Page 56 of Orc's Veil

What are you doing?The amusement in its voice has curdled into uncertainty.You can’t fight me. Not here. Not?—

“I’m not going to fight you.” I press the blade to my palm. “I’m going to come get him.”

You can’t enter the Shadow Court.The Sovereign actually laughs—a horrible sound, made of a hundred stolen voices.No human has ever crossed that threshold and returned. The darkness will consume you before you take three steps.

“Maybe.” I draw the knife across my palm. Blood wells—bright red against pale skin, the same blood that’s fed the Veil for eight years. “But I’m not just any human, am I? I’m the anchor. The door you want so badly. And doors open both ways.”

The Sovereign goes still. Its stolen faces freeze in expressions of dawning horror.

You wouldn’t.Its voice has lost all pretense of control.You’d die. You’d?—

“I’ve been dying for eight years.” I let the blood drip from my palm onto the ancient stones. The Veil responds—shuddering, shifting, the tear in reality widening just a fraction. “Every nightI bleed, I die a little more. Every memory I steal, I lose a piece of myself. This is just… finishing what I started.”

The mark on my chest pulses. I feel Varkhul’s awareness—dim and pain-hazed, but present. He knows what I’m planning. He’s trying to warn me, to stop me, to tell me not to throw my life away for his.

I ignore him.

I choose to walk into hell. I choose to face the darkness that’s been haunting my work since I first came to the Veilborder. I choose to save the man I love, even if it kills me.

I need to touch him again. Need to feel his arms around me, his mouth on mine, his body solid and real and alive. The thought of never having that again—of dying here without feeling his warmth one more time—is unbearable.

Because that’s what love is, isn’t it? Not the claiming mark burning on my chest. Not the magic that ties our souls. Love is the choice to keep choosing someone, even when it hurts. Even when it’s terrifying. Even when every rational part of you is screaming to run.

I didn’t choose to fall for an executioner. Didn’t choose the mark, didn’t choose the claiming, didn’t choose any of the magic that wound us so tightly we can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. But I’m choosing now. I’m choosing him.

And that choice—that single act of will—matters more than all the destiny and magic and ancient prophecy in the world.

I cut deeper. Blood pours now—not the careful offerings I’ve made for eight years, but a flood of crimson that soaks into the stones, that feeds the Veil until the boundary shakes with power.

The tear widens. The Shadow Court beckons.

Stop.The Sovereign’s voice has gone desperate.You don’t know what you’re doing. The Court will consume you. It will?—

“Then stop me.” I meet its pale eyes—those points of luminescence that have watched so many souls die. “You’re sopowerful. So ancient. So hungry. Stop me from walking through that door.”

It doesn’t move.

It can’t. I see it in the way the stolen faces flicker, the way its massive form trembles with suppressed motion. The Sovereign can’t stop me because if it touches me now—if it interferes with my blood offering—the Veil will seal the tear and trap it in the Shadow Court. My blood is the key. And I’m using it to open a door it can’t close.

“I thought so.” I step toward the tear. “You need me willing. You need me choosing to serve you. But I’m not going to serve you, Sovereign. I’m going to destroy you.”

With what?The Sovereign’s voice drips with contempt, but I can hear the fear beneath it.You’re a bleeding girl with a knife. I am centuries of stolen power. I am the darkness that has been growing since your ancestors first broke the Veil. What could you possibly have that could hurt me?

I smile. It’s not a kind smile.

“Every memory you’ve consumed came from me. Every soul you’ve devoured was mine first—stolen by my hands, fed to the Veil by my blood. I gave them to you.” I pause at the edge of the tear, the Shadow Court yawning before me like a hungry mouth. “And I can take them back.”

The Sovereign’s faces cycle through expressions—confusion, realization, terror. It understands now. It sees what I’m planning to do.

I step through the tear.

The Shadow Court swallows me whole.

Cold.

The first sensation is cold—not the chill of winter, but an absence of warmth so profound it seems to steal the heat from my blood. The darkness presses in from all sides, thick and hungry, tasting me with invisible tongues.

The air here—if it can be called air—tastes of grief and forgotten things. Every breath fills my lungs with the residue of stolen memories, the raw burden of centuries of consumed lives. I feel their sorrow pressing against my mind, their rage, their desperate hope for release.