Daughter of the Veil

The sky broke open the night Elara turned nineteen.

She was walking home from her shift at the Moonrise Inn, the scent of roasted pheasant and honeyed wine still clinging to her apron, when the stars blinked out one by one—snuffed like candles in the wind. The world fell eerily silent. No owls, no rustling branches. Even the wind stilled, as though the forest itself were holding its breath.

And then she heard it: a whisper, ancient and low, like thunder born in a tomb.

“Elara.”

She froze. The whisper came again, curling around her name like smoke. The road she walked each night—lined with goldenleaf trees and humming lanternflowers—looked suddenly unfamiliar. Too dark. Too quiet.

She took a step back.

That was when the ground cracked beneath her.

A hand—shadow-black and clawed—burst through the earth and grabbed her ankle. She screamed and kicked, but more hands followed, clawing up from the depths, dragging her down.

“Elara, daughter of the Veil. You belong to me.”

She woke chained to a throne room of obsidian and bone.

The ceiling arched high above her like a cathedral turned inside out, dripping with molten iron and hung with shards of glass that shimmered with trapped screams. Cold wind slithered across her bare arms. She was dressed in a simple shift, but it pulsed with a faint silver glow. Her skin tingled with the same energy—like her blood had turned to starlight.

“Awake at last.”

The voice was the same as the one that whispered in the forest, but now it was deeper, more resonant—like drums made of dead things. A man—if he could be called that—stood before her.

He was tall, draped in armor made of blackened bone. His hair was long and silver as moonlight, but his eyes were pits of midnight, devouring the light around them. When he stepped closer, the shadows clung to him like a cloak.

“I am Vaelros, the First Darkness. And you, Elara, are mine.”

She spat at his feet. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

He laughed, a sound like cracking tombstones.

“Oh, but you do. You are the last daughter of the Veilborn—goddesses who once kept the balance between light and dark. Your powers have awakened. And I intend to use them to open the Rift.”

She felt it then, humming beneath her skin—a song older than time. She didn’t know how, but she knew he spoke truth. Her mother had always been odd, whispering to trees, casting small spells, warning Elara never to draw attention to herself. She had died when Elara was ten, leaving behind only a locket etched with strange runes and a warning: Don’t let them find you.

Vaelros raised a hand and dark chains wrapped tighter around her wrists, burning like frost. “You will open the Rift. Willingly or not.”

Elara didn’t sleep, didn’t cry. She waited.

The chains weakened when Vaelros was away. She could feel the pulse of power building inside her. It came in waves—gold and violet, like morning sky bleeding into dusk.

One night, as the shadows thickened and the candles dimmed, the air changed.

A low hiss echoed from the far wall.

“Elara,” a voice whispered. Not Vaelros. Softer. Feminine.

The shadows parted, revealing three figures cloaked in silver robes. One held a staff of woven moonstone. Another wore a crown of twisted branches. The third had no eyes, only gleaming sockets of fire.

“Elara Veilborn, we’ve come for you.”

They called themselves the Coven of the Last Flame. Witches who followed the old paths, protectors of the prophecy.

As they whisked her away through a portal of mirrorlight and smoke, Elara barely managed to ask, “What prophecy?”

The blind witch, the eldest, replied, “The Veil shall break, the daughter shall rise, and from her fire the dark shall burn.”

They took her to their sanctuary: Myrrwyn Hollow, hidden beneath a lake of starlight, guarded by sentient trees and creatures of the Fade. There, they taught her who she was.

“You are not merely a goddess,” said Ysena, the youngest witch, “You are the balance. The world cannot survive without you.”

Chap 2

Elara trained in Myrrwyn Hollow for seven weeks.

Each morning began with stillness—meditation beneath the moonwillow tree where her dreams whispered through the leaves. Each afternoon brought lessons: spellwork, history, combat with blades forged from celestial ore. And every night, she felt her power grow stronger, like a second heartbeat in her chest—radiant, coiled, waiting to unfurl.

She learned that she was not only a goddess, but the last of her kind.

