Page 27 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

The Veil Breaks

The estate is too quiet. It’s the kind of silence that suggests everything important has already been said, and none of it was good.

I’ve been walking for what feels like hours, barefoot across cold marble and ancient rugs, tracing hallways I don’t recognize.

Riven’s mansion is massive, unnaturally so, like the bones of it shift behind your back when you’re not looking.

It doesn’t feel like a house; it feels like a mausoleum built for gods who never showed up.

I told him I needed space. And for once, he listened.

He didn’t even argue when I slid off the bed this morning and walked away, body still wrecked, skin marked from the night before. He just watched me go with that look, like he knew I wouldn’t stay gone for long. Like he trusted me to come back when I was ready.

I don’t know if I will.

Because something’s wrong. And it’s not just me. It’s in me.

The longer I’m alone, the louder it gets. That humming tension under my skin. The echo of something I haven’t let myself name. It’s calling. And whatever it is, it isn’t Riven.

I pause at the end of a long corridor. The windows here are narrow, fogged with age, the outside light thin and gray.

Dust dances in the air in slow spirals. There’s a closed door at the end, familiar.

The vault. And I’m not alone. I feel him before I see him.

The drop in pressure. The stillness. The silence within the silence. I turn, and he’s already there.

Vale.

Standing behind me, a few paces away, dressed in black like mourning is a habit he never breaks. No sound. No warning. Just arrival. Death doesn’t knock. It appears.

He says nothing. Neither do I, not at first.

He looks the same as always, ageless and sharp, the kind of beautiful that doesn’t belong to anything human. There’s something colder in him now. Something locked. Like whatever lines were left between us burned up in the night, and he didn’t bother redrawing them.

I swallow once, slowly. “You following me now?”

His head tilts slightly. Not a no. Not a yes. “You left a trail,” he says. “Even the dead could find you.”

I lean against the wall, arms crossed, gaze fixed on him. “You said the veil was thinning.”

“It is.”

“And you said it wasn’t because of me.”

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. “I lied.”

Of course he did. I look away before the anger can rise. It’s not worth it. Not with him. Not with this. “How long have you known?”

There’s a beat of stillness that’s not hesitation. It’s calculation. How much information to give me. How much to keep. “Since your first scream.”

I go still. Not the scream in the bar. Not what happened with Riven. He means the other one. The one I never talk about. The one that split my throat open the night everything I loved burned away and I fell to my knees, letting something ancient tear out of me .

The one that shook the windows and silenced every dog on the block. That stopped hearts. “You were there?” I ask, voice hoarse.

“I heard you,” he says. “Across the veil.”

My stomach turns. “You said it woke something.”

He nods once. “It didn’t just crack the veil, Lux. It tore it. Screams like that don’t come from grief. They come from blood.”

“What are you saying?”

He steps forward, slowly. Carefully. “I’m saying it wasn’t power. It wasn’t chance. It wasn’t a bond awakening early.”

I meet his eyes. “Then what the hell was it?”

Vale doesn’t smile. Doesn’t soften. “You’re a banshee.”

My breath leaves me all at once. The word feels too big. Too old. “That’s not possible.”

“It is. You are.”

“No one in my family…”

“Then they didn’t tell you. Or they didn’t know. The blood can sleep for generations. But it woke in you. Violently. ”

I shake my head, but I already know he’s right. Because I remember the scream. I remember how it didn’t feel like mine. I remember the echo that came back from a place I didn’t understand.

“You’re not just some broken girl who attracted the Horsemen,” he says, voice low. “You were born to walk the edge of death.”

My knees feel unsteady. I reach for the wall behind me. “You’re telling me I was always going to be this?”

“I’m telling you the veil was never sealed,” he says. “It was just waiting for someone with the voice to open it.”

I press my hand against the wall behind me, needing something solid to anchor the shift happening in my chest. “You’re not making sense.”

“I’m not trying to make sense,” he says. “I’m telling you the truth.” His steps are slow, deliberate, and weighted. Like each one carries centuries. “You know what a banshee is,” he says. “Or you think you do.”

I lift my chin, resisting the tremor in my throat. “They scream when someone’s about to die.”

“They scream death into being,” he corrects, and the sound of it punches a chill through my spine. “They don’t just mourn. They don’t just warn. The old ones…they called it keening. The truth? They sing the veil open.”

I swallow. “I thought they were a myth.”

