The Being Within

Intro Veilrend 26: What Waits Within Darkness slumbered in the hollow places of Eryndra’s soul, coiled like a serpent too ancient for dreams. It had waited—through generations of silence, through bloodlines bound to ritual and watchfulness—beneath layers of human thought. Now, it stirred. It began with scent. The sharp sting of burnt sigils. Sweat from the living. Decay from the dead. Ashren’s mind had been unmade in the wake of the shard’s unveiling, but something else had arrived with it—a ripple of her, the deep one, the whisper-weaver called Ith’rael. Her proximity scratched across the being’s awareness like a nail across stone. Next came sound. Murmurs in the walls. Rhen’s unsteady breath. Vael’s wary pacing. The sound of blood coursing through mortal veins, like rivers awaiting flood. The being listened, its hunger sharpening with each beat. Then, it reached outward—feeling the room. Ward-stones humming. The lingering veil-fracture where the shard pulsed. The power curled in the stone like a fist around a scream. The being felt Seris inside it—fractured, burning, resisting. It admired him. He was familiar in a way it couldn’t yet name. It turned its attention next to Ith’rael. Ah… that one. That rival. Always patient, always prying. Dangerous, yes—but predictable. The being did not fear her. It had waited while Ith’rael danced through minds and mirrors. It had not stirred then. But now… it had found a voice. It opened a single eye in the darkness of Eryndra’s mind. A pale vertical slit. It saw. And Eryndra screamed. She dropped the ritual bowl, its contents shattering into a hissing pool of blood and ash. Her eyes rolled back, her limbs convulsing—not from pain, but from something ancient brushing against the edge of waking. > “It is not the shard you should fear,” a voice whispered, but it did not come from her lips. It came from within. And it was only the beginning.