The Veilborn, her ancestors, had once held the boundary between the mortal world and the Netherdeep, a chasm of shadow where Vaelros and his brood had been sealed after the First Sundering. When the Veilborn perished—betrayed by one of their own—the boundary weakened. Vaelros had clawed his way back into the world, one crack at a time.

Only Elara, child of the final Veilborn line, could restore what was broken.

“You are the flame between light and shadow,” said Ysena, her silver eyes fierce. “But only if you choose to be.”

That word—choose—rattled her.

Because Vaelros hadn’t lied. She had felt his power. Understood it. Part of her had been drawn to it, the dark comfort of surrender, the seduction of certainty. It scared her more than the shadows ever could.

One night, while training alone by the lake, Elara tried to summon a ward of protection.

She whispered the words, shaped the sigils, but the magic came wild and furious. It exploded from her hands in a surge of light that cracked a tree in two. She staggered back, panting.

“I can’t control it,” she muttered. “It’s too much.”

A voice drifted from behind her.

“Power without control is a storm. But storms, too, can be guided.”

It was Morwen, the blind witch and leader of the Coven. Her fire-socketed eyes glowed faintly as she stepped closer.

“You’re afraid,” she said. “That’s natural. You were stolen, twisted, touched by Vaelros’s darkness. But it doesn’t define you.”

Elara didn’t reply.

Morwen sat beside her. “I knew your mother, you know. She once trained with us. Strong, stubborn, full of heart. She chose exile to protect you.”

Elara swallowed. “She said not to let them find me. But they did anyway.”

Morwen touched her shoulder. “The prophecy didn’t say you’d be untouched. Only that you’d endure.”

That same week, the first creatures breached the Hollow’s wards.

They weren’t entirely physical—more like shadows wearing flesh, grotesque forms of teeth and bone cloaked in rot. Elara watched as the witches fought them with spellfire and blade.

She fought too.

Her power ignited like a wildfire. She called flame without speaking, shaped light into spears, shattered one of the beasts with a scream that cracked the cave ceiling.

But something was wrong.

The shadows hissed her name. Not in pain, but in reverence.

“Elara...mother...flame-born...come home…”

After the battle, she collapsed to her knees, trembling.

The witches met in secret that night. She wasn’t supposed to hear them, but Elara had learned how to listen with magic.

“She’s slipping,” Ysena said. “The dark god marked her. If he calls again—”

“She is the Veilborn,” Morwen said firmly. “There is no saving the world without her. We must prepare her for the Choosing.”

“What if she chooses him?” another whispered.

Elara fled before she could hear the answer.

That night, the dreams came again.

She stood in the heart of the Netherdeep—black sand, a dead sky, rivers of ash. Vaelros waited there, dressed not in armor but shadows that curled like lovers around his skin.

“You feel it, don’t you?” he said. “The fire and the void. You are both.”

Elara’s hands glowed gold, but they trembled.

“You’re lying,” she said.

Vaelros stepped closer. “You could burn the world and rebuild it better. No more chaos. No more suffering. No more death. Just peace. My peace. Our peace.”

His hand reached for hers—and for a moment, she didn’t pull away.

Then she woke.

The next day, Myrrwyn Hollow was attacked in full.

The Rift had widened. Dozens of shadowbeasts poured through the broken sky above the lake. Witches fell. Fire crackled. The scent of blood filled the Hollow.

Elara fought at the center. A cyclone of radiant fury.

But Vaelros was there, standing atop a spire of rock like a god returned.

“Enough,” he said, and time itself shuddered.

He held out his hand.

“Elara. Come. And I will spare them.”

Her heart cracked.

Behind her, Ysena bled from a deep wound. Morwen was caught in a stasis charm. The others faltered. They had no strength left.

And Elara—Elara was full of it.

She could save them. But only if she surrendered.

She stepped forward.

Chap 3

Elara stepped into the void.

The Rift swallowed her whole—one moment, she stood in Myrrwyn Hollow, the next, the world turned inside out. Color inverted. Time unraveled. She fell through shadow and silence, through memories not her own: her mother weeping, her father screaming, Vaelros watching it all with empty eyes.

When she landed, it was on smooth obsidian, the air thick with ash.

