in the mist ahead.
And this time, the Veil was no longer a distant whisper.
It was walking beside them.