Chapter 2
AMARIA
I licked the last of the sugar from my thumb, already turning back toward the alley's mouth—toward smoke, stone, and whatever waited in the dark. Some girls spent their sugar on kisses. I spent mine on buns. Safer that way.
Serenya's voice came quiet behind me.
"You don't know how to stop loving the wrong things, Amaria."
I swallowed, eyes fixed on the split stone at my feet. She wasn't wrong.
"But one day, that will save us."
My eyes snapped to hers. Warmth spreading in my chest. Sometimes... I could swear, the strongest medicine is a friend's faith in you.
I glanced at the bell tower. Just past the eighth mark. Two hours to dusk. Plenty of time, if nothing else went wrong. So, no time at all.
Smoke curled in slow ribbons from the spires—sweet with burnt myrrh, bitter beneath it. Iron, maybe. Or blood. It clung to my tongue, erasing the last of the cinnamon.
The satchel thudded against my hip. Dull and traitorous.
A reminder of what we carried. Of what we'd already paid to get it. The Mark-Eater balm.
Not in coin or favors. But memory. One of Serenya's.
She never told me which and I knew better than to ask.
The only thing I knew for sure was that she flinched when certain rituals were performed. Rites she once had full access to, now lost to buy a chance we might never use.
The little vials of balm couldn't help me.
Not with what I carried. The balm could blur a single mark: one clean signature on the skin.
But mine wasn't clean. Something deeper stirred beneath the amulet as if it could feel how close we were to the Sorting, a pull at the base of my sternum that had nothing to do with the Luminar light I wore on the outside.
I shoved it down. Held it there. It never stayed down for long.
She stepped close and reached into the pouch, fingers rooting through its contents.
She didn't pull out the balm. Just a sprig of Hearthsage, wilted, but scent still acute.
One of her temple things, meant to calm the nerves.
She tucked it behind my ear without looking at me—like I'd forget it was a blessing if she made it seem like nothing.
I inhaled, letting the Hearthsage do its work. Four streets. Two more crossings. Almost there. The gods could give me that much. They owed me more, but I'd settle.
Then—
My breath fogged once. Then didn't. The air shifted. Thickened. Watching.
My skin prickled. A rhythm had changed. I didn't know what. But my body moved on instinct. Rhain. The boy. The mark. The risk. I held them firm and kept moving.
Three more streets...
My balance tipped forward, like I was being pulled by an unseen force.
My mark stirred—soft at first, then firm.
Threads of magic tugged with a deep, rhythmic pull at my core. I froze, cloak stirring around my ankles. Serenya touched my arm.
“Something's coming," she murmured. I nodded, our heads turning in unison towards the gates.
Then the sound came—
Not a bell or a shout—
The horn. Hollow. Final.
It split the hush like a curse through prayer.
The city gates screamed as they opened, the sound of stone yielding to what it was never meant to hold.
Velmyra's ancient doors heaved apart, the metal grinding on stone.
My legs should've moved, but didn't. I was nailed in place, like a saint pinned down before her miracle could rise. I knew what came next. Every child raised in the inner quarters did. You didn't mistake the sound of the gates. Or what followed it.
And then they emerged.
The Hunters.
The horn. My chest clenched. That sound only meant one thing: the Hunters had returned from the Veil rupture scout. And if they were here, the fracture had gotten worse.
Every time Hunters rode back through those gates, the Crown cracked down.
Tighter sweeps. Faster Sortings. Shadowmarked dragged to the square before their families could say goodbye—because nothing soothed a frightened city like a scapegoat.
My hand went to my satchel. We were on schedule five minutes ago. I wasn't sure we still were.
The crowd peeled back, pressing into doorways and pulling children close, leaving the main road bare. We knew better than to stand in the path of what came through those gates.
Serenya met my gaze and we rushed to crouch behind the wheel of an overturned cart, the wood splintered and slick beneath my palms, iron rim warm from the day's heat.
Through the broken spokes, I saw the riders emerging, cloaks ash-drenched, horses foam-streaked and quaking. The animals stumbled forward, ridden too hard for too long, flanks spasming. Eyes wide, their hooves scraped over scorched flagstones, chipped where old warding runes had faded to nothing.
The riders were worse off. Their leathers were streaked with blood gone black at the seams, crusted mud flaking as they moved.
Even their blades looked weary—dulled not by miles, but by a corruption that didn't wash off.
A scabbard swung low as one dismounted. The scent of iron lingered, faint but stubborn.
I crouched lower, the sweat cooling along the back of my neck.
They weren't marked by grime alone—but by a stillness that only follows the unnatural.
At their front rode a female with a moon-white braid and a gauntlet scorched to ruin, blackened metal still clinging to her wrist. She dismounted in one ripple-smooth motion, urgency radiating off her.
Dust kicked up as she landed. The captain stepped forward from the gate, braced and tense for the news from the Hunters.
I needed to hear what storm she carried.
Serenya met my eye and I raised two fingers to my lips, then motioned forward.