Vaelros waited in the center of a shattered cathedral, black roses growing from the stone, their petals weeping blood. He was unarmored again, dressed in dark robes that flickered with stars. His long silver hair rippled as if underwater.

“You came,” he said softly. Not triumphant—almost...relieved.

Elara raised her chin. “I came to buy them time. They’ll find me.”

Vaelros approached, slow and careful. “They already lost. The Hollow will fall. And you—your power has grown too great for them. They fear what you are.”

She clenched her fists, fire flickering from her skin. “I’m nothing like you.”

His lips quirked. “Aren’t you?”

And then he showed her.

Not with words, but with touch. His fingers brushed her temple, and the world melted.

She saw herself as he saw her: radiant, terrible, divine. The fire in her was not merely light—it was hunger, longing, destruction, and rebirth. The very essence of creation.

“Gods do not beg,” he whispered. “They take. And shape. And rule.”

The vision faded, leaving her breathless. She staggered back.

“You could be queen of everything,” he said. “End the war. Banish the shadows. But only by becoming what you already are.”

His hand hovered near hers.

For a heartbeat, she wanted to take it.

Days passed—maybe weeks. Time in the Netherdeep did not move like the world above.

Elara remained in Vaelros’s palace of bone and lightless marble. No guards. No chains. Only his presence, constant and watchful. He showed her fragments of truth: how the Veilborn had grown corrupt, how her mother’s sisters had turned against their own, how the world above had chosen blindness over balance.

“You think you fight for the light,” he said one night, as they sat in a hall of broken stars. “But light unchecked burns just as cruelly as shadow. I offer something better.”

She didn’t argue.

Not because she believed him—but because part of her wanted to.

And Vaelros… he never touched her, never forced her. But he listened. He spoke of the cosmos, of creation before time. He knew the constellations by name. He played the harp, sometimes, soft and strange melodies that stirred old feelings in her bones.

She watched him when he didn’t know.

She hated herself for it.

But still, when the shadows whispered her name at night—Elara, goddess, bride of flame—she didn’t answer.

Until one evening, she found herself in the black garden again, alone. Or so she thought.

“You don’t sleep,” Vaelros said.

She jumped. He was beside her, silent as a ghost.

“I don’t dream here,” she said. “Not of my own.”

He looked at her then, truly looked. “You do not belong to them, Elara. And you never have.”

“You’re wrong.” But her voice cracked.

Vaelros stepped closer. His hand brushed her jaw.

“I could give you everything.”

And she let him kiss her.

It was not violent, nor tender—it was consuming. His mouth on hers felt like falling and flying at once. Her power surged, met his, twining like lovers long parted. When she pulled away, her lips were shaking.

“I don’t want to be a weapon,” she whispered.

“You don’t have to be,” he said. “Be a goddess. Be mine.”

She fled before she could say yes.

That night, the witches came for her.

Ysena led them through a portal carved by blood and memory. Elara felt them before they arrived, her heart thundering.

They fought Vaelros.

The battle was fury incarnate—light and flame and shadow exploding through the Rift. Ysena’s blade cut him deep, but Vaelros retaliated with sorcery that twisted time itself. Elara watched it unfold, torn between horror and awe.

“You came for me,” she said when Ysena reached her.

The young witch, bruised and bleeding, nodded. “We never stopped.”

Vaelros stood bleeding but unbroken, watching Elara with those infinite eyes.

“Choose,” he said simply.

Elara turned to the witches, to the light that raised her. Then to Vaelros, the dark that understood her.

“I choose me,” she said. And the power awakened.

It erupted from her like a supernova. Gold and violet light blazed from her skin, banishing the shadows, freezing time. Her scream cracked the ground, and the Rift groaned like a dying god.

She raised both hands. With her right, she summoned flame. With her left, shadow.

“I am not light. I am not dark,” she declared. “I am the Veil.”

She closed her eyes—and the Rift began to close.

Vaelros reached for her. “You’ll destroy us both.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But maybe that’s balance.”

And then—

Chap 4

The Rift shattered like glass.

Light and shadow collided in Elara’s heart, a storm so vast it drowned thought. She floated in the space between—between time, between realms, between life and godhood.

Memories flickered like embers.

