Page 65 of Orc's Veil

“Then you should understand this.” I stop, turning to face the Sovereign directly. The freed souls within me pulse with anticipation. “I’m done asking for forgiveness. I’m taking redemption instead.”

And how do you plan to do that?The stolen faces arrange themselves into an expression of condescending amusement.You’re one witch—wounded, bleeding, half-dead from the power you’ve consumed. I am centuries of stolen lives. I am the darkness that has been growing since your ancestors first broke the Veil. What could you possibly do to hurt me?

I smile. There’s nothing gentle in it.

“I could give you back everything you’ve stolen.”

The Sovereign goes still. Its stolen faces freeze in place, the cycling of features stopping for the first time since it manifested.

What?

“Every memory you’ve consumed came from me.” I raise my bleeding hands, let the power coursing through my veins become visible—a glow that starts at my wounds and spreads outward, illuminating the throne room with light the color of dawn. “I took them. I fed them to the Veil. And through the Veil, you ate them. But they’re still mine. They remember who gave them away.”

The forbidden rite had shown me this. Not as instruction, but as understanding, sudden and complete: the boundary keeps traces of everything it has ever consumed, the way scar tissue keeps the shape of an old wound. The memories were never truly destroyed. They were stored. And I am the Veil’s living record now. Its blood. Its keeper.

“I am the Veil. Every memory it ever consumed left a trace in its fabric—and its fabric is my blood now. I’m not returning them whole. I’m returning them as fire.”

I reach for the souls I’ve been carrying. The ones I freed in my journey through the Court, the ones who gave themselves to my ritual, the ones who have been waiting centuries for a chance to escape.

And I call to the ones still trapped.

The walls of the throne room begin to shake. The floor of severed ties cracks and heaves. The souls the Sovereign has consumed for hundreds of years—not just my victims, but everyone who ever paid a tithe to the Veil—feel my power reaching for them.

And they answer.

Stop!The Sovereign’s voice has gone sharp with fear.You can’t—you don’t understand what you’re doing?—

“I understand perfectly.” I pour more power into the call, feel the trapped souls straining toward me, feel the Sovereign’s form beginning to unravel at the edges as its fuel starts to escape. “I’m doing what I should have done eight years ago. I’m taking responsibility for every life I’ve touched. Every memory I’ve stolen. Every price I’ve extracted in the name of mercy.”

The first souls break free.

They burst from the Sovereign’s form like light through cracks in a dam—brilliant, beautiful, impossible to contain. Each one that escapes takes a piece of the entity with it, strips away a layer of its stolen power.

The Sovereign screams.

Behind me, I hear Varkhul laughing—a raw, painful sound, but genuine. “That’s my witch.”

More souls escape. Dozens. Hundreds. The throne room is filling with light as the consumed lives flee their prison, as centuries of stolen grief finally finds release.

But the Sovereign isn’t done yet.

The entity lashes out.

Not at me—at Varkhul. The shadow-chains around him tighten, dig deeper, and I feel his scream echo in my own chest like a blade through flesh.

Continue, and I’ll tear him apart.The Sovereign’s voice has lost all pretense of control. It’s afraid now—genuinely afraid—but fear makes monsters desperate.Every soul you free, I’ll take a piece of him. His memories. His mind. The mark that binds you. Stop now, or watch me destroy everything you love.

The chains tighten further. Varkhul’s face goes gray with pain, his body convulsing against the shadow-bindings. I can feel his agony through our link—sharp and terrible and designed to break me.

It almost works.

For one terrible moment, I hesitate. The souls I’ve been freeing pause in their escape, feeling my uncertainty, responding to my fear. The Sovereign’s form stabilizes slightly, the bleeding power slowing as I waver.

Then Varkhul opens his eyes.

“Don’t stop.” His voice is a rasp, barely audible over the chaos of escaping souls and the Sovereign’s increasingly desperate screams. “Don’t you dare stop for me.”

“It’s killing you?—”