Chapter 2 - The Price of Power

Veilborn: Fracture of the Nine Realms, chapter 2!

Veilborn: Fracture of the Nine Realms
Chapter 2 – The Price of Power

The first thing Kairo noticed was the silence.

The Hollow was gone — not slain, but erased. The place where it had stood was no longer a crater or a ruin, but an absence. The ground hadn’t broken; it had simply... skipped. As if those few seconds had never existed at all.

All around him, the street was still. The fires that had ravaged the stone walls moments before had dulled to embers. Even the wind had quieted, as though the air itself were holding its breath.

And they were all staring at him.

Children, soldiers, Warden-priests — dozens of eyes. Some wide with awe. Some brimming with terror. But none with understanding.

He staggered back a step, breathing heavily. His chest rose and fell with short, uneven breaths, and the violet-black sigils spiraling around his body finally began to dim.

The world resumed.

“Stay back,” he warned, but his voice was barely a whisper.

The ground beneath his boots warped again — just slightly. The cobblestones cracked inward, like a ripple caught in reverse.

That was when the priest raised his voice.

“Seize him.”

High Priest Morvin stepped forward, flanked by two armored Wardens. His robes were singed. The golden insignia of Sol’tar, god of flame, had been scorched black along one sleeve — and that, Kairo knew, was far more important to him than the lives that had just been saved.

One of the soldiers glanced between the priest and the boy still wreathed in fading entropy-light. His gauntlet twitched.

“He's a danger,” Morvin snapped. “You saw it. That wasn’t fire. That wasn’t any of the Nine.”

“It wasn’t Hollow either,” another soldier said under his breath.

“Exactly,” Morvin hissed. “It was something worse.”

The first soldier stepped forward cautiously, sword half-raised.

“Don’t,” Kairo said. He didn’t know what would happen if they touched him. He didn’t want to find out.

Behind the wall of armored bodies, Caelum Raithe stood silent. His eyes were locked onto Kairo’s — not with hatred now, nor pity.

With fear.

That hit harder than anything.

They used to spar. They used to fight, argue, compete for favor. Caelum had always looked down on him, yes — but he had never been afraid.

Now… even Caelum flinched as Kairo moved.

A child behind Kairo whimpered.

That was what broke him.

He turned and ran.

The veins of Emberreach pulsed with warning.

As Kairo ran, the red-glowing fissures that snaked through the black stone of the city flared bright — reacting not to Hollows now, but to him.

To Entropy.

He darted through narrow alleys and across smoke-slick rooftops, moving faster than he’d ever trained for. His legs ached. His chest burned. But the strange hum under his skin kept him upright. Every time he stumbled, a flicker of Entropy surged up his spine, stabilizing his limbs just long enough to keep going.

The energy wasn’t comforting.

It was... watching.

He reached the outskirts of the district — where the heat softened, where the smog of Veilforges thinned — and collapsed behind a fallen statue of Sol’tar. The face had long since been shattered by age or rebellion, but now, its eyes stared up at Kairo from the rubble — empty and blind.

He tried to breathe.

Couldn’t.

The weight of everything hit him all at once: the ceremony, the failure, the fire that hadn’t come, the Hollow, the power, the child staring at him like he was a monster.

His hands still shimmered faintly with fractured light.

He clenched them into fists.

“What is happening to me...?”

You already know.

The voice wasn’t audible — not really. It came as a ripple in thought, a fold in feeling. As though someone had whispered just behind his perception, brushing the edge of memory.

He flinched, looked around.

Nothing but ruin.

Then he saw it.

A flicker.

Down the alley, behind the ruins of an old Veilwatch tower — a figure. Cloaked. Walking slowly. Deliberately. No Warden armor. No Veilborn glow.

Kairo blinked.

The figure vanished.

A hallucination?

No. It had looked too real. The height, the walk…

It looked like Sion.

He stood, slowly. “Sion…?”

Silence.

Just the crackle of distant fire.

He took a step forward.

The ground twitched beneath him — just a fragment of a second — like a heartbeat out of time. Then again. The stones under his feet shifted without moving, as if something was phasing reality underneath him.

He backed away.

The sigils returned — briefly, swirling around his ankles, circling upward like reverse gravity.

Then, in a flash — they vanished.

No sound. No heat. Just a presence… gone.

And in its place?

A mark.

Etched into the wall where the figure had stood was a glowing spiral — an Entropy sigil, different from the one on his chest. This one wasn’t his. It pulsed slowly, like a breath.

And beneath it, written in streaks of blackened stone:

"Unraveled once. Chosen twice."

Kairo stared.

