Vael Duskwind

Intro Veilrend 9 — The Blood in the Name Vael had been living among them for eighty-three days. They called her Ash-Marked, for the burn across her left cheek—a scar she’d earned staging a false ritual under moonless sky to gain trust. They never asked her true name. The cult did not value names. Only purpose. The robes itched. The chants sickened her. The mirrored masks made her skin crawl. But Vael had grown good at hiding what she felt—Kaelen’s blood taught her that. Cold purpose, hot blade. She had the Duskwind eyes—flame-brown, gold-ringed. She kept them lowered now, always half-lidded, the way cultists did when listening for the Prophet’s whisper. And tonight, they said the Mirrored One would appear. The entire shrine knelt before the obsidian mirror they called the First Reflection, a great monolith that pulsed with inward light. Candles wept black wax. Priests screamed in ecstasy. Somewhere, someone was playing a harp made from bone. Vael knelt among them, outwardly still. But her hand clutched the dagger beneath her robe—a relic passed through six generations: the last fragment of Everspire, Kaelen’s sword. It thrummed faintly, resonating in the presence of the Rift’s echo. Suddenly, the mirror changed. Not a shimmer. Not a flicker. A tear in certainty. > He stepped through. Not walked. Stepped through. As if the boundary between mirror and world was merely a suggestion. He was taller than stories. Wrapped in contradiction. Haloes turning. Eyes unmatched. The room gasped. Vael did not. She stared at him, and in that moment, he looked at her. The Mirrored One tilted his head. A flicker crossed his face—Seris's sorrow… then Thar’Zul’s grin. But then… something else. A glint of recognition. > “Duskwind,” he said. Not a question. A memory. The cult turned toward her in one shivering wave of flesh and breath.