Chapter 37
The first village vanished at dawn.
Kian stood at the edge of the crater, his boots sinking into ash that still hummed with residual fear. The air smelled of burnt honey and static. Where homes once stood, there was only glass—smooth, black, and silent.
"No bodies," Jin Yue said, her crystalline tattoo pulsing faintly as she scanned the ruins. "No blood. Just… gone."
A child's whimper cut through the stillness.
They found her curled inside a shattered water jug, her skin mottled with crystalline growths, eyes glowing like trapped lightning. She couldn't speak, but her small hands clutched a poppy petal—crimson, gold, and singing.
"Lian's work," Kian murmured. "She must have fled the Veil."
The girl's fingers spasmed, etching symbols into the glass: HE IS COMING.
The Eclipse Veil
It arrived at twilight—a wall of storming darkness, its edges fraying the sky into prismatic shards. The air screamed as the Veil devoured it, sound collapsing into a vacuum.
"Move!" Jin Yue hauled Kian back as the storm surged, swallowing the crater. The girl in his arms shrieked, her crystalline patches spreading.
They barely outran the Veil's tendrils, retreating to Lian's garden.
The poppies were screaming.
The Garden of Whispers
Lian knelt among his flowers, their petals vibrating with panicked harmonies. "They've been singing of the Veil for weeks," he said, hands buried in soil that wept black sap. "They call it the 'Unfinished Note.'"
Jin Yue gestured to the trembling girl. "And her?"
"An Echoing Child," Lian said softly. "The Veil consumes lives but leaves their memories behind. She's… a vessel."
The girl lunged suddenly, her crystalline fingers clawing at Lian's throat. "First Gardener," she hissed with a voice not her own. "You will water us."
Kian pried her off, but the damage was done. Lian's neck bore jagged marks that glowed like dying stars.
"It knows me," Lian whispered.
Jin Yue's Bargain
In the garden's heart, Jin Yue unwrapped her Devourer-shard arm—a claw of void-energy, its surface crawling with inverted runes.
"Don't," Kian warned.
"We're out of choices," she snapped. She plunged the claw into the soil. The ground shrieked as roots blackened and the poppies wilted, their stolen songs funneling into the shard.
The Veil recoiled beyond the garden's borders, repelled—for now.
"What did you do?" Lian demanded.
Jin Yue flexed her corrupted arm, its void-energy now threaded with poppy-gold. "Gave us time."
The Eclipsed Heart's Whisper
That night, the Veil spoke.
Kian dreamt of a throne of static, where a figure shaped like his reflection sat. "You called me 'balance,'" it said. "But you buried me in your shadow. Now I hunger."
"Who are you?"
"What you made me." The figure dissolved, leaving a single poppy rotting at its core.
Kian woke to the garden in flames.
The Fractured's Mark
The girl was gone. In her place, a symbol smoldered on the soil—the Fractured's spiral, twisted into a crown.
"The cults are back," Jin Yue said. "And they're not alone."
Lian touched the scorched earth. "The Veil isn't just hunting us. It's learning."
Above them, the storm crackled, its heart pulsing with stolen light.
The Choice
Kian stared at his hands, where the merged Song/Silence energy flickered erratically. "We need to enter the Veil. Find its core."
"Suicide," Jin Yue said.
"Sacrifice," Lian corrected. He plucked a dying poppy, its song a rasp. "The garden says the Veil's heart is a memory. Your memory, Kian."
The storm roared, closer now.
"Then let's give it a reminder," Kian said.
They stepped into the Silent Zone.