Chapter 5: The Cracks in the Veil
Morning came, but it brought no warmth.
The storm had passed sometime before dawn, its howling winds silenced, its thunderous rage spent. Yet the cottage remained cloaked in a heavy, suffocating stillness. The usual rhythm of life—the distant rustle of the forest, birds calling to one another in the trees, the gentle creak of branches swaying in the breeze—had been replaced by a silence so deep it seemed unnatural.
Dorian stood by the window, unmoving. The sky was pale, bruised with fading storm clouds, and the woods were blanketed in a gray mist that clung to the trees like ghostly breath. Even the leaves looked dulled, drained of color. Something was wrong.
He had felt it the moment he awoke. A dull ache behind his eyes, as if he'd been crying in a dream he couldn't remember.
But it wasn't just the silence or the pressure in his skull. It was Lyra.
She moved around the cottage like a shadow—quiet, guarded. There was a tremble in her hands as she prepared tea, a stiffness in her body that betrayed what she hadn't yet said aloud.
Dorian didn't ask. Not yet. He knew what it meant to be haunted by something you weren't ready to name.
He watched her from across the room as she gently rested her hands on her growing belly. She had been different since the nightmare. Her eyes flickered constantly toward corners, to dark spaces beneath furniture, to windows not yet drawn open. And she hadn't looked him in the eye since dawn.
That evening, as twilight bled across the horizon, painting the world in bruised purples and dying golds, Dorian stepped out onto the porch.
The wind was absent, but he felt its cold. Not on his skin—on something deeper. A chill wrapped itself around his spine, coiling with familiarity. The same dread that had once plagued him every night after Evelyn died. The kind that whispered without words: something is coming.
He turned to head back inside when Lyra called his name. Her voice cracked slightly at the end. He paused, heart skipping, and before he could respond—
The lights went out.
Not flickering. Not a dim fade. They simply died, like a breath sucked out of the room.
Lyra let out a sharp gasp. She was standing in the hallway, one hand around her belly, the other braced against the wall. "Dorian?" she called again, voice brittle.
A moment later, the temperature dropped. Not the kind of chill that came with a breeze—but a biting, unnatural cold. Frost began to form on the inside of the windows, webbing out in delicate, crystalline veins.
Then—
A voice.
"Dorian... help me... please."
Soft. Distant. Like a cry from underwater.
Lyra stiffened. It came not from outside, but from within the walls.
Dorian rushed in from the porch, his face pale and eyes wide. "Did you hear that?"
She nodded slowly. "It was her."
And then the house came alive.
The walls began to seep shadow—not just darkness, but movement. Something ancient and alive slithered beneath the surface of the timber, pressing outward like dozens of unseen bodies. The air thickened, the scent of old earth and rot rising. The candle on the table flickered violently before extinguishing entirely.
And then—she emerged.
Evelyn.
But not the Evelyn Dorian had once loved. Not even the sorrowful ghost he had glimpsed in dreams and memories.
She stepped from the wall like water breaking, her form rippling between human and something grotesquely divine. Her skin flickered—one moment alabaster and perfect, the next gray and sunken, with veins like cracks running across her cheeks. Her once-beautiful face was torn between life and ruin. Her eyes—oh, her eyes—burned with a crimson light that wasn't rage alone, but agony.
Lyra stumbled backward as Evelyn moved forward.
"Dorian…" she rasped. Her voice was layered, like two beings speaking through the same mouth—one soft, one venomous. "They took me. They bound me."
Dorian stepped in front of Lyra instinctively. His breath trembled in his chest. "Evelyn…?"
"I didn't choose this," she whispered. But even as she said the words, her body spasmed, and from her lips rose a stream of black smoke—like a scream expelled in silence. Her hands twisted, claws replacing fingers for a brief moment before returning to flesh.
Then the fury returned.
"NO! SHE LIES!" Evelyn shrieked, her voice shrill and shattering. "She would steal you from me again!"
The room responded to her rage. Shadows surged like tidal waves, sweeping through the hall, up the walls, onto the ceiling. Lyra was dragged back, her scream muffled by the thick, smoky darkness. Dorian tried to reach her, but Evelyn was on him.
She pinned him to the floor, her body trembling with unstable energy. Her face hovered above his, flickering between heartbreak and horror. "Please… end this," she gasped. "I'm still here… somewhere."
In that instant, he saw it. The Evelyn he had loved—the girl with laughter in her eyes and sunlight in her soul—trapped inside the writhing storm.
"Evelyn," he whispered, and for a moment, her eyes blinked clear.
Then, the darkness surged again, and she shrieked. Her fingers clawed toward his chest.
Lyra screamed from the corner, struggling against the shadows.
Then—light.
The amulet around Dorian's neck—something he had almost forgotten he wore—burst into sudden, searing brilliance. A white light, pure and humming with ancient energy. The shadows recoiled, hissing like snakes. Evelyn screamed and stumbled back, her body convulsing as if the light seared her from the inside out.
Dorian scrambled to Lyra, gripping her hand, the light now encasing them both in a shield that pulsed with life.
The shadows retreated, melting into the walls, the floor, the air itself.
But Evelyn remained.
She was on her knees now, trembling. Tears streamed from her darkened eyes. The rot on her skin seemed to recede just a little. Her lips parted.
"Save me," she whispered, barely audible. "Please… before it's too late…"
Then—she vanished.
Just like that.
The house fell silent. No wind. No movement. Only Lyra's sobs and the distant echo of Evelyn's final plea.
Dorian held her close, burying his face in her hair, the scent of lavender and fear clinging to them both. They sat in the middle of the room, the glow from the amulet fading, the frost on the windows melting into weeping trails.
It was over.
For now.
But they knew—this was only the beginning.
Evelyn had returned, and she was no longer just a ghost. She was a fracture in the veil between life and death. She was the vessel of the Zeolat cult's wrath.
And beneath all that fury, she was still… Evelyn.
Despite all she had done… they had to try.
They had to save her. Before whatever had taken root inside her consumed her soul forever.