Maerel

Veilrend 46: "The Reaping Spiral" She should never have come back. Maerel had left Dars-Myel in gleaming silver, her name etched into the Queen’s Guard annals—an honor of blood and blade. Now, she returned in silence, to a city gnawed hollow by the Veil. No cheering crowds. No streets she recognized. Only the wind, and the stench of things that should not breathe. It started beneath the old shrine. A spiral carved in bone, half-buried in ash and rot. It pulsed. She touched it. That’s when he entered. Now her body is no longer hers. Her veins twitch with obsidian roots, pulsing to a heartbeat not her own. Her mouth speaks in languages she never learned. Her armor has fused to her flesh, blistered and blackened—plates warped into ribs, helm melted like wax over her crown of thorns. Thar’Zul does not whisper. He screams through her marrow. She walks with broken elegance, each step leaving behind a trail of flickering symbols that sizzle against the ground. The city shifts around her. Buildings fold inward like paper. The sky runs like ink. She slaughters a clutch of Vaeroth’s spawn without touching them—her shadow stretches, bloats, and devours. One of the creatures, a blind thing with a harp made of teeth, whimpers as she approaches. She crushes it with a glance. Its ribs fold like wet bark. Madness is peeling her apart. When she blinks, she sees herself in a mirror that isn't real. In it, her mouth moves differently. She smiles when she should scream. She dreams of Seris. Always Seris. A figure wrapped in grief and fire, standing on the edge of reality, calling his other half back. Maerel does not understand it. But Thar’Zul hungers. The gods are not quiet anymore. They wear your skin and walk in your shape. Maerel feels herself unraveling, thread by thread—but the hand pulling the string is divine. And its name has been buried too long. She walks. And the spiral grows behind her, blooming like rot in bloom.