Ashren

Veilrend 21 – Ashren, Warden of Threads The incense curled like tendrils of smoke through the Ritual Spire of Dars-Myel, clinging to the stone walls like breath from another realm. Ashren, Warden of Threads, traced the spiral glyph across the basin’s surface, watching ripples disturb the reflection of torchlight. The Veil was tightening. Something had shifted. It wasn’t a tearing—not yet—but a pressure, subtle and dreadful. Like a storm building behind the fabric of the world. He’d felt it twice before in his long tenure: once before the fall of Elaras, and again during the mourning of the Red Eclipse. Each time, death had come for those unprepared. This… felt worse. > “There’s something coming,” he murmured. Ashren turned from the basin, robes whispering as he moved through shelves of bound skin and star-etched glass. The deeper texts were beginning to hum again. Wards flickered in agitation. The runes written in void-ink had begun to distort. > “Not a breach,” he thought, placing his hand against the warded wall. “Not yet. But something is drawing near that was once close to the beyond.” He’d sent no summons. Yet his instincts—refined through years of ritual and communion—were certain. He retrieved a bone-white mask and slid it over his face, its interior warm with breath and magic. Through its eyes, the threads of fate became clearer. Not readable, not yet. But tangled. Two threads approached the stronghold. One sharp and tense—a warrior, perhaps. The other… slippery. Coated in layered truths and hidden paths. A scholar. A liar. Or a man becoming one. He felt tension between them, not spoken but thick in the weave. And something else following behind—not with them, but watching. > “They bring something with them.” He couldn’t see what. Not yet. But it stirred the Veil, and that alone was enough.