He almost smiles. Almost. “They were. Until they weren’t. Until the world learned what they really were. And tried to silence them.”

I narrow my eyes. “You mean they were hunted.”

Vale nods. “Extinct. Or so they believed. Their screams frightened kings. Woke plagues. Once, one of them brought a city to its knees when her lover was murdered in the square. Her voice collapsed buildings. Every child born that night was stillborn.” The words land heavy.

“And you were there?” I whisper.

“I carried the souls,” he says. “I always do.”

I shudder, but I can’t look away. “When was the last one born?”

His answer is immediate. “Two hundred and six years ago.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died at seventeen,” he says. “They drowned her in a river they thought was sacred. She split it open on the way down. Three villages flooded. ”

“Jesus. Harold. Christ.”

“She never got to scream for herself. Only for others.”

I don’t realize my hand has curled into a fist until I feel my nails in my palm.

“And now me.”

“You were dormant,” he says. “Quiet. Whatever thread of that bloodline survived in you, it hid itself well. Your grief was...loud. And grief always opens the oldest doors.”

“You said my voice woke Oblivion.”

“No,” he says. “Your existence did. Your voice simply told it where to find you.”

The chill deepens, crawling across my skin like recognition. “And now?”

He studies me, unreadable. “Now you’ve bonded to War. Now the gate is weakened. Now the veil listens when you breathe.”

I exhale slowly. “What does that mean for me?”

“It means,” he says, stepping closer, “you are a living sigil and your voice doesn’t just open the veil…” His gaze sharpens like a blade. “It invites what’s waiting on the other side to step through.”

My pulse is a drumbeat behind my eyes now, steady and sick. My hands shake, but it’s not fear anymore. It’s fury.

“Why are you the one telling me this?” I ask, my voice low. “Why not Riven?” Vale doesn’t answer right away. His silence stretches until it cuts. So I press harder. “Why hasn’t he told me any of this? The veil. The sigils. The banshee blood. Why the fuck is he keeping secrets from me?”

Finally, Vale speaks.

“Because Riven’s afraid,” he says simply.

I flinch, but he doesn’t stop.

“He won’t show you the full truth until he’s sure it won’t drive you away. He’s already let you in farther than he meant to.”

“That’s not my problem,” I snap.

“No,” he agrees. “But it will be.”

I stare at him, breathing hard.

“I don’t need protection.”

“No,” Vale says. “You need clarity. And the others won’t give it to you until it’s too late.

I’m telling you now because you’re already too far in to run.

” His voice is a razor; soft, clean, sharp.

“Oblivion isn’t waiting for permission. It’s waiting for a crack.

One scream. One bond too deep. One moment of surrender.

And then you’re not the key. You’re the fucking door. ”

A silence falls between us. Something inside me doesn’t feel silent at all. It’s humming. Alive. And suddenly I need to see it again. The vault. The sigils. The truth etched in stone, in metal, in blood. I turn toward the sealed door at the end of the corridor. “I need to see them.”

Vale doesn’t follow. He just watches me as I walk. And I swear, as I reach the door, I hear him say it. Not loud or meant for me…but I hear it all the same. “I wish we had more time.”

The vault door recognizes me.

Not in the way a lock clicks open or a light flickers on, but in the way the air changes when someone important enters a room. Like the space has already shifted to accommodate me, like it knows I’m coming. Like it’s been waiting.

I press my palm to the thick metal slab, and it doesn’t resist. There’s no grind of gears, no hiss of pressure, just the sound of a slow sigh, long and low, as the door swings inward without a command.

It shouldn’t be able to do that. It did not do that last time.

Inside, the vault is darker than I remember, not lightless, but weighted.

The illumination comes from no single source.

Instead, the space itself glows in soft, pulsing hues.

Bronze and bone. Rust and shadow. Everything is slick with the kind of energy that feels organic, as if the walls themselves are breathing.

The sigils are where they were before. Still. Waiting.

Four symbols were carved into standing stone monoliths along the circular interior of the chamber. One, once etched into the floor at the center, was the one I saw with Riven. The one he wouldn’t talk about.

Oblivion.

I step past the threshold. The moment I do, the air presses in against my body, like a second skin. The echo of Vale’s voice lingers in my head, coiled around the truth like a blade.

You are a living sigil.

You’re not marked or chosen. You were born.

I move to the first stone without hesitation.