The last light of the ruined day faded and vanished behind them, swallowed by the circling storm above.
Liora shivered, though the air wasn't cold. It was the wrongness of it, the strange weight that pressed against her skin and made it hard to breathe.
Beside her, Tomas tightened the straps of his pack with sharp, tense movements. He had barely spoken since they passed through the Thorned Path. His jaw was tight, and though he stayed close to her, there was a distracted edge in him that Liora hadn't seen before.
Ysolde walked ahead, her staff tapping softly against the broken ground. She walked with purpose, but slower than before, like the weight of what they had seen and what still waited pulled at her bones.
They walked through a land that looked torn apart. The ground was cracked and dry, with deep cuts in the earth. The trees that still stood were blackened and empty inside. No birds sang. No insects buzzed.
Only the whispers.
Liora heard them at the edge of her thoughts: soft, steady, and impossible to ignore. The whispers crept through her mind like threads of vapor, winding around her memories and fears. They weren't loud, but they pressed into her, each word heavy with a truth she couldn't yet understand. They spoke in voices that felt ancient and sorrowful, as if the world itself was crying out and it was calling her by name.
It is unraveling.
It cannot be stopped.
She shook her head to clear it, hoping to scatter the voices like mist in sunlight, but the whispers only dug in deeper, curling like thorns around her thoughts. Each breath brought them closer, more insistent like echoes of something forgotten but vital. They weren't just sounds; they were feelings, memories not her own, pressing into her soul with a weight that made her chest tighten and her eyes burn with unshed tears.
It wasn't just the land breaking. It was life itself the hidden strings that connected everything the Veil, the land, the magic, the blood.
And those strings were coming apart.
Ysolde finally stopped where the ground had split wide open a deep crack tearing the land in two. She turned to them, her face tired and full of something else fear.
"We're close to the breach," she said softly. "But it's worse than I feared."
She pointed at the gap.
From its depths, faint strands of light and shadow stretched out visible threads, tangled and breaking, rising into the sky and down into the earth. They moved like living things, but they felt sick and wrong, and Liora's stomach twisted.
"The Veil is tearing faster now," Ysolde said. "The old protections, the old balances they're coming apart thread by thread."
Tomas crouched near the edge, staring down into the darkness. His voice was serious. "Is there a way to stop it?"
Ysolde paused. Liora felt a cold heaviness settle in her chest.
"There is," Ysolde said at last. "But the cost will be great."
The wind blew over the broken land, carrying the smell of ash and old pain.
Liora stepped closer to the rift without meaning to, drawn by its hum. She could see the threads clearly now some glowed gold, others pulsed with a sick red, and some looked faded, close to breaking.
And among them, she saw something more. Something deep inside the Veil. A thread of fire. A thread that beat in time with her own heart.
The First Flame.
It had always been there, hidden in the weave of the world.
Her hands ached to reach for it, but Ysolde's voice stopped her.
"If we act the wrong way," Ysolde warned, "we could rip the whole pattern apart."
Liora turned her eyes from the rift. "Then what do we do?"
Ysolde took a deep breath to steady herself. "We find the Source Thread the one all others come from. If we can repair it, reweave it, we can hold the breach long enough to fix it."
"And if we can't?" Tomas asked.
Ysolde's eyes turned dark. "Then the Veil will fall completely. And everything behind it will flood through."
They made camp a short way from the rift, under the broken remains of an old willow. The air shimmered strangely, bending the firelight, making the night seem full of shifting shapes.
Liora couldn't sleep.
She sat apart from the others, staring at the last embers of the fire, the weight of what was coming pressing on her like a stone.
Tomas joined her after a while, sitting close so their shoulders touched.
"You're thinking too loudly," he said with a soft smile.
She gave a small laugh, but it caught in her throat.
