The sky never changed.
There was no sun, no moon, and no stars—just the dull gray canopy overhead like the ceiling of a great tomb. And yet, time moved. You felt it in the marrow, like a clock ticking in a forgotten church.
Brother Solen woke beneath a shattered obelisk.
His robes were torn, the edges still blackened from fire. The holy symbol of Saint Halbrecht lay charred around his neck, fused to his skin. He sat up slowly, coughing ash, and tried to remember the last thing he had said.
Was it a prayer?
A curse?
His body bore no wounds, but he remembered pain—not the physical kind. The kind that twisted the soul.
As he stood, a faint sound echoed across the field.
A bell.
Faint. Hollow. Distant.
Solen turned toward the sound. It came from a tower—impossibly tall, thin as a needle, rising far into the sky. It hadn't been there moments before. Or perhaps it always had.
He felt a pull, deep and old. Something sacred. Or profane.
As he walked, memories flickered at the edges of his mind—faces without names, hands reaching out, blood soaking the floor of a temple.
"Brother Solen," said a voice behind him.
He turned. The figure in the gray cloak stood there, silent as fog. No footprints behind them. No expression on their ageless face.
"You are remembered," it said. "But not clearly."
Solen's voice was hoarse. "Am I being judged?"
"No," said the figure. "You are being given a chance."
"For what?"
"To find yourself. Before you forget what that means."
The bell rang again, louder this time. It shook something loose inside him.
"I buried gods," Solen whispered. "And burned books that were older than the sun."
"You did many things in life," the figure said, "some righteous, some terrible. But here, those things are shadows. What matters now is what you do with your death."
Solen looked to the tower. "What is that place?"
"A memory. Or a lie. In The Veil, they are the same until proven otherwise."
Solen said nothing. He only walked, step by step, toward the tower.
Meanwhile...
Kael and Ilyra had reached the edge of the Field of Silence. Beyond it, the ground split into jagged stone and drifting isles of shattered ruins. A river of ink ran through the canyon, whispering as it flowed.
The Gate still loomed behind them, but it had sealed shut the moment they turned their backs.
"I don't like this," Ilyra muttered.
Kael grunted. "You don't like anything."
"I don't like traps. And this place smells like one."
Suddenly, the sky above them cracked—not thunder, not lightning, but a fracture in the air itself. Through the split, something watched.
Not a god. Not a demon.
Something older.
Kael drew his sword. Ilyra readied her bow.
The sky healed as quickly as it broke, but the feeling lingered—like eyes on the back of your neck in a temple gone cold.
Kael glanced at her. "Still think we're dead?"
"Oh, we're dead," she said. "We just haven't finished dying yet."