Page 28 of Orc's Veil

But they feel real. Gods help me, they feel real.

You promised safety and gave us emptiness.More voices now, layering atop each other. Dozens of them. Hundreds.Every person I’ve stolen from, every memory I’ve consumed, all speaking at once.You carved out pieces of our souls and called it mercy.

My knees buckle. I catch myself against the stone, fingers scraping ancient runes, and the voices swell into a chorus of accusation that drowns out everything else.

Then they stop.

All at once. Complete silence.

And in that silence, a single voice emerges—not speaking through stolen memories anymore, but with a presence that presses against my mind like a hand closing around my skull.

Blood-keeper.The Sovereign’s voice is neither male nor female. It’s a chorus compressed into singularity, ancient and hungry and terribly patient.

Blood-keeper. A name for what I’d become without realizing it. Not a boundary witch anymore—something older. Something the Veil had made of me.

Did you think I needed to manifest to speak with you?

I force myself upright.Force my voice to remain steady, though my hands are shaking against the stone.

“I know what you are.” The words come out stronger than I feel. “Severed ties and stolen moments. Everything the Veil has consumed for centuries, given form.”

Laughter ripples through my mind—not cruel, but amused. The way a parent might laugh at a child who thinks they understand the world.

You understand so little, boundary witch. I am not merely what the Veil has consumed. I am what YOU have created. Every memory you’ve taken lives in me now.

The truth of it hits like a blade to the gut.

I made this. Eight years of mercy, eight years of stealing memories to spare lives, and all of it—every fragment, every moment, every precious piece of humanity I’ve torn away—has been feeding an entity that wants to unmake the world.

“Why?” My voice cracks. “Why tell me this? Why not just?—”

Kill you?The presence pulses with what might be amusement.Because I don’t want you dead. I want you willing.

A shudder runs through me. Not from the cold—the Veilborder is never truly cold—but from the implication beneath those words.

“Willing to do what?”

The Sovereign doesn’t answer with words. Instead, it shows me.

The vision slamsinto me without warning.

One moment I’m standing at the stones, fingers pressed to ancient runes. The next, I’m somewhere else entirely—a place that exists outside of space and time, where reality bends like wet paper and darkness has texture, substance, intent.

The Shadow Court.

I’ve glimpsed it before—through tears in the Veil, through the eyes of travelers too damaged to describe what they’ve seen. But those were fragments. Shadows of shadows. This is the real thing, laid bare before me in all its terrible glory.

Faces pressed against the darkness on all sides—souls by the thousands, mouths open in silent screams, straining toward me as if they knew I was coming. And at the center of it all, a throne.

It rises from the living darkness like a tumor rising from flesh—twisted, organic, wrong. It’s made of names. I can see themcarved into its surface, can feel them humming with residual identity. Thousands of names. Millions. Every soul the Veil has consumed since the original betrayal, compressed into a seat of power.

The throne is empty.

Waiting.Do you see now, boundary witch? Do you understand what waits on the other side of your precious boundary?

“This is what you are.” I force the words out through the horror clawing at my throat. “This is what you want to bring through.”

This is what WILL come through. The only question is whether it happens with your cooperation… or your screams.