Chapter Thirty Two

Chapter Thirty Two
Jole's POV (Cont.)

The walls felt too quiet. Too calm. My boots scuffed against the old stone floor as I took another step into the room, eyes locked on Lillian and Everett.

“You’re not prisoners,” I growled. “So tell me… what the hell is going on?”

Everett didn’t flinch. “It’s complicated, Jole.”

“Start uncomplicating it!”

My voice cracked the air, sharper than I meant. Heat pulsed beneath my skin… hotter than anger should be. My blood pounded like thunder in my ears. The lights above flickered. My mother’s eyes widened for a flicker of a second. A reaction. She stepped toward me… but cautiously.

“Jole,” Lillian said softly, “listen to me. There’s something you need to know.”

I laughed bitterly. “Now you want to talk? After lying to Serelina her entire life? After letting her think she was normal… safe… while you sat on godsdamn secrets?!”

The air around me shifted. Vibrated.

A low, cracking sound echoed from the floor beneath my boots. Stone splintered in a perfect ring around me.

My mother froze. “Oh no,” she whispered. “Everett… it’s surfacing.”

I blinked. “What is?”

His father stepped forward now, eyes shadowed. “Your family line… you descend from the Korrin line. Ancient protectors of veil-bound magic. Creatures of two realms.”

“Not wolves,” Lillian added. “Something older. Rarer.”

My stomach turned. “I don’t… what are you talking about?”

My hands were glowing. A soft, stormy gray light leaked from my fingertips, spiraling up my arms like ink in water. My breath hitched. The temperature dropped by ten degrees. Energy crackled around me, sharp and unnatural.

“It’s called a Veilborn,” Everett said quietly. “Some call it a shadow sentinel. Others… a guardian of the Rift.”

“What?” I shook my head. “That’s a myth.”

“No,” my mother said. “It skipped you mother. It skipped your father. And we assumed it had skipped you, too. But you were just… dormant.”

“You kept this from me? My powers? And you both not being my parents?” My voice wavered… anger and betrayal all at once. “You let me walk around thinking I was just normal? While Serelina went through hell thinking she was alone?”

Lillian’s face crumpled. “We thought it was safer…”

“You were wrong.”

The shadows around me twisted. My eyes… once warm brown… flashed a deep obsidian, ringed in silver. The sigils on the chamber walls trembled. And somewhere deep in my chest, something woke up. Something old. Something hungry.

I took a step back from them, chest heaving. “No more lies. Not to me. Not to Serelina. You tell me everything, or so help me… ”

The door behind me slammed open.

Riven’s voice rang out, breathless, “We’ve got movement… Draven’s men are pushing harder. We need to fall back to the southern stairwell… now.”

I didn’t move. I didn’t take my eyes off his parents.

Everett gave a small nod. “Go. But this isn’t over.”

“No,” I said, turning with power still simmering under my skin. “It’s just beginning.”

Lucian's POV

Caelin’s Voice Carried Like Thunder in the Old Tongue. Smoke rose in thick coils from the ash and powder he flung over the sigils etched into the ground, each chant biting into the air with authority older than memory. The symbols burned silver, then gold, then blackened and crumbled as I pressed forward, Kael clawing just beneath the surface of my skin. Serelina lay unmoving in the center of the circle, her body slack, the silver light wrapped tightly around her wrists and ankles like spectral chains.

My blade hissed through the bindings, one by one. Each cut sent a wave of energy rippling outward, a clash of Moonfire and tethering magic. Sparks shot from the wounds left behind by Draven’s arcane restraints, but I didn’t stop. Not when I saw the flutter of Serelina’s lashes. Not when Kael growled in my chest.

“Serelina. Come back to me.”

Her eyes flickered, her breathing stuttered… and then, out of the smoke, Draven stepped forward like a shadow given form.

“Not quite yet,” he said with a calm smile. “She belongs to me, remember?”

I moved first. My fist collided with Draven’s jaw, sending the man stumbling back.. but he didn’t fall. He barely looked phased. Draven’s smile widened, and then I was thrown backwards by an invisible force, hitting the forest floor hard. Caelin barked out a command in the old tongue and threw another powder into the air. The smoke swallowed Draven in an instant… but the man laughed.

The laugh. It echoed again. My blood went cold.

“No,” Serelina rasped as she stirred, eyes wide with panic. “That laugh…”

Draven stepped into her view once more. “It was always me,” he whispered. “From the start.”

And then he vanished. The smoke cleared, and the sigils were dead. I scrambled to Serelina’s side and gathered her into my arms. “You’re safe now,” I whispered fiercely. “He’s gone.” For now.

Jole’s Veilborn Awakening

Inside Haven Ridge, the fighting was relentless. Shouts echoed off the stone walls, the clash of claws against steel ringing louder than the war drums in my chest. My breath came in ragged bursts as I ducked beneath an attacker’s swing, shoving my blade through a second man’s ribs.

Something was happening to me.

My vision sharpened… I could see through walls now, faint outlines like pulsing shadows. My skin prickled, glowing faintly with a soft indigo aura. When I looked down at my arms, faint runes shimmered just beneath my skin, like ink woven into muscle and blood.

And then I heard them… my parents… again. I looked up and there they were… 

I stepped forward… and froze. They weren’t frightened. They were waiting.

“Jole,” Everett said calmly, taking a few steps towards me. “You’re... glowing.”

“What the hell is this?” I snapped, the rage bubbling hot in his chest. 

Lillian didn’t speak. She simply looked at me with haunted eyes and said, “You’re waking up, aren’t you?”

My blood roared in his ears. “What did you do to me?”

Everett exchanged a glance with Lillian, then stepped forward. “Like we said… You were always Veilborn. From a bloodline older than the kingdoms themselves. It skipped us…. But now obviously not you.”

“And neither of you told me?” I snarled. “Like you both didn’t tell her…”

Lillian cut in, voice sharp. “You never showed signs… until now. The awakening only happens in crisis. And you were always protected.”

“Bullshit,” I whispered. “You lied to her. You lied to me. And now you want to stand here and play innocent?”

The glow on my arms pulsed brighter. Sparks crackled around my fingers, and a new power uncurled in my chest like a storm waiting to break.

I was no longer just Serelina’s brother. I was something else entirely.

Serelina POV

The sharp scent of silver had finally faded. My limbs still trembled from the last of Draven’s binding, but I was free.

Lucian’s warmth anchored me as I sat in the dewy grass, my breath slowly evening out, the forest spinning less and less with each inhale. Somewhere behind me, Caelin murmured softly to Nyra, a grounding tone that helped the quiet between heartbeats.

But it wasn’t Lucian’s hand I reached for next.

It was Jole’s.

His palm met mine, the touch a little too warm, a little too charged with something that hadn’t been there before. When our fingers interlocked, a soft tremor ran up my spine… not pain, not fear, but something else.

Recognition.

“Jole?” I asked, voice soft.

His eyes, glowing faintly with that shifting veil-blue, lifted to mine. “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he admitted. “But when you were trapped, I felt you. Not like before… deeper. Like I could… pull toward you. Like something broke open inside me.”

Nyra hummed softly in my mind. “Not broken. Awakened.”

I squeezed his hand. “We don’t share powers, but I felt it too. A tether. It’s not the same one I have with Lucian, but it’s still real.”

Jole nodded, throat tight. “I think it’s the veil. Whatever this power is… it let me see into the other side for a second. Where you were.”

Our gazes met. Not as siblings of blood or fate, but as something older. Chosen. Fate-crossed. Connected.