Page 32 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

My hands, shattered to ensure I could never hold a weapon again or perform intricate spells using voidcraft, rebuild themselves, bone by bone.

Each finger that Sereven personally broke heals.

Tendons reattach themselves, nerves reconnect, sending shocks through me that nearly blind me with their intensity.

Nails regrow where they tore them from their beds.

The sensation is both excruciating and exhilarating.

Death and rebirth sharing the same breath.

Months of healing compressed into moments.

It reaches my face next. The cheekbones shift, reforming from misaligned pieces into their proper structure.

My swollen eye, damaged beyond repair according to Lysa’s grim assessment, throbs.

The pressure decreases as tissues regenerate, nerve endings reconnecting with shocking speed.

For the first time since capture, I can feel my eyelid respond when I try to open it, vision flooding back where there was only darkness.

Down my legs, across my back, into extremities nearly forgotten after days of agony, the silver-shadow energy flows relentlessly, bringing regeneration wherever it touches.

The whip marks on my back, Sereven’s favorite method of breaking resistance, knit together as muscle and skin reform. Each lash, each wound, heals from the inside out, leaving no trace of his cruelty.

Throughout this violent rebirth, memories surface.

Sereven standing over me with the heated iron, watching as they pressed the Authority symbol into my flesh.

The destruction of my body over days that stretched into eternity.

The crystal at River Crossing, tearing my shadows apart, scattering them like leaves in a storm.

Each memory brings fresh waves of hatred so intense they burn hotter than the fever.

Hatred for Sereven who orchestrated every moment of suffering.

Hatred for the Authority that sanctioned purges while preaching righteousness.

Hatred for the hypocrisy of those who condemned magic while harvesting it for their own purposes.

The silver-shadow energy responds to this emotion, weaving it into the regenerating tissues, making it part of the transformation itself. Hatred is woven into muscle fiber, into bone, into blood. Not consuming me, but fueling me. Not destroying, but focusing.

When I emerge from this, I will no longer be the Shadowvein Lord who escaped their tower. I will be something new. Forged in torture, tempered in suffering, reborn with a purpose sharper than a blade’s edge.

The process is not gentle. It is not kind.

It is a rebirth through fire and shadow, every cell dying and remaking itself in sequence.

I taste blood and silver and darkness as my insides rearrange—lungs sealing, infections burned away.

Even my broken teeth reform in my mouth, a feeling so strange and intimate that I nearly choke on the unexpected wholeness.

Throughout this process, I hover between awareness and oblivion. Anyone witnessing such a thing would recoil in horror. It violates every known boundary of healing, of magic. It carries the precision of voidcraft yet operates at a scale I’ve never seen.

As dawn approaches, my transformation reaches its crescendo.

The silver force coursing through Ellie blazes with unbearable brightness, while my shadows rise to the surface, no longer content to work from within.

They meet in the space between us, twisting together in a double helix that encompasses my entire body, veins of shadow and silver winding as one.

For one suspended moment, I exist in neither form nor function. Neither flesh nor shadow, but in between. For a second, I glimpse something vast and terrible and beautiful—the chasm Ellie must have been pulled across from her world into mine.

I see patterns within patterns. Prophecies written in the language of stars.

Celestial bodies that have never known names move in configurations that speak of purpose instead of chance.

The darkness between them pulsates with intelligence, with awareness.

I sense rather than see the countless worlds suspended in this void, each with its own destiny, its own powers.

For an instant, I understand how small Meridian is, how fragile, and yet how significant in ways I cannot fully comprehend.

I see Ellie’s world, too. A place without magic yet filled with wonders of its own making. I see thin veils where our worlds nearly touch, where crossing becomes possible.

Then reality crashes back with stomach-churning suddenness.

Where once was devastation, now there is wholeness. Where torture wrote its story on my flesh, now only power remains. The miracle is complete. Total regeneration of a body that leaves nothing of the broken man who lay dying hours before.

But the memory remains.

