Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
The Echofae settlement hums excitedly as we make our way through the crowds.
Esmarie leads us up a winding staircase, across branches woven into bridges and walkways through the trees.
Lanterns made from blossoms of living light sway gently in the boughs above, casting soft gold and blue light over the mossy platforms. Stryx walks beside me, her expression unusually solemn, her posture proud, but anxious.
We follow Esmarie through an intricately carved arched door that leads to a huge, dimly lit room, the space created by a cocoon of hundreds of branches plaited together with a large fire pit positioned in the centre.
Around it, a circle of Echofae awaits us—elders or shamans, I presume from their advanced years, their various humanoid forms adorned with markings of gold and indigo that pulse faintly with magic.
We come to an uncertain stop and one among them rises, a woman draped in layers of silken moss and silver-threaded cloth.
Like Stryx and Esmarie, her hair is pale as moonlight, though hers is braided with beads that glow like fallen stars.
Her eyes are impossibly deep, like staring into the reflection of the night sky upon still water.
I feel my knees threaten to buckle under the weight of the woman’s gaze.
Stryx bows low. “Mother,” she murmurs.
“You have done well, sweet child.” She nods her head at Stryx with a warm smile and the three of them embrace each other before her attention settles fully on me. “So,” she says softly, “The lost one returns.”
My throat tightens. “You must be mistaken,” I manage, denial still scrambling to the forefront of my frazzled mind. “I’m no Echofae. My parents were–”
“Mortals?” the woman finishes gently. “Yes, so you were told.”
Stryx’s mothers both step closer, Esmarie’s hands glowing faintly as she lifts them toward my face. I feel warmth spreading through my skull, a deep, humming recognition stirring somewhere buried inside me, like a long-forgotten song returning to my lips.
She inhales sharply, whipping her hands back. “Veyrathi blood,” she whispers, turning to her partner. “Althea, my love, you were right. She carries it still.”
I blink. “Vey…rathi?” I’ve never heard of such a term.
Stryx looks at her mothers in awe. “You mean, she’s one of them?”
Althea nods. “Born of visions. A Veyrathi sees beyond the Veil—not just glimpses of fate like a seer, but the pure threads of what lies between worlds. Your mother, Lyara, was one of the last. She crossed into the astral plane and met your father there, a mortal whose heart was consumed by curiosity.” Her tone darkens.
“He learned of her prophecy. Of the Faceless God.”
My pulse spikes. “The prophecy?”
She nods seriously, and a hush falls across the room, heavy with reverence as she speaks it, her voice turning otherworldly as if the very air is vibrating with her every word.
“When the sky is cleaved and the mists descend,
When light and shadow meet their end,
A child of silence, crowned in white,
Shall rise where two worlds collide.
Her hair shall bear no colour’s claim,
His eyes the storm the stars hath slain.
Through betrayal shall flow the sleeping god,
Through deceit shall flow what the fog forgot.
Two born of both worlds, of mirrored flame,
Bound by blood, yet split by fate,
Together they shall mend the Veil,
Or sundering, end all that awaits.
The end of Velmora shall begin with her breath,
And by her hand shall dawn decide,
To bind the heavens whole again,
Or cast them, fractured, open wide.”
Her words land on me heavily, a burden I never asked for, nor fully understand. But I can feel the weight of it pressing on me nonetheless.
“What does it all mean?” I breathe, replaying it over and over in my head.
Esmarie takes our hands and leads us to the fire, one of the elders gesturing for us to sit. I do as I’m bidden, numbness leaching my mind of all logical thought.
“It means,” says an old man I recognise as a Kaelvara, his skin black as pitch. “That you and another half mortal child will unite, bringing about peace to our two worlds…or destroying it.”
Riven. He has to be the other child they are referring to.
“Wait,” I say, his words finally registering fully. “You’re saying I could end the world?”
The thought is ludicrous, but their expressions suggest the opposite.
Althea smiles at my disbelief. “It could be literal, or figurative, there’s no way of telling at this time. But, if mortals do succeed in tearing open the Veil and releasing the Faceless God, the end of the world might not seem so impossible after all.”
Stryx inhales sharply. “So it is true then?” She turns to me. “This cult does actually exist?”
