A blood not of this world
The pendant was hot again.
Not warm — hot. As if a coil of fire had nestled itself into Caelan's chest and decided it wanted out. He pressed a palm to it beneath his shirt, wincing, teeth clenched.
It beat like a second heart.
Outside, the sky had turned wrong again. Not dark, not stormy — just off. Clouds moving against the wind. The sun flickering behind layers of vapor that didn't belong. And everywhere he went, he could feel eyes.
Not people.
Not animals.
The Veil was watching.
He didn't know what that meant, not yet, but he was beginning to understand this: something had shifted in him. Something ancient. Something claimed.
And it wanted him to remember.
---
He skipped class.
Again.
The university library felt like a tomb, and the mirrors in the philosophy wing all showed a version of him with his eyes too bright. The last time he looked into one, his reflection had smiled before he did.
So he ran.
To the edge of campus, down to the old chapel ruins the students called "the Spiral House." Not officially named, not listed on maps — just a hilltop relic. Trees crept up its stone like hungry hands. Its stained glass was shattered. Ivy grew across what remained of its veiled altar.
He sat on the cold stone floor. Breathing. Just breathing.
Until the pendant pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then glowed.
---
It began with the sound of a crow.
Then the silence behind it.
Then the fog.
It rolled in fast, thick as smoke. The kind that swallowed whole landscapes. He stood up, heart thudding now, backing away — but there was nowhere to go. The trees blurred. The sky vanished.
Only the spiral glass above the altar still reflected him.
Only it held his shape.
And then someone else stepped through.
Not a footstep. Not a noise. Just — presence.
A figure stood at the far end of the ruin.
Tall. Hooded. Cloaked in grey and deep red. A mask covered the lower half of their face. Their voice was soft, layered, not fully human.
"You kept it," they said.
Caelan didn't answer. His hands were fists. The pendant blazed hot against his skin.
"I thought you might," the figure continued, stepping forward. "It called to you long before you knew its name. It chose you before your world was born."
"I don't know who you are," Caelan said.
"No," the figure agreed. "You don't. But I know what you are."
Caelan's stomach tightened. The air around him was rippling now, the way heat ripples over asphalt in the desert — except this wasn't heat. It was... thinness.
"You've felt it, haven't you?" the figure said. "The mirror that moves too late. The bruises that form from dreams. The name whispered in blood."
"Duskwither," Caelan breathed.
The figure smiled beneath the mask.
"At last."
---
They held out their hand.
Something uncurled from their sleeve — not fingers. Claws. Faintly silver. Too refined to be beast. Too wrong to be human.
"You are not of this world," the figure said. "Not truly. Your blood is older than the cities you walk in. The family name you carry was a lie given for your safety."
"I'm human," Caelan said. "I was born here."
"No. You were placed here."
The spiral on the altar glowed faintly.
"You are Veilborn."
---
The wind howled. The fog thinned.
And the figure pulled back their hood.
Caelan flinched.
Their eyes were black as shadow, ringed in silver veins. Their mouth curled back to reveal twin fangs — but not vampire. Not fully.
Something else.
"The blood of two kings stirs in you, Caelan Duskwither," they said. "And it is waking. The human shell will not hold it much longer."
His knees buckled.
He dropped to the stone floor, the weight in his head like thunder.
"The realm remembers," they whispered. "And it wants you back."
Then they vanished.
---
He awoke some time later, face down in the chapel's cracked stone, breath cold, eyes burning.
The spiral glass above the altar was shattered.
His pendant was no longer glowing — but it was open.
A line had split through it, revealing something inside: a core of crystal, humming faintly with violet light.
He clutched it to his chest, gasping, and knew:
His blood was not of this world.
And the Veil was waiting.