Chapter 15
SERIS
Two weeks of training blurred into an exhausting yet purposeful rhythm of breath control, mental discipline, and careful manipulation of the Veil.
Even though Lyralei emphasized proper rest, my day started before the sun rose.
I put in an extra training session before meeting her.
I had a feeling she knew I wasn’t heeding her advice, but she said nothing to stop me, understanding the urgency required for the path ahead.
Afternoons were devoted to meditation, evenings to studying Veil theory in the Citadel's archives. The improvements that had been gradual at first were starting to accelerate, compounding each time I reached a new level.
I could now sense the Veil's presence without triggering defensive surges or having an emotional meltdown. The simple breathing exercises that Lyralei had emphasized so heavily, and that I had doubted, turned out to be as crucial as both Lyralei and Kael had indicated.
Control the breath. Control the body. Control the mind. Control the perception. Control the power that could make or unmake the world.
Daemon's health changed too. The stabilization of my power reflected in his health.
Color returned to his face. Only a small dark spot resembling a birthmark remained under the base of his palm, and he no longer needed to wear a glove on his left hand.
He moved with more strength, no longer carrying the rigidity he had when I first met him.
As I learned control, the accidental drain on his life force diminished. We were still connected, still racing against an impossible timeline, but the immediate crisis had stepped back from the edge.
Which meant we could focus on learning how to actually fight.
"Distance," Lyralei said, standing across from me on the training grounds, "is an illusion the Veil maintains to keep dimensions separate. When you manipulate that illusion, space becomes negotiable."
I'd watched Daemon shadow-walk. The night I ran away from him, I saw him step through darkness and emerge right in front of me. However, what Lyralei taught was something else entirely.
"The Veil exists between places as much as between dimensions," she continued. "Your mother could compress the distance between two points until they overlapped. She once brought an entire company of allied soldiers three hundred miles in an eyeblink to defend fleeing Fae. This was something she excelled at. Although I can do this too, Lyanna was always a natural at this aspect of the Veil’s powers. It’s part of the reason why she was the one to operate outside of Vaelthorne. "
"How can I learn this power?"
"By understanding that distance only exists because the Veil keeps it in place.
The Veil is the fence that keeps distance separate, but Veil-touched magic can rewrite the rules.
Teleportation is an advanced manipulation of this principle.
We start small." She gestured, and the air between us rippled. "Watch."
Lyralei raised her palm at a moss-covered rock a few paces away.
The moss and stone compressed like bunching fabric.
Then, Lyralei made a fist. The rock crushed into itself, and an explosion sent pieces popping away like fireworks.
The Veil itself had simply decided the distance didn’t exist anymore.
My eyes remained wide with disbelief.
"Now you try. Feel the space between us. Find where the Veil maintains the separation. Then convince it that the separation is unnecessary."
I reached out with senses I was still learning to trust. The Veil shimmered in my awareness, holding everything in its proper place. I touched it carefully, remembering the wolves I’d accidentally erased, the tower I’d nearly unmade.
The fabric resisted. Insisted that fifteen feet meant fifteen feet, that distance was real and permanent.
I pushed harder.
The space buckled. Twisted. For half a heartbeat, I felt every dimension stacked against each other, reality's layers pressed so close I could fall through, but Lyralei stopped me with a soft hand on my shoulder.
"Gentle," Lyralei said, and the steadiness in her voice pulled me back. "Compression, not rupture. You're not tearing the Veil, you're folding it."
I tried again, this time imagining the space as cloth instead of stone. Something flexible. Something that could bend.
The distance between the rock and me collapsed.
I stumbled forward, suddenly falling onto my knees. Lyralei had hopped just high enough to clear both feet off the ground the moment the Veil shortened the distance, landing softly. My stomach lurched and my vision swam, but I hadn’t destroyed anything.
"Good," Lyralei said, extending a hand toward me. "That same principle, taken further, becomes a weapon. Compress the space inside an enemy until there’s no room for their body to exist."
