Chapter 4 The First Tear

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Aeris couldn't sleep.

Not after what she'd seen in the flames of the relic. Not after what she'd felt when the Veil fused her soul to Lazrin's. The sigil still burned faintly on her skin, humming like a tether.

She sat by the cathedral's ruined archway, staring out over the broken city of Virelle. Somewhere below, the world carried on. Unaware. Unready.

Lazrin stood behind her, silent.

"You're watching me again," she murmured.

"I'm watching the Veil."

"Is that what we're calling this now?"

He stepped beside her. His presence was heavy-made heavier by whatever force now stitched them together.

"You saw it too," he said. "When the relic bound us."

She didn't want to admit it. But the memory clawed through her brain like smoke refusing to fade.

A burning palace.

Two lovers on a blood-soaked altar.

A voice chanting in an ancient tongue.

And then-her own hands, shaking, drenched in Lazrin's blood.

"I stabbed you," she said quietly. "In that life too."

"And I let you," he replied.

Aeris closed her eyes. "What were we?"

"Something powerful. Something dangerous."

She looked at him. "We still are."

Lazrin's gaze dropped to her sigil. "The Veil doesn't choose at random. If we're bound, it's because we're the only ones who can either break it... or become what broke it last time."

A deep hum echoed from the relic, now embedded in the cracked altar.

And then the sky above them ripped.

It didn't shatter. It tore-as if someone took a blade to the fabric of reality. A gash of starlight and shadow opened above the ruins, spilling light unlike anything Aeris had ever seen.

The Veil had opened.

Lazrin stood. "It's begun."

Aeris rose beside him, watching as the tear widened. "What's on the other side?"

"One of the lost realms. A shard of the world sealed away after the first Binding."

"Why open now?"

"Because we did."

The relic rose from the altar of its own accord, pulled upward by unseen magic. The light from the Veil tear shimmered across its surface-and then it shot into the rift.

Aeris cursed. "Do we follow?"

"We have to."

"Great." She looked at the tear, then at him. "After you, dreamboy."

He smirked faintly, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Stay close. Things born on the other side of the Veil don't take kindly to our kind."

She stepped beside him. "I'm not afraid."

"You should be."

They leapt.

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The world beyond the tear wasn't light or shadow.

It was memory.

The moment they crossed, Aeris felt time twist. Her bones remembered things her mind could not-runes she'd never seen burned behind her eyes. A field of obsidian grass stretched ahead, glowing faintly with whispers.

In the sky, there were no stars. Only eyes.

Lazrin landed beside her, his hand instinctively reaching for hers.

Aeris didn't pull away.

"Where the hell are we?" she whispered.

He scanned the horizon. "First realm. They called it Deythar. A place of forgotten kings and sealed magic."

A tower loomed in the distance-spiraling and ancient, crumbling yet alive with Veillight.

Aeris narrowed her eyes. "That's where the relic went."

He nodded. "And probably where the first enemy waits."

She looked up at the watchful sky. "What are the odds it's someone who doesn't want to kill us?"

Lazrin's jaw tightened. "Slim."

Aeris pulled her dagger. "Then let's make it interesting."

And together, they stepped into the realm fate had once locked away.

But fate... had just changed its mind.

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