The Last Veilborn

Chapter 4

"What happened?" she asked. "Did the creature get inside?"

Eryx looked at both of us, and his face had gone pale beneath the dust covering his skin.

"I found the system logs."

"What did you find?" I asked, already expecting the answer to be worse than anything he had said before.

He hesitated, as if he was trying to decide how much information we could handle while the building continued to collapse around us.

"Someone changed the mission data before we arrived," he said. "They removed the original Veil readings, replaced the threat classification, and altered our route so that we would enter through the eastern side."

My blood went cold.

"Who?"

"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head in frustration. "The access code was hidden behind several layers of encryption, and whoever did it knew exactly how to erase their trail."

"Can you trace it?"

"I tried, but the moment I reached the source, the system wiped itself."

"And?"

He looked at me.

"Every record was erased, including the original mission file and the access history."

I stared at him, unable to speak as the truth settled over us.

For a moment, none of us moved.

Then the warehouse shook again, harder than before, and the ceiling above us cracked with a sound like thunder.

"Move!" I shouted.

We grabbed Eryx and pulled him out of the room just before part of the ceiling collapsed behind us, burying the communications equipment beneath concrete and twisted metal.

Dust filled the corridor so quickly that I could not see my own hands.

"Eryx!" I shouted, reaching through the cloud. "Answer me!"

"I'm here!" he called back, coughing violently. "I'm alive, but I think my ribs are broken."

"Lyra?"

"Here!" she answered from somewhere to my right. "I'm with Eryx, and we're clear of the collapse."

I reached for my comm, pressing the device against my ear while trying to hear anything through the static.

"Kael, Maelis, answer me!"

Nothing.

I felt something inside me breaking, not all at once but slowly, as if every unanswered call was taking another piece of me with it.

"Riven!"

Silence.

Then, somewhere far away, I heard a gunshot.

One.

Then another.

Then nothing.

I ran toward the sound before I could think about the danger, moving through the dust and debris while Lyra followed close behind me.

Eryx tried to keep up, but I could hear his breathing becoming weaker and more painful with every step, and I knew he was forcing himself forward because he understood that stopping in the open would make him an easy target.

We reached the main warehouse floor.

Bodies were scattered across the concrete, some hidden beneath broken equipment and others lying in the open beneath the flickering emergency lights.

My steps slowed.

I knew them.

I knew their weapons, their gear, and the way each of them moved during a fight.

I knew who carried extra ammunition, who preferred close combat, who always checked the exits first, and who would never leave a teammate behind.

And now they were lying still.

"No," I whispered, refusing to accept what my eyes were showing me.

Lyra stopped beside me, her weapon lowering as she recognized the bodies.

Eryx looked behind us, his face tightening with fear.

"Caelan..."

I didn't answer.

I kept searching, moving between the bodies while hoping that one of them would move or speak or curse at me for taking too long.

"Riven!"

Nothing.

I ran farther into the warehouse, ignoring the pain in my ribs and the blood running down my hand from the broken control panel.

"Riven!"

Still nothing.

Then I found him.

He was lying near the loading area, close to the sealed emergency route he had warned me about.

I dropped beside him and reached for his shoulder.

"Riven."

No response.

I checked him anyway, pressing my fingers against his neck and searching for any sign that his body was still fighting to remain alive.

I knew before I finished.

But I refused to accept it.

"Riven, wake up," I said, shaking his shoulder gently at first and then harder when he did not respond. "Come on, open your eyes and tell me you're fine, because I'm not going to believe you're gone until you say it yourself."

Nothing.

I grabbed his shoulder again.

"Come on. Get up."

My voice started shaking, and I could hear the desperation in it even though I tried to hide it.

"You always tell me not to do stupid things, remember? So get up and tell me I'm doing something stupid, tell me I'm ignoring orders again, tell me I'm making everything worse, but don't just lie there and leave me with nothing."

Nothing.

I looked at his face.

My brother was gone.

The world around me became quiet, as if the warehouse had finally stopped fighting and decided to let the silence take over.

I couldn't hear the alarms anymore.

I couldn't hear the creatures moving through the walls.

I couldn't hear Lyra or Eryx calling my name.

All I could hear was my own breathing, uneven and broken, as I knelt beside the person who had spent his entire life protecting me.

Then something moved behind me.

I turned.

The creature stood across the warehouse, half-hidden between the darkness and the failing emergency lights.

It was watching me.

I raised my weapon, even though my hands were shaking and I knew that firing would not bring Riven back.

For a few seconds, neither of us moved.

Then it disappeared into the darkness, leaving no sound behind and no trace of where it had gone.

I wanted to follow it.

I wanted to kill it.

I wanted someone to blame, whether that someone was the creature, the person who had altered the mission, or the people who had sent us into the warehouse without telling us the truth.

But there was no one left to protect.

The emergency lights slowly shut down one by one, leaving the warehouse darker with every passing second.

The building became completely silent.

I looked around.

Lyra was gone.

Eryx was gone.

Kael was gone.

Maelis was gone.

Riven was gone.

My entire team was gone, and the only proof that they had ever been there was the blood, the broken weapons, and the bodies scattered across the floor.

I was the only one still standing.

The official report would later say that an unknown creature crossed the Veil and attacked Rhys Unit Seven, killing every member of the team except me.

It would say that our communication system failed during the breach, that the emergency route became inaccessible because of supernatural interference, and that the warehouse collapsed before outside support could reach us.

It would say that I was the sole survivor.

But standing there inside Warehouse 17, surrounded by the people I had trusted with my life and staring at the sealed route that had been manually locked before the attack began, I already knew one thing.

The report was a lie.

It wasn't only a creature that killed my team.

Someone had made sure we could not call for help, someone had sealed our way out, and someone had changed the records so that no one would know what truly happened inside Warehouse 17.

And somehow, they had allowed me to survive.

I didn't understand why, and I didn't know whether surviving had been a choice they made or a mistake they failed to correct.

Not that night.

All I knew was that my brother and my team were dead, and I was the one who walked out of Warehouse 17 alive, carrying the weight of every unanswered question with me.

That was the night my life changed.

That was the night I stopped believing in the people who were supposed to protect us, because the people who sent us into that warehouse had either lied to us or helped create the trap that killed us.

And that was the night I began carrying a question that would stay with me for the next eight years:

Why was I the one they left alive?