The casual violence in her tone jarred against Vaelthorne's gentle beauty, but I understood. I grabbed her hand and got up.
"Can you show me one more time?" I asked.
She did. A practice dummy across the training ground suddenly crumpled inward, its wooden form compressing into a sphere the size of my fist. Then nothing. The space it had occupied simply closed, and the dummy ceased to exist.
Lyralei’s control and manipulation of the Veil was clean, efficient, absolutely terrifying.
"Your mother preferred this method," Lyralei said. "She believed enemies who threatened her people deserved no chance to reconsider or retreat. I prefer another method. My way leaves a reminder for the enemy."
Lyralei strained her fingers, her hands forming a blade. She pointed both hands at the practice dummy next to the one that had just vanished. I felt Veil magic condense. She separated both her hands in one swift motion. The practice dummy split apart, straws flying in every direction.
I imagined something like that applied to a living being and realized what she meant by a “reminder.”
I thought of the ritual chamber, the mages who had carved targeting sigils into my skin. The guards who had dragged me to cells and bound me in iron. King Aeron, who had executed my mother and tried to turn me into his weapon.
Part of me wanted to learn these techniques just to imagine using them on them. The other part remembered Daemon's warning about becoming the monster they claimed I was.
"What else?" I asked, pushing past the reminder of my past.
"Dimensional sourcing." Lyralei’s expression shifted to something more serious. "The Void is only one dimension beyond the Veil. There are others, without entities, that are bent on dominating our world with tyrannical rule. This is something I excel at, and something your mother had trouble with."
She gestured toward the edge of the training ground where ancient trees grew. The air shimmered, and I felt the Veil thin in a way that didn’t trigger alarms in my instincts. This time, instead of destruction, there was creation.
This was a door, carefully opened.
Green light poured through. It wasn’t the darkness of the Void, but vibrant energy that smelled like spring rain and new leaves. The trees responded, growing several feet in seconds, branches extending, roots deepening. Flowers bloomed across their bark in iridescent colors.
"This energy comes from Thalynward, the Verdant Ward," Lyralei said. "The Verdant Ward doesn’t corrupt or consume. It gives freely to those who understand how to ask. This is how the Nightwood and the surrounding forest were created. The energy you feel, and that makes you sense the Nightwood differently from any forest you have come across, is borne from the Verdant Ward’s energy. "
I stared at the transformed trees, feeling something unlock in my chest. All this time I’d thought my power only destroyed. That being Veil-touched meant being dangerous, monstrous, and wrong.
But this was creation. This was beauty weaponized, nature turned into an ally instead of a victim.
"I want to learn this," I said.
"You will. You must." Lyralei let the connection close, the green light fading.
"But creation requires even more control than destruction. You must balance the power you draw with the vessel you use. Your mother excelled in distance manipulation. I excel in channeling energy from other sources of the Veil. As Lyanna’s daughter and my student, you will excel at both. "
We spent the rest of that session on basic contact with the Verdant Ward.
I learned to feel its presence beyond the Veil, to recognize the difference between its generous energy and the Void’s hungry emptiness.
By the time Lyralei called for a break, I could make a single flower bloom in my palm without destroying the stem.
Small progress, but progress nonetheless.
The next week brought combat applications. Lyralei taught me to redirect magical attacks through the Veil, sending hostile spells into dimensional pockets where they’d dissipate harmlessly. We practiced until the principles started to feel natural.
"Against human mages, this makes you nearly invincible," she explained.
"Their magic relies on elemental forces that can be easily redirected. Against Void-touched entities, it’s more difficult.
The Void has been aware of our powers for a long time and has had time to study us, long before we were aware of their existence.
Fighting them requires the Veil magic user to be advanced in both spatial manipulation and dimensional channeling.
This is one of the reasons Lyanna and I decided we were not ready to face the Devourer. "
“But couldn’t the two of you fight the Devourer together? Between the two of you, both areas are covered.”