Chapter 198: Light in the Veil
Cassian trembled in Aryia’s arms, his face streaked with blood and dust, eyes wide with something that hadn’t fully returned to him yet. She knelt in the rubble, holding him as if anchoring both of them to the earth that still rumbled faintly beneath.
He was alive, but clearly different. His body bore the signature of what appeared to be an ancient curse, not just the scars of war, but a mark beneath the skin, pulsing with soft violet light.
“Aryia,” he whispered, his voice raw, frayed, but hers. She pressed her forehead to his. “I have you. You’re safe now.”
But they weren’t.
All around them, the wind screamed again, carrying with it the shrill whispers of the Sombrosi assassins. The fortress walls groaned like they might collapse, and from the edges of the broken sanctum, shadowed figures, the shadow-born, began to emerge, more than before. This was the second wave. Red-robed, faces masked, their weapons glowing faintly with Umbrazin runes.
Vincent stepped forward first, his blade catching the dying light. “We don’t have time.”
Brienne stood at his side, blood soaking her torn clothing. “They were waiting. It was a trap.”
“No,” Isla murmured, rising slowly from where she’d knelt beside Damian. “It was a warning.”
He looked up at her, eyes rimmed with Umbrazin fire, his control still fraying at the edges. “From the Elders?”
Isla nodded, her golden gaze scanning the tightening circle. “From the one who’s still pulling the strings.”
“They’ll kill us,” Alaine said flatly. “We’re too exposed.”
“They can try,” Isla said.
She stepped forward, past Aryia and Cassian, past the shattered altar stone and the broken Veil glyphs. She walked with calm precision, even as shadow-born and Sombrosi assassins closed in, circling with blades that whispered in the smoke.
One assassin lunged, fast, impossibly so, but Isla didn’t flinch. With a single flick of her wrist, a wave of light pulsed out from her fingers, catching the attacker midair. He froze, suspended like an insect in amber, then disintegrated into glowing ash.
The others hesitated.
“You see it, don’t you?” Isla said, her voice ringing clear across the ruin. “You feel what they fear.”
Brienne’s eyes widened as she whispered, “She’s not just channeling power. She is it.”
Another assassin charged and then another. Isla didn’t move. She lifted her hands, fingers splayed, and the air split with heat and clarity. Pure, seething and ancient light rippled out in a spiral from her body. The air shimmered, distorting around her like glass bending under heat.
Isla moved forward into the assault.
They came at her like a wave of blades, but their weapons shattered before they reached her. Magic clashed against the invisible field she summoned, and every step she took, earth bloomed behind her, veins of gold and silver trailing the stone.
Damian stared at her, sweat beading on his brow. “She’s doing what none of us could.”
“She’s unsealing what was meant to stay sealed,” Raven murmured, her crimson eyes glowing. “But they shouldn’t have tried to cage it.”
Assassins screamed whilst Isla burned. Not in pain, but in power. Her veins glowed, not with Umbrazin silver, but something older and way brighter. The true essence the Elders feared. This was the reason the Veil had cracked. The reason Damian had been pushed to the brink and Cassian nearly lost.
Aryia pulled Cassian to his feet, holding his weight even as he swayed. “Look at her,” she whispered.
“I see her,” he said, voice trembling with awe. “She’s becoming what they were always afraid of.”
More assassins surged in desperation. Isla raised her hand, and this time the light pulsed from her chest, like a second heartbeat.
When it hit the advancing shadows, they vanished in silence. There were no screams. They didn’t even collapse, it was as if they were just gone.
The remaining assassins backed away, faltering and murmuring in a language none of them understood. Isla’s golden eyes locked on one of them, a commander by the look of his embroidered collar. He hesitated too long.
She spoke to him, but there were no words, just power. Her presence unmade his shadow, left only bones where once had been flesh.
The wind died and only silence remained.
Her breathing slowed. Her eyes dimmed back to her usual self. The light receded, not gone, but tamed. The circle of ash around her shimmered in the dusk.
Alaine was the first to speak. “That wasn’t magic.”
“No,” Vincent said. “That was origin.”
Isla looked down at her hands, trembling now. “It’s… changing. I’m changing.”
Damian came to her then. She leaned into his chest, but it was clear she wasn’t broken, just shaken. “You brought me back from the edge,” he whispered. “Now I’ll do the same for you.”
Aryia helped Cassian walk to the center. He stopped beside Isla and placed a hand over hers. “That light. I felt it in the Veil. I think… it pulled me back.”
Isla looked at him, eyes wide. “Then we’re more connected than we thought.”
“We need to leave,” Raven said. “Whatever that was, it stirred things beyond this fortress. I felt it ripple across the Veil lines.”
“Where do we go?” Brienne asked.
Damian turned to Isla.
She met his gaze. “We go to the old borderlands. Where they first banished the Umbrazin. We find the truth the Elders buried.”
Cassian coughed, blood on his lip. “My father had too many secrets. Hollow Ridge, Valkan … I don’t know what to believe anymore…”
Alaine’s voice was quiet. “Cassian, you can’t undo your father’s sins but you can your own. choose your oath wisely.” Then she took in a deep somber breath and faced Isla “The last war has begun, hasn’t it?”
Isla turned her face to the sky, where no stars yet shone, only the thick smoke of what they’d survived. “No,” she said. “It began a long time ago. We’re just the ones who will end it.”
Behind them, the mountain began to crack.