Page 57 of Orc's Veil

But I’m still bleeding. And in this place, blood is power.

The shadow-creatures that swarm toward me—drawn by the scent of fresh crimson—recoil when they get close. My blood burns them. Eight years of feeding the Veil have made me toxic to the very darkness I’m walking through.

I press forward. The wound on my palm drips steadily, leaving a trail of brightness in the gloom. Ahead, I can feel Varkhul—his presence a beacon of warmth in the frozen dark. He’s still alive. Still fighting. Still holding on.

Hold on, I think at him, pushing the thought through whatever remains of our claiming.I’m coming. Just hold on a little longer.

The Shadow Court reveals itself as I walk. Walls built from stolen memories—I see faces pressed into their surfaces, mouths open in silent screams, eyes tracking my passage with desperate hope. These are the souls the Veil has consumed. The lives the Sovereign has devoured. All of them trapped here, aware and suffering, fuel for an entity that will never let them go.

Unless someone takes them back.

I reach out and touch the nearest face—a woman, young, her features frozen in an expression of loss. A memory surfaces: her mother singing her to sleep, the same lullaby the Sovereign used to torment me. I remember taking this memory. I remember the price she paid to cross the boundary safely.

I give it back.

The magic burns through me—painful, purifying, a reversal of every theft I’ve committed in eight years of mercy. I feel the memory leaving me, feel the space it occupied in my mind emptying out, feel myself becoming just a little bit lighter without the burden of her stolen grief.

The woman’s face shifts, her expression changing from despair to peace. Then she’s gone, released, no longer part of the Sovereign’s prison.

One soul freed. Thousands more to go.

But I’ve made a start. And every soul I free weakens the Sovereign, strips away another layer of its stolen power.

Behind me, the Sovereign roars. It’s felt the loss—the first crack in its armor of stolen power. The sound echoes through the Shadow Court, shaking walls built of memory, cracking floors paved with grief.

I smile and keep walking.

Varkhul is waiting.

And I have a monster to kill.

THIRTY-TWO

VARKHUL

The Shadow Court is worse than death.

I hang suspended in darkness, chains of pure shadow wrapped around my wrists, my ankles, my throat. They’re not metal—they’re colder than metal, colder than ice, colder than anything I’ve ever felt. The chill seeps through my skin and into my bones, numbing flesh and thought until I can barely remember what warmth felt like.

The mark on my chest is the only heat in this frozen void. It pulses weakly, a distant ember fighting against the endless cold. Eirene. She’s out there. Still alive, still fighting. I cling to that pulse the way a drowning man clings to driftwood.

I cling to the memory of her body beneath mine. The softness of her skin against my scars. The taste of her mouth, copper and sweetness, when she bit my lip and drew blood. The sound she made when I first pushed inside her—half-gasp, half-moan, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.

The Sovereign can force me to relive every execution. But it can’t take that memory. Can’t poison the way she felt wrapped around me, the way she looked at me afterward—not with fear, not with disgust, but with a fierce tenderness that was entirely hers.

Time doesn’t work here. I know that much. Seconds stretch into hours, moments compress into heartbeats, and I’ve lost all sense of how long I’ve been hanging in the void. It could be minutes. It could be days. The darkness doesn’t care about measurement.

The Sovereign has created a mockery of a throne room around me. I can see it in glimpses, when the darkness shifts—walls built from stolen memories, their surfaces crawling with faces that press and strain against an invisible barrier. Eyes that track my every movement. Mouths that open in silent screams.

These are the souls the entity has consumed. The lives it has devoured. And they’re all watching me, waiting to see what happens to the executioner who thought he could escape justice.

The floor beneath me—or what passes for a floor in this nightmare realm—is paved with severed ties. I can feel them even from up here: promises broken, loves lost, families torn apart. Every grief the Veil has fed upon, solidified into a foundation for the Sovereign’s court.

And at the center of it all, a throne. Built of crystallized darkness, sharp edges catching light that doesn’t exist. Empty, for now.

The Sovereign doesn’t need to sit. It is everywhere in this place. Every shadow. Every whisper. Every forgotten dream.

Executioner.The voice comes from all directions, a chorus of stolen tones that makes my skull throb.Welcome to my home. I’ve been waiting for you.