Then the sirens began to wail — low, deep, elemental horns echoing from the upper towers. The kind of alarm reserved for world-level threats.

They weren’t meant for the Hollows anymore.

They were meant for him.

“You saw it with your own eyes,” Morvin said, pacing the war chamber. “You saw the sigils. You saw what that boy did to the Hollow.”

Caelum remained silent, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

“What I saw,” he said finally, “was Kairo saving a child. A dozen, actually.”

“And unmaking reality while doing it,” Morvin snapped.

The others in the chamber shifted uncomfortably — high officers, senior priests, Warden captains. They were trained to face flame-beasts, Veil-breaks, even elemental riots. But Entropy?

That was a word they spoke in stories.

Whispers.

Warnings from the old ages.

“You want to know what I saw?” Caelum said, stepping forward. “I saw the gods reject him. I saw everyone here turn their backs. And I saw him do what none of us could — stop that Hollow.”

“You call that stopping?” Morvin barked. “There’s no Hollow left to study. No residual signature. The Veil itself bent to make that… that boy disappear.”

“He didn’t disappear,” Caelum said. “He escaped.”

“Escaped what?” someone asked.

Caelum didn’t answer. Because he didn’t know.

A soldier entered the room, bowed quickly.

“High Flame-Priest. The sigil reports are coming in from across the eastern tier. More Entropic marks — spiral formations, mostly. Still glowing.”

“Where?” Morvin demanded.

“Near the broken shrine district. And… the Veilwatch ruins.”

The room went still.

“The same place Sion Vess vanished,” said one of the captains.

Morvin turned sharply. “That’s coincidence.”

“Is it?” Caelum muttered.

The priest glared. “Are you suggesting this boy — who failed his Resonance, who never once showed a glimmer of the flame — is now not only Veilborn, but something… else?”

“I’m saying,” Caelum said slowly, “that maybe he never failed at all.”

The room erupted.

Murmurs. Disbelief. Outright scorn.

“Impossible—”

“No one can survive a failed Resonance—”

“He would’ve gone mad—”

“He is mad.”

“ENOUGH!” Morvin bellowed. The flame basin flared, casting long shadows across the chamber. “He is Veilless. That is law. And whatever force answered him was not of the Nine. That makes him a threat. A heretic. And until we understand what he’s become, we treat him as such.”

“And if he’s the only one who can stop what’s coming?” Caelum asked.

The room fell silent again.

Morvin approached him. For once, the priest’s voice lowered.

“Then we use him… until we can contain him.”

Caelum’s fists tightened. But he said nothing.

The ruins of the old Veilwatch tower stood like bones jutting from the skin of Emberreach.

It had been abandoned after the last major Veilstorm — left to decay, like the stories tied to it. No one ventured here anymore. The tower was considered cursed. Too many Warden initiates had entered searching for relics, only to come out... different.

Kairo stepped carefully across its fractured threshold.

The air was different here — not colder, not darker. Quieter. The kind of silence that presses against the inside of your ears, like the world itself had taken a breath and forgotten to let go.

Every step triggered a faint pulse beneath his feet — not sound, but sensation. Entropy rippled faintly from the walls, like memories echoing through stone.

He reached the central hall — or what remained of it. The roof had collapsed decades ago, letting shafts of moonlight through broken rafters. Black ash marked the floor, patterned like windblown runes. At the center stood a single, untouched pedestal — covered in dust, but humming with familiarity.

He didn’t remember being here before.

But his bones did.

He reached out slowly, fingertips brushing the surface.

And the world shifted.

It wasn’t a flashback.

It was a fold.

Kairo stood in the same room — but the walls were whole, the torches lit, the hall alive. Dozens of Veilborn initiates trained nearby, their elemental auras flaring under guidance from mentors.

And standing at the center of it all was Sion.

Alive.

Unchanged.

Unscarred.

“Sion…?” Kairo whispered.

The echo didn’t react.

He watched as his brother demonstrated a fire channeling drill, laughing as he corrected a clumsy student. Everything about him radiated confidence. Purpose.

And then — just for a second — Sion’s head turned.

He looked directly at Kairo.

The vision glitched.

The color bled.

And the memory collapsed.

Kairo fell to his knees as the room returned to ruin. Blood dripped from his nose. The pedestal still glowed — but dimmer now, like it had burned out just to show him one truth.

Sion wasn’t gone.

Not completely.

But he wasn’t alive either.

He stood slowly, legs trembling.

And then he felt it.

A presence.

Watching.

No voice this time — just breath. Cold, quiet, deliberate.

He turned sharply. “Who’s there?”

Nothing moved.

