Veil of the Firstborn Part 1

The storm had been waiting for them.

By the time Vaelin and Elira crested the ridge into the northern wastelands, the sky was a crushed, bruised gray, torn open by claws of black lightning. The earth itself seemed uneasy, heaving shallow tremors beneath their boots. A metallic tang hung on the air, as if the ground were bleeding somewhere unseen. Neither of them spoke for a while. In the growing distance ahead, the remains of Hearthdeep, once a proud trade town, smoldered like the dying embers of a forgotten hearth. Stone buildings, once tall and proud, were now half-swallowed by broken earth and choking vines.

"This feels wrong," Elira muttered, tightening the strap of her belt as her hand drifted near her daggers. Her voice, always carrying a note of quiet sharpness, now barely masked the instinctual tension threading through her. She tilted her head slightly. "I mean, more wrong than usual."

Vaelin gave a small grunt of agreement, adjusting the sword across his back. His gaze swept over the horizon, trained and precise, before settling back on her with that dry glint in his eyes. "You have a gift for understatement, El."

A faint smile touched her lips, a ripple of light in the gloom. But neither joked long. Not here.

They crossed into the ruins just as the first of the Hollowborn appeared.

At first, Vaelin thought it was a trick of the fog—shapes moving between crumbled pillars, too fast, too wrong. But when one emerged fully, he understood the weight in his gut. It looked like a man from a distance, cloaked and lean, but when it turned—its face was an absence, as if something had taken the memory of a man and worn it like a poorly fitted mask. Empty eye sockets, a slivered mouth stitched by strands of black sinew.

They didn't speak. They didn't breathe. They simply charged.

Vaelin moved first, instincts honed sharp from years of survival. His blade sang free from the sheath with a hiss, and he met the first Hollowborn head-on, ducking under a wild swipe and driving his sword upward through its ribcage. The creature barely staggered. Up close, the wrongness was even stronger: its body was too pliable, like flesh stretched over smoke.

Elira, moving with the eerie grace Vaelin had come to rely on, flared her hands outward. Her soul-magic rippled in the air, stirring a shimmer of colorless energy between her fingers. With a low word in a language Vaelin couldn't name, she sent a jagged lance of force snapping from her palm—piercing the Hollowborn clean through and pinning it to a crumbling pillar.

It struggled silently, the sinews at its mouth twitching as if laughing.

"They're not alive," Elira said quickly, stepping back into a ready stance beside Vaelin. "But something's animating them. It's... old." Her voice caught slightly. She pressed a hand briefly to her temple, wincing as if something whispered too close.

Another tremor shook the ground, more violent than the first, and more Hollowborn poured from the broken streets. Dozens. They moved erratically, like puppets jerked by an unseen hand.

"We're surrounded," Vaelin said grimly.

Elira just flashed a sharp, reckless grin. "Good. Easier to hit them."

Vaelin chuckled, low and dangerous, and they fought back-to-back.

The battle was brutal and close. Vaelin’s blade work was relentless and efficient, favoring quick cuts that severed tendons and hacked through whatever twisted mockery of bone these things had. Hollowborn that fell didn't bleed; instead, they collapsed inward in puffs of thick, gray ash.

Elira was a storm unto herself. She wove her soul-magic into physical attacks—slicing arcs of pressure that snapped limbs, erupting invisible force that shattered stones underfoot and hurled enemies back. But every time she drew deeper on her power, it tugged at something. Her aura crackled with faint tendrils of darker energy, a shade of power Vaelin hadn’t seen in her before, something older, more violent.

At one point, a Hollowborn managed to grab Vaelin’s wrist, its grip cold and impossibly strong. Before he could break free, Elira was there, her dagger flashing silver. She jammed it into the creature's temple and ripped it free with a savage twist. The Hollowborn collapsed into ash that swirled around them like a dying fog.

"You’re welcome," she said, voice strained but still teasing.

"I had it handled," Vaelin replied, swinging his sword in a wide arc to clear another wave.

"Sure you did."

The fight seemed endless, but eventually, the Hollowborn numbers thinned, scattering back into the deeper ruins. For a long moment, only the sound of their breathing—and the low, groaning rumble of the earth—filled the air.

Vaelin wiped his blade clean against a shredded cloak. "Something's waking up down here. Something tied to these... things."

Elira didn’t answer right away. She was staring at a wall half-buried by rubble. Faint glyphs glowed beneath the soot, pulsing gently. A doorway, sealed by a pattern of soulwoven sigils Vaelin didn't recognize.

She stepped closer, almost entranced. Her fingers brushed against the glyphs—and the stone shivered beneath her touch. A voice, ancient and broken, whispered in a language neither of them knew, but Elira stiffened as if she understood it.

"You felt that too?" Vaelin asked quietly.

She nodded once. Her face was pale but set. "It's calling something inside me. Something I don't remember... but it remembers me."

Before either of them could act, the seal cracked down the middle with a deafening crack, spilling blinding light and a blast of freezing air into the ruin.

Behind it, something stirred.

Something waiting.

Vaelin moved to stand between Elira and the door without thinking, sword raised. His voice was steady, almost amused despite the pounding of his heart.

"Next time," he said dryly, "we stick to bandit hunting."

Elira’s laugh, even cracked with exhaustion, was still the best sound in the world.

And together, they stepped into the light.

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All Parts of the Series

Veil of the Firstborn Part 1

Veil of the Firstborn Part 2

Veil of the Firstborn Part 3

Veil of the Firstborn Part 4

Veil of the Firstborn Part 5