Mirae

Veilrend 56: A Thread Unwoven The city was too quiet. Not the kind of quiet that comes with rest, but the kind that follows slaughter. Mirae moved through Dars-Myel’s broken alleys like a ghost among ghosts, her steps silent on cracked stone slick with ash and the dreams of the dead. She didn’t know where she was going. Only that something had shifted in the bones of the world. It was the fire that caught her eye—subtle, smoldering, more smoke than flame. A house she remembered, though she’d never entered. A place people spoke of only in whispers: the dream-weaver’s refuge. A sanctuary of memory and meaning. Now, only a shell. Mirae stepped inside, her breath catching at the sight. Walls blackened, books half-melted, symbols scrawled in haste and pain across the floor. A single, blood-darkened thread trailed from the hearth to the body. She knew it was her before she saw the face. The last dream-weaver. Eyes wide, mouth parted in a final, frozen word. The air was heavy, humming with something foul. Not just death. Something had been taken. Torn out. A thread that should never have been touched. Mirae knelt beside the body, trembling. Her fingers grazed the robes—tattered, scorched. Something remained tucked within the folds. A torn scrap of dream-cloth, faintly glowing with residual energy. When she touched it, visions surged: a blade. A figure. A voice she recognized far too well. Rhen. But no longer Rhen. She stumbled back, bile rising in her throat. He had done this. Or… what had become of him. The thought froze her blood. Ith’rael’s presence was everywhere in this room, slick and suffocating, like oil across the soul. Mirae felt it press against her thoughts, trying to slip inside. She bit her lip until it bled, grounding herself in the pain. Her grief was cold. Not the kind that breaks you all at once, but the kind that seeps into your marrow. She wanted to scream, to beg the stars for a reason. But the stars had long since turned away.