Page 2 of Orc's Veil

Still not enough.

The air between two of the eastern stones begins to shimmer. Pearlescent light bleeds into the darkness—wrong light, sick light, the color of something dead and luminous. The Twilight Gate. It’s forming without warning, without the usual gradual flickering that gives me time to prepare.

A will is forcing it open.

I push myself to my feet, swaying with blood loss, knife still clutched in my dripping hand. The Gate tears wider—a vertical gash in reality, edges ragged and weeping that sickly luminescence. Through the gap, I catch glimpses of what lies beyond. Shadows that move with intention. Shapes pressing against the barrier.

Close. Close, damn you.

I slash my other palm open. Both hands bleeding now, I press them against the nearest stones, one on each side of the forming Gate. The boundary magic surges through me, raw and burning, trying to knit the tear closed. The Veil fights back against the intrusion, using my blood as ammunition.

The Gate wavers. Begins to shrink.

And then a child tumbles through.

TWO

EIRENE

He’s small. Human. Maybe eight years old, though it’s hard to tell with the way he’s curled in on himself, shaking and bloody on the black soil. His clothes are simple—peasant stock, nothing expensive—and they’re torn in places that don’t correspond to any visible wounds. As if claws reached through the fabric to touch what was underneath.

The Gate snaps shut behind him.

I drop to my knees beside him, ignoring the screaming protest of my blood-drained body. His face is pale, too pale, with dark circles beneath eyes that are open but unseeing. The pupils have swallowed the irises entirely—black pools reflecting things that aren’t there, can’t be there, shouldn’t exist in any realm.

“Mama,” he whispers. “Mama, I can’t find?—”

His voice cuts off in a choke. Blood wells from his nose, his ears, the corners of his mouth. Wounds that have no source, no explanation. The Shadow Court has touched him, and it’s still touching him, still reaching across the barrier to claim what stumbled through its domain.

The Veil demands payment for passage. Blood, memory, or service.

This child has no blood left to give. He has nothing to serve with. And if I don’t act in the next thirty seconds, the boundary will take everything else—tear his mind apart, leave him a hollow shell breathing but empty, another victim fed to the insatiable darkness.

Let him go. His blood will count as tithe. The Gate will seal properly. One death to prevent a thousand.

It’s not wrong. The math is simple, brutal, and accurate. One child dies, the boundary stabilizes, the world keeps turning. The Veil doesn’t care about innocence or age or the fact that someone is crying for their mother. It only understands payment.

I reach for the boy’s face.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I’m so sorry.”

Not an apology for letting him die. An apology for what I’m about to steal.

My fingers press against his temples. The twilight magic rises in me, dark and familiar, answering the call I make without words. This is the part of boundary witchcraft the Veil-wardens call treason. The forbidden technique. The reason executioners exist.

Memory extraction.

The tithe.

I close my eyes andpull.

The memory surfacesfrom the boy’s fractured mind, rising to meet my magic with the ease of a bubble floating to the surface of dark water. It doesn’t belong to him anymore—the Shadow Court’s touch has loosened it, made it easier to take. Small mercy.

A woman’s voice. Soft, warm, threaded with love so pure it makes my chest ache.

Hush now, little one. Mama’s here. Mama’s got you.

The memory blooms behind my eyes—a small bedroom, firelight flickering, a woman with the boy’s nose and chin leaning over a narrow bed. She’s singing. Not a song I recognize, but the melody is simple and sweet, designed to chase away nightmares and coax a frightened child into dreams.