Her mother’s lullabies. The scent of moonfruit in the Hollow. The taste of Vaelros’s kiss, dark and forbidden. The terrified look on Ysena’s face as the magic exploded outward.

And the fire. Gods, the fire. It wanted to burn everything.

But Elara stood in the heart of it, hands outstretched, forcing balance where none had ever been. She screamed. Not in pain, but in will.

“I. Am. The. Veil.”

The Rift sealed behind her with a sound like a heartbeat stopping.

The war was over.

But Elara had vanished.

They found her three days later.

Her body lay in a crater of scorched earth at the edge of the Hollow. She was unconscious, barely breathing, her hair streaked with silver and ash, her skin etched with glowing runes that pulsed faintly with power.

The witches carried her home.

For nine nights, she slept.

The world healed slowly. The creatures of the dark retreated. The shadows grew quiet. And the people whispered her name like a prayer.

Elara. The Last Flame. The Living Veil.

When she awoke, it was to the soft sound of a harp.

She blinked against the dim glow of candlelight, finding herself in the inner sanctum of the Hollow—her old bed, her locket on the nightstand, a bowl of starlight soup cooling nearby.

And him.

Vaelros.

Alive.

Mortal.

He sat on a stone bench beside the fire, strumming the harp he’d played for her once in the Netherdeep. His silver hair was streaked with black now, his once-immortal body bruised and battered. The void had left him. He looked up, and his dark eyes were no longer bottomless pits—but deep wells of remorse.

“You survived,” she croaked.

He nodded. “Because you let me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

Silence stretched between them, heavy and soft.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, weak but steady.

“The witches wanted to kill me,” he said, setting the harp down gently. “But Ysena—surprisingly—argued to let you decide.”

Elara closed her eyes. “How noble.”

Vaelros moved closer. He knelt at her bedside like a penitent. “I was wrong,” he said, quietly. “About everything.”

“You wanted to use me.”

“I wanted to save the world. In my own twisted way. I thought the old gods were weak. That control was kindness. But you… you showed me what real balance is. What real strength looks like.”

She looked at him then. Not as the Dark God. Not even as the enemy.

But as the man who had seen her fire and not flinched.

She touched his cheek, and he leaned into it—wincing slightly, still not used to pain.

“You made me feel seen,” she whispered. “Even when I hated you for it.”

“And you made me remember who I used to be,” he replied. “Before the void.”

Their fingers entwined, and this time, it was not fire or shadow—but warmth.

The weeks that followed were strange.

The Hollow changed. Some witches left, unable to accept Vaelros’s presence. Others stayed, choosing curiosity over judgment.

Ysena visited often, her usual sharpness mellowed. “You love him?” she asked one evening, watching Elara tend to Vaelros’s injured shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Elara said honestly. “But I feel something. Deep. Old. And real.”

“And what about the prophecy?”

Elara smiled faintly. “The prophecy said I’d save the realm. It didn’t say how.”

Ysena raised an eyebrow. “Dangerous loophole.”

“You’re telling me.”

Elara didn’t take the throne the witches offered her. She didn’t rebuild the Veilborn temples. Instead, she wandered.

Sometimes with Ysena. Sometimes with Vaelros.

Once, she stood on a cliff at dawn, watching the sun rise over a mending world. Vaelros came beside her, quiet as always.

“You still regret?” she asked.

“Every day.”

“Would you take it all back?”

He hesitated. “No. Because it led me to you.”

She turned to him.

“I don’t want a world of fire and conquest,” she said. “I want one of stars and stories. Of love. Of choice.”

He nodded. “Then I’ll help you build it. If you’ll let me.”

She didn’t answer with words.

She kissed him.

Epilogue

They say the Veil still exists, not as a barrier—but a person.

A woman with eyes like dawn and hair like night, who walks the line between light and dark.

Beside her, sometimes, walks a man who was once a god, now just a man who made a thousand mistakes and one right choice.

And sometimes, a third walks with them too—Ysena, blade sharp, heart slow to trust but fiercely loyal.

Together, they rebuild. Not empires, but hope.

Because gods don’t save the world.

People do.

And Elara, daughter of the Veil, is both.