I tear my gaze from hers to the elders around us, desperately hoping they can answer our questions. “Seers have been murdered. I’ve been working the case with very few leads, until we were warned they could be linked to a cult. They all had a tattoo, it looked like–”
“A magpie surrounded by thorns? With numbers under its feet?” Another elder whispers, her pale skin reflecting a blue tinge in the dim firelight.
My stomach drops. “You know of it?”
She hisses. “An outrage. Augustus was tasked with protecting the Veil, after he faced the consequences of making that godsforsaken deal with that troublesome God. The Memonic Council was formed to guard the Codex of Thorns, so no one could use its pages to unleash that power again. But over time mortals grew greedy. They, like your father, craved the power they lost, grew tired of the consequences of using magic. The council became corrupted, those seeking power forging a new, secret society. One with the sole purpose of destroying the Veil—The Children Of The Briar.”
Sharp whispers and hisses travel round the circle at the name, all of them tapping their fingers to their temples three times, begging forgiveness to the Gods.
“My father…he believed in the destruction of the Veil? He was part of this cult?”
“He believed it would make him, and all mortals, divine,” Esmarie says, eyes soft with pity. “He sought to use you, little one. To open the gate through which that ancient horror might return. The ritual was begun, but your mother intervened. She saved you, though the price was her life.”
A chill tears through my chest, my veins turning to ice. “She died…because of me?”
“No,” she says firmly, pressing a glowing hand over my heart.
“Because she loved you. And because you were never meant to be a weapon. It was decided that you should be hidden, away from the perils the prophecy marked upon you. You were given to mortals we trusted. We masked your nature and bound your memories. Your white hair was excused by illness in the hopes that you could pass as a mortal until the time was right.”
I sway where I sit, my breathing shallow. Images flicker in my mind; shards of light, laughter beneath a starlit canopy, the smell of jasmine and rain. A voice whispering my name in a language I shouldn’t know.
“I remember…something,” I murmur.
Stryx leans forward, resting a hand on my shoulder. “You see now why I brought you here,” she says gently. “You’re one of us, Octavia. You always were.”
I meet her eyes, the truth burning through my disbelief. I’ve spent so long fighting to be accepted in one world, for me to now be standing between them both…it’s a thought my brain simply can’t comprehend.
“There’s something else,” Stryx murmurs, addressing the circle. “Her magic, it’s not…normal.”
All their eyes whip to mine, narrowing as they observe me intensely.
“Show us,” Esmarie encourages gently, though I don’t miss the wariness in her gaze. I glance at Stryx as panic starts to rise, the memory of what I did in our apartment fresh in my mind. If my best friend was horrified by my magic, I can’t bear to think what the reaction of this crowd would be.
But Stryx reaches for my hand, and gives me a warm smile. “It’s okay, show them. Just… maybe hold back a little though this time, something less explosive?” She chuckles, but her laughter doesn’t reach her eyes– a troubling sight I don’t miss.
I look away from Stryx and I’m met with ten pairs of eyes boring into me, waiting.
I swallow thickly and take a deep breath, the air growing heavy as I summon my magic—slowly this time.
Instead of the explosive power of before, I manage to shape it as I usually do, guiding it to my will.
I mutter the words under my breath, and in a single exhale, the braziers and the fire blow out and we are plunged into darkness.
The crowd inhales sharply as one, murmuring to each other in the dark, then slowly, one by one, I use my power to relight the fires, leaving the fire pit between us until last.
Around me, faces come flickering into view in the firelight, and apprehension swallows me whole as I note that none of them are smiling. Like Stryx, their faces are pale, their eyes wide and stricken.
There’s a beat of silence, then chaos bursts forth in the form of numerous angry whispers and hissing curses.
“The Veyne!”
“How can this be?”
“She will doom us all–”
“Blasphemy in the highest–”
“An abomination,” they all chant in unison, their seemingly collective mind united against my meagre show of power.
Panic claws at my throat, my hand searching for Stryx’s and clenching her fingers tight. She eyes me wearily as the whispering builds up, but across from me, an old crone who has yet to speak holds her bronzed, withered palm in the air and silence immediately falls.
“Come here child,” she says, her voice youthful and soft, so at odds with her extreme years.
I let go of Stryx, walking round the circle until I’m standing in front of the old woman.
She gestures for me to sit and I do, crossing my legs as she turns, until our knees are an inch apart.
She takes my hand forcefully from my lap and yanks it towards her, pulling my palm close to her face as she starts to examine it.