Kael stood barefoot in the centre of the Echo Chamber, cloaked in silence.
Stone walls. One lamp. No doors once they sealed him in.
Only a ring of mirrors—tarnished, uneven, warped at the edges—and a sigil beneath his feet shaped like an open eye. The ceiling pulsed faintly with spell-light. Whispercraft, but deeper. Old layers of enchantment no longer taught.
From a hidden alcove above, a voice rasped through the walls. Ser Whitmer.
"Strip yourself, Kael Veyne. Not of cloth. Of illusion."
Kael's breath hitched. The mirrors began to ripple—not with his reflection, but with others.
His father's sneer. His mother's blank stare as she bled out in the hayloft. Noble boys laughing as they dunked his head into freezing trough water. Eline's voice—sharp as a blade: "Don't get in my way."
Tenebris stirred. The air thickened.
These are not memories. These are weights.
Kael clenched his fists. "What is this?"
Whitmer's voice echoed. "The Chamber draws from the soul, not the mind. You'll see what you carry. Survive it—or be sent to clean privies with your own shadow."
The mirrors flickered again.
Now Kael stood before himself. A younger self—maybe ten or eleven. Starved. Cold. Eyes wide with need. Behind that boy loomed Tenebris's silhouette, indistinct but vast, like smoke forming teeth.
Kael took a step back.
The child-Kael spoke. "You begged for the bond."
"I didn't."
"You wanted to matter," the boy hissed. "You whispered it into the dark every night."
The shadow behind the boy twitched—and then lunged.
Kael flinched—
—And found himself in a stable, knee-deep in straw and blood. His blood. He remembered this night. The noble's son. The whip.
Only this time, the boy who whipped him had Tenebris's eyes.
"Fight back," the whip-boy snarled. "Let me grow."
Kael roared, and shadows surged—ripping the illusion apart in a flare of black.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping.
Whitmer's voice echoed once more. "Not bad. Half the initiates soil themselves by now."
Kael spat blood. "This your idea of therapy?"
"This is us deciding if you're a tool, a threat, or something in between."
The mirrors shifted again.
A new image: Bran, pale and shaking, holding a knife at Kael's back. Eline, chained and screaming. The Gloam Cult kneeling—offering Kael a throne of fog.
Kael stepped toward the mirror.
"None of this is real."
Tenebris coiled around his ribs, whispering:
But it could be.
The mirror cracked.
This time, the voice didn't come from outside. It came from inside his mind.
A woman's voice. Older. Softer. Familiar—but impossible.
Kael. If you hear this… you're further than I ever was.
His mother.
Kael froze. The mirror pulsed.
They'll lie to you. The Whisperers. The Crown. Even the Veil itself. But the Dusk didn't always hunger. It used to protect."
Your shadow isn't a curse. It's a key.
The mirror shattered.
Kael fell again—this time into full darkness.
He woke on the cold floor of the Chamber, sometime unknow later. Ser Whitmer stood above him, leaning on his cane.
The old Whisperer said nothing for a long moment. Then:
"You screamed like a branded pig."
Kael sat up, head swimming. "Did I pass?"
"Did you break?"
"No."
Whitmer offered a brittle smile. "Then you passed."
He turned to leave. Paused.
"That voice at the end," he said quietly. "You'll hear it again. Not here. But soon. That was your inheritance speaking."
Kael frowned. "You know what it was?"
Whitmer's eyes gleamed beneath their heavy lids. "I've heard her too. Years ago. Before I lost my bond."
Kael's pulse skipped. "You were Veilbound."
"Once."
"And what happened?"
Whitmer smiled bitterly. "I passed too."