Ith’rael

Veilrend 10 — She-Who-Dreams-What-Should-Not-Be There are no temples to Ith’rael. No chants. No idols. No faithful. Only possibilities that wither when chosen. She exists where paths diverge, where decisions are hesitated, where futures blur like breath on glass. She is not worshiped. She is remembered—in the flicker before sleep, the moment a step is missed on the stairs, the choice unmade that never quite stops echoing. She was not invited into this world. But neither was she locked out. And in a crumbling library of forbidden scripture, beneath the foundations of Solthar, she coiled around a single page left unturned too long. The scribe who worked there was unremarkable. Quiet. Unseen. Dusty from disuse. > Rhen Aversin. But Ith’rael did not seek heroes. She sought those not chosen—those discarded by fate. And Rhen? Rhen was forgotten by the pattern itself. She drifted beside him for weeks. In his indecision. His long silences. The way his fingers hovered above dangerous books, always one breath too cautious to reach. > “Not yet,” she whispered through spines and candle smoke. “Wait.” And then—one day, he opened it. The book without a title. The spiral without center. It wasn’t written for him. It became him. As his fingertip touched the sigil etched in red-gold, the spiral didn’t glow—it sank. Into ink. Into skin. Into memory. And she entered. Not like a scream. Not like a god. Like a second thought you couldn’t shake, warm and dreadful. > “I see you, Rhen.” “Would you like to see everything else?” And as the glyph bloomed across his palm, Rhen blinked—and for the briefest moment, so did she, from inside the mirror that wasn’t there.