"I don't know if I can do it," she whispered, her voice trembling like a fragile thread stretched too thin. The weight of everything of the Veil unraveling, of the lives resting in her hands pressed down on her chest until it ached. Doubt curled cold in her stomach, cruel and familiar. She wasn't a hero, just a girl who had lost too much. And yet the path ahead waited, silent and merciless.
Tomas said nothing for a while.
Then he reached over and gently took her hand. "You're not alone," he said.
The simple words broke something in her. Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks, hot and bitter.
Tomas didn't try to stop them. He just sat with her, their hands joined, while the world broke around them.
When she finally looked up, she saw Ysolde watching from across the fire.
Her grandmother's face was unreadable. Maybe sad. Maybe proud. Maybe just tired.
But when their eyes met, Ysolde gave her a small nod.
You are not alone.
Morning or what passed for it was a pale gray blur in the sky.
They packed in silence, lost in thought.
When they returned to the rift, Liora saw that the threads had broken even more overnight. Some were gone completely, leaving ugly gaps in the weave of the world.
And the fire thread the one tied to her was flickering.
Ysolde brought them to the edge.
"There," she said, pointing at a knot of threads twisted tightly together, trapped in a cage of bone and thorn.
"The Source Thread," Ysolde said. "But it's been poisoned."
Dark vines wrapped around it, feeding on it, choking it.
Tomas swore under his breath.
"How do we reach it?" Liora asked.
Ysolde looked at her seriously. "Only you can. You carry the First Flame. It's the only thing strong enough to burn the poison without breaking the thread."
Liora's mouth went dry.
"And what happens to me?" she asked.
Ysolde paused.
"You might live," she said finally. "Or you might not."
The silence that followed held all the things they couldn't say.
Tomas stepped forward. "There has to be another way."
"There isn't," Ysolde said softly. "This has always been her path."
Liora looked at the rift, at the broken threads, at the fire thread that still beat with her pulse.
She thought of Elderwood. Of her mother's laugh. Of Tomas's fierce loyalty. Of Ysolde's quiet strength. Of everything worth saving.
And she nodded "I'll do it."
Crossing into the rift felt like falling forever.
The world blurred, and only one thing stayed clear the fire thread pulling her forward.
The poison reached for her as she came close, dark wrapping around her arms and legs, whispering offers of rest, of giving up.
She clenched her teeth and pushed on, calling the flame inside her.
It rose at her call not wild, but steady and strong.
It wrapped around her, guarded her, burned away the poison with a loud scream.
She reached the Source Thread, her hands shaking.
It pulsed faintly, threads breaking faster now.
Hold on, she thought. I'm here.
She grabbed it and screamed.
The pain was beyond anything she'd felt. It ripped through her, tearing away body, mind, memory. She saw her whole life flash before her every joy, every hurt, every choice.
And then, beneath it all, she found something deeper. A core of fire. The First Flame, strong and eternal.
She gave it to the Source Thread.
The world twisted around her. The rift howled.
The poison writhed and burned away, thrashing like a dying beast.
The Source Thread glowed once, then again and began to weave itself again, gold and silver strands making a new pattern.
The breach began to close.The world began to heal and Liora fell into darkness.
When she woke, she was lying in soft green grass.
The sky above was clear and blue. The Veil had been mended.
The threads had been rebuilt but she had changed.
She felt it in her breath, in her heart.
She wasn't just a girl from Elderwood anymore.
She was something more and something less.
Tomas knelt beside her, tears in his eyes. "You're alive," he whispered.
Ysolde stood a short distance away, watching her with awe and sorrow.
"You did it," she said.
Liora sat up slowly, every part of her aching.
The world was healing.
But far off, deep in her senses, she felt a dark place.
A scar where the breach had been.
A sign that some threads, once broken, never fully mend.
She looked at Tomas, and despite it all, gave a small, fierce smile.
"We've still got work to do," she said.
And somewhere, deep in the repaired Veil, a new thread began to form bright, strong, and burning with the hope of a future regained.