Chapter 44: The Splintered Veil
The air above Vareth shimmered with a strange stillness. The world that had been reborn under the Keeper's Breath now seemed to pulse uneasily, as if something beneath its luminous calm had begun to stir again. The balance was holding—but only barely.
Carrow felt it first. He had taken to walking the outer ridges at dawn, where the light met the hollow winds. For weeks now, the edges of the world had felt… thin. Like silk stretched too tight.
The girl—no longer merely a vessel of the Breath but something beyond it—found him there, standing on the ridge, eyes fixed on the horizon. The mist below rippled, shifting with every movement of the sky.
"You sense it too," she said softly.
He didn't turn. "Something's pressing against the Veil. Not from below this time—but from within."
"The world is young," she murmured. "New things are always born restless."
He shook his head. "No. This isn't restlessness. This is memory trying to return."
She stepped beside him, her gaze tracing the shimmer in the distance. The golden horizon wavered, and for a heartbeat, she saw shadows moving behind the light—shapes that looked almost familiar. Faces half-remembered. Voices she had forgotten to miss.
"The echoes of the old age," she whispered.
"The echoes shouldn't still exist," Carrow said grimly. "The Keeper's Breath dissolved what was left. But something has survived—something that learned how to hide inside the very air we breathe."
A long silence stretched between them, filled only by the faint hum of the world.
Down below, the city glowed faintly in the soft dawn. Children played near the Fountain of Breath, chasing motes of light as if they were butterflies. The peace was beautiful—and fragile.
"If the Veil tears again," Carrow said, "everything we rebuilt could unravel."
"Then we must go to where it began," she replied. "To the Hollow itself."
Carrow turned sharply. "That place was sealed. Even the Breath cannot pass freely there now."
"Then we will not pass—we will listen."
Her voice had changed in recent days—softer, but threaded with an ancient calm that reminded Carrow of the Keeper himself. The more the world grew, the more she became something neither mortal nor divine.
"Do you trust what you've become?" he asked quietly.
She looked at her hands. Light flickered beneath her skin like veins of dawn. "Trust? No. But I understand it."
That was enough.
Together, they set out at dusk, moving through forests that shimmered with breathlight. The world seemed to sense their purpose—the wind slowed, rivers bent their currents toward them, and the stars flickered brighter overhead, aligning in subtle patterns.
When they reached the edge of the Hollow, the air grew still. The chasm that had once swallowed entire lifetimes was now half-healed, its walls pulsing faintly with veins of living light.
"It's… alive," Carrow whispered.
"It always was," she replied. "But now it remembers."
They stepped closer, and the air vibrated—a low, resonant sound that seemed to come from within their bones. The Hollow spoke not in words, but in feelings: sorrow, loss, longing.
Then, suddenly, Carrow saw them.
Figures moving within the light—faint, fractured, but undeniably real. The lost souls of the last age, flickering like memories trapped in crystal.
"They're trying to return," he said.
"Or trying to warn us," she countered.
The ground trembled. Cracks of shadow spread across the light like ink in water. Carrow stumbled, reaching for his sword out of instinct—but the weapon dissolved, turning into a stream of luminescent dust.
"No more blades," she said. "Only truth."
Her voice deepened, echoing through the Hollow. The light responded, swirling upward in spirals of memory and song. For a moment, Carrow saw everything—the fall of the old world, the Keeper's final breath, the children's laughter, the silent promise of balance.
And then he saw something new—an image that didn't belong to either past or present.
A tower of obsidian rising from the heart of the new world. Shadows twisting at its base. A single eye of light blinking open at its peak.
He gasped. "What is that?"
"The Breath cannot see beyond it," she said, voice trembling. "Something else is awakening."
The vision shattered, and the Hollow went dark. Only their breathing remained, shallow and uncertain.
When the light slowly returned, it was no longer gold—it was gray, muted, uncertain.
"The Veil is splintering," Carrow said. "Not from the outside, not from the old world—but from the inside out."
She turned toward him, eyes glowing faintly. "Then we have less time than I thought."
"What do we do?"
"Find the source. The tower we saw—it wasn't a vision. It's being built. Somewhere near the edge of the Breath's reach."
Carrow frowned. "By who?"
Her gaze darkened. "By those who were never meant to remember."
They stood in silence, the Hollow pulsing faintly beneath their feet. The world around them felt fragile again, its song interrupted.
Carrow clenched his fist, feeling the strange hum of the Breath in his veins. "If something's rewriting the new world, we can't let it finish."
She nodded. "Then let's begin before it does."
As they turned to leave, the Hollow sighed—a long, low sound, almost like a farewell.
Above them, the stars trembled.
And somewhere far away, beyond the mountains and rivers, a dark tower of living stone rose a little higher into the night.
The world had breathed once more.
But this time, something else was listening.
"— To Be Continued —"
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