Page 41 of Orc's Veil

The breach-born lunges again. I deflect the blow, but the force drives me back a step, then another. More Veilspawn are circling, drawn by the blood and the battle, a tightening noose of shadow and teeth.

She’s right. We’re not going to survive this with steel and blood offerings. Not when the enemy can tear faster than she can seal, not when every creature I kill is replaced by two more.

The Sovereign knows. I can feel its satisfaction pulsing through the Veil—smug, patient, certain of victory. It’s been planning this assault for centuries. It knew exactly how to break us, exactly how to overwhelm our defenses. And it’s succeeding.

Unless we change the game.

We need a different weapon.

I think of what Eirene told me. How our desire weakens the boundary. How the mark between us feeds the erosion that lets the Sovereign push through.

But poison works both ways. And fire doesn’t care what it burns.

I make a choice.

I reach Eirene in seconds,blade still raised to ward off the circling Veilspawn. She sways from blood loss and I catch her against my chest. Her blood smears across my armor. Her heartbeat races against mine. The mark on my chest blazes with recognition, singing with heat and need and a hunger I’ve been trying to deny since the moment I first saw her.

“Your arm.” Her voice is breathless, her hands already reaching for the straps of my vambrace. “Give me your blood.”

I don’t hesitate. I draw my knife across my forearm—a deep cut, deeper than necessary—and press the wound to her bleeding palm. Our blood meets. Mingles. Burns.

The effect is immediate.

Power surges through both of us—not gentle, not gradual, but a tidal wave of magic that makes my vision white out and my knees buckle. The Veil responds with a sound like a struck bell, resonating through the stones, through our bodies, through the very fabric of reality.

The Veilspawn recoil. The breach-born staggers back, wisps of shadow boiling off its form where the light from our marks touches it.

But it’s not enough. I can feel it—the power is raw, unfocused, bleeding away as fast as it builds. The mark wants more. The magic demands completion.

“What are you—” Eirene starts.

“Completing the claim.” I don’t let her finish. “If what’s between us is poison to the Veil, maybe it’s poison to the Sovereign too. Maybe the only way to beat the darkness is to become brighter than it can stand.”

Her eyes widen. She understands—she must understand—what I’m proposing. The full claiming. Not the half-formed mark we share now, but the complete ritual. Permanent. Irrevocable. Binding us in ways that can never be undone.

“Varkhul.” Her voice is trembling. “If you do this—if we do this—there’s no going back. We’ll be?—”

“Bound.” I meet her eyes, and I let her see everything I’m feeling. The fear. The certainty. The desperate, consuming want that’s been building since the first moment our blood touched. “Claimed. Fated. Whatever word you want to use. But alive. Both of us, alive.”

Her breath catches. I can see the war in her expression—the terror of surrendering to a magic that will bind her to an executioner forever, battling against the fierce need to survive. To live. To see what we might become if we make it through this night.

The breach-born roars and charges. The Veilspawn surge forward, sensing weakness, smelling blood. We have seconds—maybe less—before the darkness overwhelms us.

Eirene grabs the front of my armor and pulls me down to her. Her eyes are fierce, decided, alight with the same certainty I feel burning in my own chest.

“Do it.”

TWENTY-FOUR

VARKHUL

The claiming is nothing like the gentle rituals the old stories describe.

There’s no moonlit clearing. No soft words exchanged. No tender kiss to seal the vow. There’s only blood and desperation and the howling darkness pressing in from all sides.

I press my palm to her chest—over her heart, where the mark will burn deepest—and I push. Not just blood. Not just pressure. I push my essence into her, the orc magic that’s been building in my veins since my ancestors first broke the Veil. It’s dark and old and hungry, and I feel it pour through my hand into her flesh with a force that makes us both scream.

She screams. I scream. The Veil screams.