Page 26 of Orc's Veil

I step between them. Blade raised. Every instinct screaming that I’m outmatched, that this creature is beyond anything I’ve trained to fight, that the execution blade in my hands is a toothpick against a hurricane.

I don’t care.

“Stay back.” My voice comes out rough. Commanding. The voice of a man who has faced death a hundred times and learned not to flinch from it. “Whatever you are, you don’t touch her.”

The Sovereign’s attention shifts to me. Those silver eyes examine me with clinical curiosity, and I feel the pressure of its regard like a physical thing—crushing against my mind, my soul, my carefully constructed walls of discipline and control.

“The executioner.”The voice changes again—not the mother anymore, but a man’s voice. Deep. Terrified. Familiar in ways I don’t want to examine.“Please. I have children. I have?—”

The voice cuts off. My hands are shaking.

I know that voice. Execution forty-three. A merchant accused of selling boundary secrets to shadow-cultists. He’d protested his innocence until the blade fell. He’d begged for his children.

I’d ignored him. Done my duty. Let his blood run down the channels of the execution platform while his screams echoed in my ears.

The Sovereign smiles. I don’t know how a creature made of shadow and stolen faces smiles, but I feel it—amusement, satisfaction, the pleasure of a predator that’s found its prey’s weakness.

“So many sins, executioner. So many lives ended in service to laws you never questioned. Do you ever wonder how many were innocent?”

“Don’t listen to it.” Eirene’s hand closes on my arm. Her touch anchors me, pulls me back from the edge of the abyss the Sovereign is opening beneath my feet. “It feeds on guilt. On grief. It’s trying to break you.”

“I know.” I force my hands to steady. Force my voice to remain cold. “It won’t work.”

The Sovereign laughs. The sound is wrong—too many voices, too many registers, a cacophony of stolen joy twisted into mockery.

“Won’t it?”It steps forward—a single stride that covers impossible distance, bringing it to the edge of the tear. The wound in reality pulses around it, widening, spreading.“You’ve already broken, executioner. The mark on your chest proves it. The witch’s blood in your veins proves it. You’ve betrayed everything you are for a woman you’ve known less than a day.”

“The mark—” I start.

“The claiming chose you because you were already broken.”The Sovereign’s silver eyes gleam.“Because somewhere beneath all that obedience, all that certainty, all those careful walls—you knew. You knew you were killing innocents. You knew the order’s justice was a lie. And you kept swinging the blade anyway.”

The words hit like blows. I want to deny them. Want to defend myself, my choices, my decades of service.

I can’t. Because the Sovereign is right.

“Now,” the creature says, its voice settling back into the mother’s lullaby, soft and terrible,“let me see what breaks first—the boundary, the executioner, or the bond between you.”

It reaches for Eirene.

I move.

My blade swings up, catching the Sovereign’s reaching arm. The execution blade—forged to sever magical ties—bites deep, cutting through shadow and stolen memory. The creature screams—a hundred voices crying out in unison—and recoils.

It can be hurt. The knowledge crystallizes in my mind. Whatever this thing is, however powerful, it can be hurt.

Which means it can be killed.

“Run.” I put myself between Eirene and the Sovereign, blade raised, ready to die buying her time to escape. “Get to the cottage. Protect the boy. I’ll hold it here.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Her voice is fierce. Final. “The mark?—”

“Will survive if you survive.” I don’t look at her. Can’t look at her, or I’ll lose my nerve. “Go. Now.”

The Sovereign laughs again. The sound echoes across the stones, across the boundary, across the darkness pressing in from all sides.

“Touching.”It begins to reform, the wound my blade cut already healing, shadow flowing like water to fill the gap.“But you can’t kill me, executioner. I am everything you’ve destroyed. Every life you’ve ended. Every innocent you’ve condemned.”

It steps forward. The tear pulses behind it—wider now, spreading, the Veil screaming in agony as the wound tears deeper.