The hatred remains.

The purpose remains.

The camp sleeps on as dawn’s first light filters over the ravine’s towering cliffs.

Only the two fighters on watch are awake, sitting some distance away, their backs to me, unaware of what I’ve been through.

Their attention is focused outward for signs of Authority patrol, not inward for miraculous magic happening behind them.

I untangle myself from the stretcher, and rise silently, testing my newly healed body.

There is no pain, no stiffness, no reminder of the broken man I was.

The blanket falls away, and I remove the blood-soaked bandages that no longer serve any purpose.

Straightening to my full height, I stretch, luxuriating in the strength returning to muscles that hours ago were atrophied and failing.

I flex my fingers, rotate my wrists, testing the integrity of bones and tendons remade.

My breathing comes easy and deep. The wholeness of my body is disorienting after days of compartmentalizing pain.

My ring catches the first light of dawn, the dark stone absorbing rather than reflecting it.

I lift my hand to study it. The familiar weight of it on my finger curves my lips up.

Sereven stole it from me while I bled out at Thornreave.

I stole it back at Ashenvale, and sent it to Ellie with what I thought were my dying breaths.

But now it’s back where it belongs. The final boundary between me and my magic.

Between who I was, who I am, and what I will now become.

Ellie doesn’t stir, the silver beneath her skin dimming now that we’re not touching. I look down at her for a moment, studying the face of the woman who has remade me, who saved me. The woman who brought me back from death.

In sleep, the worry lines between her brows have smoothed out, but the exhaustion remains evident in the shadows beneath her eyes.

There’s a vulnerability there that stirs something protective in me.

I want to wake her. I want her to be the first to see the miracle she’s performed.

But she needs to rest, and so I step over her sleeping body, and silently move toward the stream that runs alongside our camp.

Each step is a revelation of perfect function where before there was only agony. The ground feels different beneath my bare feet. The air against my skin carries scents I couldn’t detect through fever—dust, pine, water, the smell of life instead of death.

Crouching at the stream’s edge, I splash water onto my face, the cold shocking newly healed skin as I wash away blood and grime.

I watch rivulets carry away the remnants of torture—dried blood, sweat, dirt—revealing unmarked skin beneath.

My reflection ripples in the current, showing me a face free from wounds, but changed nonetheless.

Something harder looks back at me, something forged rather than broken by what I’ve endured.

My eyes hold a different darkness now. They no longer hold only the shadows and void that are my birthright, but purpose solidified through suffering.

I straighten and turn as one of the guards stands to stretch.

He sees me, and one hand drops to his weapon, not fully registering who I am, then his jaw drops.

I can see his throat moving as he swallows, clearly uncertain whether I’m a miracle or a threat.

He nudges his companion with his foot, and takes a step toward the sleeping fighters.

“Wake them.” My voice crosses the space between us, strong and clear where yesterday it was a pain-ravaged whisper.

At the sound of my voice, the camp stirs to panicked alertness. Varam rises first, decades of discipline bringing him to full alert instantly. When he sees me standing whole before him, he takes a staggering step backward.

“ Sacha ?” Disbelief strips away any pretense of subordinate to commander, leaving only naked shock behind.

Then his bearing crumbles entirely. His knees hit the ground with a thud as he bends forward, forehead nearly touching the earth, in an old Veinwarden honorific.

Tears track silently down his face, and I’m struck by the realization that Varam —stoic, controlled Varam—is weeping openly.

The others rise more slowly, weapons drawn until recognition dawns. Eyes widen, jaws slacken, weapons lower by degrees. One fighter drops his sword entirely, the clatter jarring in the morning stillness. Another whispers a prayer. A third backs away, her expression somewhere between awe and terror.

One by one, they lower themselves as Varam has, until a circle of kneeling figures surround me. Fists are pressed to hearts. Others place their blades on the ground at my feet—an offering of loyalty, a pledge renewed.

“The Vareth’el has returned,” someone whispers, voice thick with emotion.