Morning fog crept through the streets as I walked, curling around my legs like something alive. I kept my head down, senses stretched thin, every nerve screaming that I wasn't alone.
Something was wrong.
The Veil felt restless—agitated in a way I hadn't felt before. Like water before a storm.
I slowed.
Then a shadow peeled itself away from the fog.
Not human. Not fully anything.
Scales caught the dim light along its arms. Eyes burned like dying embers. When it smiled, the expression was familiar enough to make my stomach drop.
Pedro.
Not the boy I had known.
Not even the monster I had learned to fear.
This was something enhanced—twisted, reinforced, held together by rituals and hunger.
"You can't hide forever," he hissed, voice layered with something older beneath it. "You belong to this now."
The Veil reacted instantly.
Light bent. Sound warped. The air thickened, pressing against my skin like invisible hands.
I backed away, heart slamming against my ribs.
He carries your nightmare, the Veil whispered inside my skull.You are part of him.
I understood then with horrifying clarity.
Pedro wasn't chasing me on his own.
Whatever had broken him had tied us together.
Fear. Guilt. Blood.
The fog surged forward, swallowing his form before I could blink. I didn't wait to see if he would reappear.
I ran.
When I finally stopped, the street was empty.
No footsteps. No pursuit.
Just the echo of my own breathing and the hum of the Veil vibrating through my bones.
My hands shook as I braced myself against a streetlamp, nausea rolling through me. The Veil wasn't distant anymore. It was close enough to touch.
A sound tore through the air—sharp, violent, wrong.
The world fractured.
Light split into jagged shards as a rift opened ahead of me, shadows stretching and twisting into grotesque shapes.
Wind roared, pulling at my clothes, my hair, my skin.
I knew what this was.
Not instinct.
Knowledge.
The Veil wasn't reacting to me.
It was adjusting.
The rift collapsed as suddenly as it had appeared, the fog closing over it like a wound sealing shut.
Silence returned.
I sank to my knees, trembling.
That was when I felt it.
Not pain.
Not fear.
A pull.
A thin, dangerous tether stretching somewhere I couldn't see.
Santiago was gone—but the Veil had marked him.
And it had marked me too.
If I wanted answers—if I wanted him back—I would have to follow the rules.
Or break them.
Alone.
And whatever had turned Pedro into what he was?
It was still out there.
Waiting.