The torches in the birthing chamber didn't just flicker — they trembled. The flames twisted on their stems, uncertain, twitching like creatures that had wandered somewhere they shouldn't have. It wasn't wind. The room was shut tight. Thick walls. No draft. And yet the light wouldn't hold still.
Blood hung heavy in the air. Not just the metallic sting of it, but something older — like something sacred had been broken here. The midwives didn't speak. They moved quietly, with shaking hands and clenched jaws. They didn't murmur the temple's prayers. These were older — prayers passed down between grandmothers and forgotten wet nurses, stitched together in fear, not faith.
Alaric came first — slick with birth, bellowing like a storm in a newborn's skin. He didn't cry so much as declare himself, a wail sharp enough to slice through the tension in the room. The midwives exhaled, visibly — like that one sound had convinced them the world still made sense.
Then came the second child.
Kael.
He didn't scream. Didn't flail. Didn't even blink at first. His eyes just opened — wide, too wide — and stared at the ceiling like something had already disappointed him. A silence followed that seemed to press against the walls themselves.
One of the women reached to clean him, to wrap him. Her fingers touched his skin for just a brief moment and she pulled back with a startled breath, like she'd touched something wrong. Not dangerous. Just… wrong. He was Cold in a way that didn't make sense.
"He's… cold," she whispered
Seraphina didn't speak. She took both boys into her arms. Her arms trembled, not just from the pain of labor but something deeper. She'd bled before. Lost children. Grieved in silence. But this felt different. Like something else had come through her, something watching from behind her sons' eyes.
There was a knock — soft and slow. Not a servant's knock.
The door groaned open. Aric stood in the frame, rain dripping from his cloak, his boots tracking dirt onto the stone floor. His eyes locked on the twins. He didn't speak as he stepped forward.
"They're alive," Seraphina rasped.
"Both?" he asked, even though he already knew.
She nodded. His gaze met on Kael, and for a moment he didn't move. He just watched as The boy's eyes never looked away.
Aric reached out, stopped inches from Kael's brow, then lowered his hand without touching him.
Outside, the sky held nothing. No stars. No moon. Only a dark veil stretched across the heavens like a burial cloth — the Veil Eclipse.
It would not end for hours.
The first days passed strangely.
Alaric cried often, fed easily, fell asleep in warm arms. He was a noisy, hungry child but he was normal in every way.
Kael was the opposite.
He didn't cry. Didn't squirm. He slept with his eyes half-open, and no wet nurse could get him to feed. Milk from breast, bottle, spoon —it all sat on his tongue like ash. He spat it out and turned away.
Until the fourth night.
The scream turned echoed down the corridor like a wound was ripped open.
They found the nursemaid collapsed beside the crib, cradling her wrist. Her skin was torn and bleeding, teeth marks deep. Kael lay in the cradle, his lips red and curled into something close to a smile. It was so creepy.
"He bit me," she whispered again and again, too stunned to weep. "He smiled after. Gods help me as if he liked it."
She left that same night. They paid her well to keep silent.
But word always slips through the cracks.
Within a week, two more servants quit. Another feigned illness. Those who stayed would not linger in the nursery. Some refused to cross the threshold entirely. Even the guards avoided the eastern corridor when Kael was awake.
Seraphina started walking at night. Some nights, she wouldn't even remember leaving the bed — but she'd be there, barefoot on the cold floor, candle burning low in her hand, standing outside Kael's door. Just standing. No idea how long she'd been there. No idea why, Not listening for crying — Kael didn't cry. But there was something. A sound like chill breath behind the door. Or the quiet click of something shifting beneath the floor.
The worst part was the mirror.
She had covered it once. The sheet kept slipping off.
Aric had changed too.
Whatever he'd taken from the altar that night — the flame, the vow, the emotions — it lived inside him now. He was hardly sleeping. He moved with a kind of terrible purpose like sleep had become optional, like rest was something other men needed but he'd forgotten. His hands which once were warm with callus and heat — which it's were cold now. And when he spoke, the words came out clipped, honed and sharp enough to draw blood if you listened too closely.
But his men still followed him. Even the ones who feared him — Especially those.
They called him Warden now.
Not King.
He didn't bother correcting them.
Seraphina began keeping a journal. Not because she trusted it, but because she didn't trust herself.
