A soft chuckle echoed across the emptiness.
“Veil. You again,” Vikarma said, voice smooth as oil.
He stepped forward from the shadows, the void rippling with his presence.
“Aren’t you tired of losing?”
Veil stood still, cloak draped like smoke.
“Don’t worry,” he said quietly.
“This will be the last cycle.”
Vikarma smiled, eyes gleaming.
“You're right. It will be.”
He took a graceful step forward—then, to Kian’s surprise (though he wasn’t there, not really), Vikarma bent slightly at the waist and extended his hand.
“So... shall we dance?”
Veil tilted his head. A moment passed—long enough to feel ancient.
“We shall.”
And just like that—
Light shattered.
Darkness exploded.
The universe cracked—
____________________________________________________________________________
Kian jolted upright with a gasp, heart racing.
Sweat dripped down his neck. His head pounded.
The wood beneath him bounced again, jarring his ribs.
He sucked in a breath, blinking blearily at the bouncing cart around him.
“...What the hell was that?”
Zeyk turned from the front, reins in hand, a relieved grin flashing across his face. “Well, look who’s alive.”
“Debatable,” Kian muttered. Still shocked from his dream.
Nahl leaned over from beside him, eyes scanning his face. Her tone was softer. “You alright? You started thrashing after you passed out. Eyes went red. You scared the hell out of us.”
Kian blinked slowly, as fragments of memory stitched themselves together in his mind.
The Herald. The dagger. The tether snapping.
And then… him.
The cold presence. The voice.
Vikarma.
“Any semblance of respect I had for you is gone…”
Kian’s fingers curled into fists. “He’s still watching me,” he said quietly.
Nahl frowned. “What?”
Kian shook his head. “Nothing.”
Kian rubbed his face, still feeling the ghost of that void. Nahl and Zeyk were quiet, watching him from the front of the cart.
Zeyk finally broke the silence. “You scream in your sleep now? That a new thing?”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Kian glared at him. “Shut up.”
Nahl shifted, her brow furrowed. “What did you see?”
Kian hesitated. How do you even explain something like that?
“Two... people? Gods? I don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “One of them was definitely Vikarma.”
Zeyk grimaced. “Great. Your favorite cosmic nightmare buddy.”
“And the other one?” Nahl asked quietly.
Kian swallowed. “I don’t know. He called himself Veil. He wasnt a god,
he was something more.”
Zeyk blinked. “Veil? Like... curtain?”
“Yeah, funny,” Kian muttered. “But no. He—” Kian paused, searching for words. “He felt... old. Like he didn’t belong. And Vikarma actually seemed—” He hesitated again, “—annoyed by him.
”
Nahl’s eyes narrowed. “Annoyed?”
“Yeah,” Kian said. “Like Veil’s been messing with him for a while.”
Zeyk leaned back, letting out a low whistle. “Well, that’s something. If someone’s out there pissing off Karma itself... might be worth finding.”
“Well we better, stop for now. We all need some rest.” Nahl said.
Zeyk pulled the reins, and the cart slowed to a creaking stop beneath a copse of ashwood trees. The donkey snorted, grateful for the pause.
“Well,” he said, stretching his arms above his head, “our hero lives another day. Barely.”
“I’ll get the fire going,” Nahl added, swinging off the cart in a single smooth motion. “We’ve got goose, and I’m not eating it raw.”
Zeyk shot Kian a grin as he hopped down beside her. “Be grateful. She caught it with a spell and a stone. Mid-flight.”
“You’re welcome,” Nahl muttered.
Kian barely heard them. He stayed seated, hunched slightly, as if trying to hold himself together. The wind rustled leaves, but it felt far away—like the world was muffled.
He slid his hand into his coat pocket, fingers brushing over the familiar curve of gold.
The ring.
Still there.
Still whole.
Right?
He pulled it out and held it up to the light. The faint shimmer of divine gold danced across its surface. From the outside, it was perfect. Intact.
But it felt… wrong. Dead.
His grip tightened around it.
Come on.
He shut his eyes and reached for the pulse of Emotion—warmth, rage, grief, joy—anything. That chaotic chorus that once lived inside him like wildfire.
Nothing.
A hollow silence.
His heart skipped.
He pushed harder.
Deeper.
Still nothing.
The silence grew suffocating.
Come on. Please. Just once.
He clenched the ring tighter, his jaw trembling.
Memories flooded forward—his first touch of the power, the underground fight, the burst of fear he’d unleashed, the divine glow—
Gone.
No spark.
He poured everything into it—his dread, his grief, his guilt, his fury. He screamed inwardly.
Then—
Crack.
A single, sharp fracture rang out like a bone snapping under pressure.
Kian’s eyes flew open.
The ring split in his palm, a clean divide running through the gold like lightning through glass.
Time didn’t just stop.
It died.
The air thickened into tar.
The trees no longer rustled. The firewood Zeyk carried hung motionless in the air, frozen in mid-step.
Kian couldn’t breathe. The weight of something vast loomed above him. Not watching.
Judging.
Claiming.
A voice—deep, calm, final—whispered through the silence like a blade across his mind.
“That power was never yours to begin with, Balance-born.”
“I warned you. Interfere again, and I would make you regret it.”
Kian gasped, the broken halves slipping from his hand like shards of bone and gold.
His chest burned.
Reality resumed all at once—the wind returning in a snap, birdsong stuttering back into being.
Nahl turned sharply. “Kian?”
Zeyk dropped the wood. “What the—?”
Nahl rushed to him just as the two halves of the ring clinked softly against the cart floor.
Her eyes widened. “Kian… your ring…”
Kian didn’t respond. He stared down at the broken pieces in his palm.
For the first time since this whole insane journey began, he felt truly—
alone.