Stupid, probably. Eavesdropping on Hunters ten feet from a gate full of Enforcers.
But stupid was how we'd survived this long, so why stop now?
We kept hidden, slipping between carts and tethered horses. Every bootfall placed with care.
Then—
A clipped voice. "Well?"
The captain was in crown-blue and gold-threaded regalia. He stood beside that dead brazier like he expected it to light itself for him.
The lead Hunter pulled a scroll from her saddlebags. Her voice rasped, deep and scarred.
“The entire city, Sir. Halemar vanished at dusk and returned at dawn. There were no signs of battle, no scorch marks, or bloody trails... They just... vanished."
She pinned him with her steel-dark gaze—
"And then reappeared. They were whole, breathing—and wrong."
Serenya's hand found mine. "That's near Roen's Hollow," she whispered. Her composure cracking. Near home. Two days' ride from here. One, if you didn't stop. If the rupture reached it...
But the Hunter spoke again.
"The mist from the Veil fracture moved."
The world went still.
A prayer banner twisted once in a window above. Then stilled—its scripture unreadable in the smoky air.
The mist wasn't just bleeding through the Veil. It was moving—with intent.
"They've started calling it—what's leaking through the rupture—the Nullatheon," the Hunter continued.
My stomach cramped. I turned to Serenya. "It's getting closer," I said flatly.
The Nullatheon was spreading. Not just north. Not just through abandoned shrines and camps. It was moving inward.
It was getting closer to home, to us, and we were running out of time.
My hand clenched around Serenya's fingers. Her palm was cold and slick, her grip bruising, and when our eyes met I couldn't tell whose fear it was. Only that it was real and rising.
The captain's voice continued:
"And the people?"
"Alive but bewildered. They had no memory of what passed. We watched them vanish. We waited. We watched them return. And they looked at us like it had never happened," the Hunter responded solemnly.
His eyes shifted toward the temple spires like the gods owed him a briefing.
"Shadowmark infection?" he asked.
There it was. The reflex. Something goes wrong, blame the dark marks. Every time.
Her eyes widened for a split second. Her reply came too fast.
"No."
Then slower, like a correction. Certainty caged behind careful teeth.
"Possibly. But… no corrupted sigils or inverted light." She hesitated. "Nothing visible."
Smart lady. She knew what she'd seen, and she knew what would happen if she said it out loud. I respected that. Didn't trust it. But respected it.
My knees scraped into the cobblestones. I shifted my weight, slow, careful, and the barrel groaned against my shoulder. Serenya's fingers dug harder into my wrist.
"Then they're lying. Or cursed."
He snapped his fingers, and a scribe shuffled forward, ink-stained and pale, scroll already unfurled.
"Get word to the Square of Names," the captain said. "The Sorting begins now. Every child of age—accounted for before the last bell."
The scribe blinked. "Sir, the Sorting isn't scheduled until—"
"I don't care when it was scheduled," he hissed.
A bead of sweat slid down the back of my neck and snagged in my collar. The barrel radiated the day's heat onto my face. I pressed closer anyway.
"If the Nullatheon is moving with intent, we cannot have unsorted marks walking free in this city. Every shadowmarked child is a crack in the wall. A conduit. You want to wait until dusk to find out which ones the fracture can reach us through?"
A conduit. That's what they called us. Never children, never people. Just cracks to be sealed.
He turned back to the Hunter. "You said the mist moved. Did it move toward populated centers or outposts?"
"Centers," she said quietly. "Every time."
"Then we sort them now. Separate them. Contain the risk before the risk becomes a body count." He gestured sharply at the scribe. "Go."
Serenya went rigid beside me.
The scribe went.
My blood turned to ice. Two hours. We'd had two hours. And a male with a title and a convenient suspicion just burned them to nothing.
I looked at Serenya. Her face had gone white. She was already doing the math—same as me. The boy. The balm. The distance still between us and his door.
We didn't need to speak. We moved. Fast, ducking back through the carts and tethered horses the way we'd come. Serenya caught my sleeve, pulling me past a knot of onlookers too stunned to move.
"Did you hear them?" she hissed as we cleared the last wagon. "They'll call it corruption before they dare blame the Veil's fracture."
I ground my teeth and gripped the handle of one of my daggers. They always did. Blame whatever suited their agenda. Cowards dress fear as doctrine.
I glanced back—just once—toward the horizon.
The temperature plummeted and the wind snapped my hair back.
And I saw it.
The Nullatheon. A wall of mist, towering, pale, and alive. It didn't drift like weather. It pulsed—folding in and out, like lungs woven from fog. And for one suspended second, I couldn't tell if I was breathing it in—or if it was breathing me in. Beautiful. The worst things always were.
My Mark bloomed in answer. Aware. Straining, it recognized what was out there and wanted to answer.
I tore my gaze away. Not now. A boy's life was hanging on how fast I could run.
But the feeling didn't fade. And somewhere beneath the panic and the mission and the pounding of my boots on stone—I knew.
The Veil wasn't just watching. It was waiting.
And it already knew my name.