The Veil was quieter tonight, if “night” even existed here. No stars, no sky, no real sense of time at all—just that endless gray, the fog shifting like a restless tide. It should have felt empty, but it never did. Not with my mother standing there, sharp-eyed, her shadowy form more solid than it had any right to be.
She didn’t waste words. She lifted her hand, the same gesture as before, and tapped her fingers gently against my temple.
The world warped, folding in on itself. And then the memory slammed into me.
Sage.
Her face twisted with pain, her body crumpling backwards as if my voice had physically shoved her away. My own scream echoing in my ears, high-pitched, raw, violent. I remembered the terror in her eyes, the betrayal in her words. How I’d run instead of facing it. How I’d