She tucked it behind the tapestry in her chambers, sealing its pages with a torn ribbon from her wedding veil a soft, fraying, once white. The journal became a quiet confession where a place for the truths she couldn't speak aloud. Each entry carved out the things she'd tried to dismiss but couldn't anymore.
Kael never blinked when he looked at flames.
The hounds stopped barking when he passed.
Once, she found frost on his window —though it hadn't snowed in weeks.
She didn't show Aric the journal. Not because he wouldn't believe it.
Because he would.
The boys grew.
Alaric took his first steps to the cheers of three servants. He grinned, stumbled, fell. Got back up again.
Kael never crawled. One day, he was simply standing — silent, still, watching dust move through the light.
When Alaric cried, Kael watched him. Not with sympathy. Not even interest. Just... attention.
It made Seraphina's stomach turn in strange ways.
She loved them both. Or tried to. But one of them felt like sunlight.
The other, like the pause before thunder.
One morning, she found herself in the forbidden wing.
The old library.
She hadn't meant to go there. She couldn't recall walking.
Books lined the walls like sentries. Most were crumbling, titles lost to time. She pulled one, then another. Pages fell apart in her hands.
Until one didn't.
This one spoke of eclipse-born children. Bloodlines twisted by pact-magic. Names scratched from records. Fires that wouldn't burn.
And a word that caught in her chest like a stone: Veilborn.
She stared at the word a long time.
Not afraid.
Not surprised.
Just... knowing.
Then the boy vanished.
Not Kael. A servant boy. Young. Sweet-faced. Vanished during the night.
They found his tunic near the stables. Torn. Bloodied.
Kael was discovered beneath the old willow tree, hands folded in his lap. His clothes were clean. His lips weren't.
He said nothing.
The guards buried what was left without asking questions.
Seraphina didn't ask, either.
She already knew the answer.
A letter arrived days later.
No seal. No sender. No handwriting.
Just words burned into the parchment itself:
The blood you buried calls to its own.
Seraphina burned it in the hearth that same evening.
The ashes didn't lift.
They clung to her fingertips like soot, sticky and black.
She was scrubbing her hands so much that it was starting to bleed.
And still, the basin water turned dark.
She stopped scrubbing.
At some point, Seraphina just… stared at her hands. Red at the knuckles. Water murky, rimmed with black streaks that clung to the basin's edge like something alive had tried to climb out.
The fire in the hearth crackled behind her, warm and gold and utterly useless. The castle didn't feel cold anymore—it felt watching.
She left the chamber without drying her hands.
Later that night, Kael stood in the nursery — just stood as stone. He'd pulled the small wooden stool from the corner, it's legs scraping softly across the stone, and He slowly climbed up to the window.
There was no moon tonight. No glow, no comfort just a stretch of sky so black that it looked like it was painted. But something else was there. A thin, pale sliver, sharp as bone, just hanging there in the black. He stared at it for hours, unmoving, as if it were staring back.
The candle burned low beside him.
Eventually, Seraphina opened the door. She didn't speak. Didn't ask what he saw.
Kael didn't turn.
His small hand lifted—just slightly, just enough to point at the sky. "It's coming back," he said, voice soft.
Seraphina froze. His voice was strange. Not wrong. Just… misused. Like he hadn't needed it before now.
"What is?" she asked.
But Kael didn't answer. He climbed down and walked past her without a glance, bare feet soft against the stone.
The candle went out behind him.
By morning, the rain had returned, soft and cold. And in the southern woodlands, two farmers found a deer flayed open, blood drained, organs intact.
No teeth marks. No tracks. No explanation.
Just eyes still wide and black, staring at the gray sky.
And carved into the tree behind it—a symbol that hadn't been used in centuries: a serpent eating its own tail, ringed in flame.
Back in Aetherholt, Alaric splashed barefoot through puddles in the courtyard, chasing a ball one of the guards had carved from wood. His laughter bounced off the stone walls, high and unbothered. A small sun in a dark place.
He just knew the sun was trying to break through the clouds.
And for a moment, the world almost seemed bright again.
But in the high tower, Seraphina watched her sons.
And for the first time, she wondered if the light reaching Alaric would one day have to choose between burning Kael away — or being swallowed by him.
Now the quiet things were no longer quite.
And they (the veil) were beginning to wake.