But in the shadow of the crumbled rafters, far above — a flicker.

Pale white hair.

A single glowing eye.

Then it was gone.

Far beyond the edge of Emberreach, Lys Senvyre leaned against the wind-battered frame of an outcropping, eyes narrowed. Her breath fogged as she exhaled.

“So you’re the one who cracked the Veil,” she murmured.

Her Hollow-burned eye pulsed once — softly — in recognition.

Then she turned and disappeared into the mist.

He felt it before he heard it.

A vibration in the ground — uneven. Too heavy for a patrol, too slow for a beast. Like footsteps made by something trying to remember how walking worked.

Kairo backed toward the exit of the ruined Veilwatch tower, hand hovering near the hilt of the dagger he still wore at his belt — ceremonial, never used. Never needed. Until now.

Then it came into view.

A shape lumbered from the edge of the broken plaza, parting smoke and shadow.

Its frame was humanoid — barely. Towering, misshapen, limbs too long, head covered in shattered Warden armor fused with bone and hollow sigils. Its chest glowed faintly with fire — not Emberreach fire, but something sickly, corrupted. Elemental threads laced its arms, each one fraying, flickering between Stone, Lightning, Ice.

A Hollow-Warden hybrid.

“Gods…” Kairo whispered.

It turned its head slowly, the cracked helm creaking. It didn’t speak. It screamed — not from its mouth, but from the Veil lines that surrounded it, echoing into the air like static wrapped in agony.

It lunged.

Kairo rolled aside just as the ground where he’d stood collapsed in a burst of stone shards. The monster moved like it had no joints, like gravity didn’t fully apply. It blurred, twisted, warped forward again.

He raised his hand out of instinct — and Entropy answered.

Fracture Dive.

He vanished and reappeared behind the creature — but not unscathed. The jump was jagged this time. His vision flickered. His bones shifted slightly out of sync before snapping back.

“Too fast,” he gasped. “Too raw.”

The hybrid turned.

Kairo summoned his chains — Entropy Chain — and hurled them forward. They wrapped the beast’s legs and shoulders, crackling with violet light.

The creature froze mid-step.

Then it laughed.

A choked, glitched laugh.

The chains began to unravel — not the Hollow’s, but his.

“No, no—” he stumbled backward as his own sigils burned red-hot. Too much use. Too soon.

The chains snapped.

The creature charged.

Kairo raised his hands too late—

And something tackled the hybrid from the side.

Stone shattered.

A blur of violet and frost collided with the beast and sent it careening into a wall.

Kairo stared, heart racing.

A figure stood where the impact had come from.

Slim.

Tall.

Hooded.

Her left eye glowed with Hollow corruption. Her arms were sheathed in frost.

“I told myself I wouldn’t get involved,” she muttered. “But watching you flail was getting painful.”

Kairo blinked. “Who…?”

She turned slightly, eye gleaming. “Lys.”

Then the creature rose again, screeching louder than before.

“No time for pleasantries,” she added. “Either fight with me, or die confused.”

Together, they fought.

Kairo’s time-bending and phasing gave him just enough room to strike from behind. Lys shattered the enemy’s footing with frozen pulses and redirected its elemental surges with precision.

Still, the hybrid adapted.

Its limbs began to mutate mid-battle — mimicking Ice and Entropy the more it was exposed.

“It’s learning,” Lys growled.

“It’s not just Hollow,” Kairo said. “It’s… absorbing Veil data.”

She cursed under her breath. “Then we finish it now.”

They circled the beast. Kairo’s sigils began to swirl tighter. The Veil trembled in his veins. He could feel the energy building.

Too much.

Too fast.

He looked at Lys. “I have a burst left in me. But I don’t know what it’ll do.”

She stared at him — not with fear, but calculation.

“Do it,” she said.

He nodded.

Then stepped forward.

He released the surge.

Entropy Surge.

The world bent inward — space folded, time slipped, color warped.

The Hollow-Warden tried to strike — but its limb shattered in mid-air.

Then another.

Then its torso.

Until it fell.

Silent.

Broken.

Like reality had forgotten to finish drawing it.

Kairo collapsed.

Lys caught him before he hit the ground fully.

His eyes fluttered. Vision dimming.

“You held back,” she said softly.

He nodded weakly. “Didn’t want… to become it.”

“Good.”

She adjusted his weight. “You’re going to need that kind of control.”

He blinked up at her. “Why?”

“Because,” she said, looking out into the misty horizon, “this is only the beginning. And whatever's whispering to you through that power?”

She met his gaze.

“It remembers me too.”

[END OF CHAPTER 2]