The journey began with moonlight at their backs and the black rose at their heels.
Iris, Thalen, and Nyx left the Garden of Night before dawn, following a path that wasn't a path at all—just a pull in the air, subtle but unyielding, guiding them deeper into the places most fae refused to tread.
The borderlands of Faerun were not marked on any map. They shifted constantly, shaped by the Veil's tides. Villages appeared for days, then vanished into mist. Rivers ran backward under black skies. The land obeyed no season, no court, no law.
"You've been here before," Nyx said, his voice tight as he kept pace beside her.
"Once," Iris replied. "When the watch first opened. But the land wasn't like this then."
"Like what?" Thalen asked from ahead.
"Hungry," Iris said.
The first sign came at the Hollow Falls.
The waterfall dropped from a cliff of ivory stone into a basin that should have been full of water. Instead, the pool was a mirror—perfectly still, perfectly reflective.
No birds sang. No wind stirred.
Thalen's voice was low. "Don't look into it too long."
Nyx smirked faintly. "Superstition?"
"Experience."
Iris glanced into the mirror-water for just a heartbeat—long enough to see her reflection blink when she didn't.
They moved on.
By the second day, the air itself was changing.
They passed through groves where trees bore fruit shaped like eyes, always watching. Across plains of silver grass that whispered their names with every step. The pull from Nyx's mark and the watch grew stronger here, the patterns aligning like a lock turning.
But so did the signs of corruption.
Entire sections of land were glassed over—smooth and black beneath the moonlight. In places, the glass cracked, and a faint starlight bled from beneath, as if the Astral One's realm was leaking through.
Nyx kicked a shard into the grass. "It's spreading faster than I thought."
"It's following us," Iris murmured.
"No," Thalen said grimly. "It's following it." His gaze slid to Nyx's back.
That night, they camped in the ruins of what had once been a border outpost. The stone was half-eaten away, devoured by something that left no ash, only holes in the shape of constellations.
They kept the fire small.
Iris tried to sleep, but the Veil felt thinner here, the stars above spinning unnaturally. She thought she heard voices in the wind—low and many, like a crowd whispering at a funeral.
When she finally did sleep, the dreams came.
She stood on the edge of a sea that was not water but liquid night, shot through with silver veins. Across it loomed a figure—the Astral One, faceless and vast. It reached out a hand, and in its palm bloomed the black rose.
The petals fell upward, into the sky.
She woke to Nyx shaking her.
"You were whispering," he said softly. "Not in a language I know."
Before she could answer, the ground shuddered.
A ripple passed through the air, and something stepped out of the dark.
At first, she thought it was fae—a tall, graceful figure, cloaked and crowned. But where its face should have been was a perfect mask of starlight, shifting constantly, never holding one shape for more than a heartbeat.
Thalen's sword was out instantly. "Veil-wraith."
It tilted its head, and the mask stilled—fixing on Iris's face.
It spoke without moving.
"The path is not yours to choose, Seer."
The air behind it cracked open, revealing a glimpse of a place she recognized only from Nyx's visions—an expanse of void scattered with islands of light, drifting through endless night.
The Astral Fold.
The wraith stepped closer. Its mask shifted again, this time into something that made Iris's stomach twist—her own face, but older, with eyes like black glass.
Thalen lunged, blade striking the mask. The wraith shattered into fragments of starlight that melted into the ground.
But the rift it had opened did not close.
Instead, the pull from the watch became a drag, tugging at her toward the Fold.
Nyx grabbed her arm. "If we step through—"
"We're lost," Thalen finished.
Iris tore her gaze from the rift. "Then we keep moving before it drags us in."
They left the ruined camp in silence, the rift shrinking behind them but never entirely fading. The whispers in the wind grew louder now, and Iris could swear they were starting to form words.
By the fourth day, the borderlands had stopped pretending to be part of Faerun.
The sky was wrong. Two moons hung above, one silver, one black. The trees bled sap that glowed faintly in the dark. Shadows moved without sources.
And far ahead, across a plain of glass, Iris saw it—the edge of the Veil.
It wasn't a wall. It wasn't even a barrier. It was a drop-off, where the world simply ended, dissolving into a whirl of silver mist and scattered light.
The mark on Nyx's back burned bright enough to cast shadows. The watch ticked like a heartbeat.
Somewhere beyond that edge was the Astral One's prison.
Somewhere beyond that edge was the next step.