Chapter #5 - The Heart of the Veil

The days that followed blurred together like half-remembered dreams.

If days could even exist here. The Lumenwild didn’t have mornings or nights it only shifting shades of light, silver at its gentlest, crimson when the moons drew close. Sometimes the world glowed so bright it felt like standing inside a heartbeat.

Cael said the Sanctum had protected the wolves for centuries, hidden deep within the roots of the veil. Now, its walls pulsed with my presence and veins of light that brightened whenever I walked by, like the place itself recognized me.

It made everyone uneasy.

Especially me.

Cael kept his distance at first, all command and composure. But the Elders had decreed he would train me, teach me to wield the Moonfire before it consumed me. So, most mornings and or whatever passed for them but we met in the hollow courtyard beneath the two moons.

“Again,” he said, circling me like a patient storm.

I glared at him. “I’m trying.”

“Trying isn’t control.”

My hands shook. The mark under my skin pulsed, threads of light sparking up my arms. Every time I reached for it, it flared like it wanted out.

Cael caught my wrist mid-motion, his hand closing around mine. Heat surged between us and not painful, not gentle, something alive.

“Don’t fight it,” he murmured. “It’s part of you.”

“I don’t want it to be part of me.”

His golden eyes lifted to mine. “Power doesn’t care what we want. It only answers what we are.”

For a moment, neither of us moved. The glow beneath my skin matched the light in his eyes and the gold meeting silver but until the air itself seemed to hold its breath.

Then, suddenly, the light snapped outward.

A wave of silver fire burst from my chest, harmless but brilliant, swirling like liquid moonlight before fading into mist. I stumbled back, gasping.

Cael didn’t look afraid. He looked alittle haunted.

“You’ve done this before,” he said quietly.

“What?”

He stepped closer, voice low. “That resonance. The Moonfire doesn’t flare unless it remembers something. Someone.”

“I’ve never ”.

But I stopped. Because somewhere in the back of my mind, I had felt it before and the weightless burn of light, the pull of another heartbeat beside mine.

A memory that wasn’t a memory flickered and a man standing beside me beneath two bleeding moons, his hand over mine, whispering a name I couldn’t remember.

Cael’s jaw tightened. “You felt it too, didn’t you?”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Auren appeared at the edge of the courtyard, silent as ever. “The Elders grow restless. The Riftborn move closer to the veil. They’re calling for you both.”

Cael’s expression hardened again, slipping back behind command. “Tell them we’re coming.”

When Auren left, Cael turned to me. “You need to learn faster.”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“I know,” he said and too softly. “That’s what scares me.”

He walked ahead, but I stayed for a moment, looking up at the twin moons. The red one burned faintly, the silver shimmered like a reflection on water.

Somewhere far beyond them, I could still feel the pull and a heartbeat not my own.

And in that heartbeat, a whisper. Find the heart of the veil.

Before the dark finds you.