“I’m telling you the veil was never sealed,” he says. “It was just waiting for someone with the voice to open it.”
I press my hand against the wall behind me, needing something solid to anchor the shift happening in my chest. “You’re not making sense.”
“I’m not trying to make sense,” he says. “I’m telling you the truth.” His steps are slow, deliberate, and weighted. Like each one carries centuries. “You know what a banshee is,” he says. “Or you think you do.”
I lift my chin, resisting the tremor in my throat. “They scream when someone’s about to die.”
“They scream death into being,” he corrects, and the sound of it punches a chill through my spine. “They don’tjust mourn. They don’t just warn. The old ones…they called it keening. The truth? They sing the veil open.”
I swallow. “I thought they were a myth.”
He almost smiles. Almost. “They were. Until they weren’t. Until the world learned what they really were. And tried to silence them.”
I narrow my eyes. “You mean they were hunted.”
Vale nods. “Extinct. Or so they believed. Their screams frightened kings. Woke plagues. Once, one of them brought a city to its knees when her lover was murdered in the square. Her voice collapsed buildings. Every child born that night was stillborn.” The words land heavy.
“And you were there?” I whisper.
“I carried the souls,” he says. “I always do.”
I shudder, but I can’t look away. “When was the last one born?”
His answer is immediate. “Two hundred and six years ago.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died at seventeen,” he says. “They drowned her in a river they thought was sacred. She split it open on the way down. Three villages flooded.”
“Jesus. Harold. Christ.”
“She never got to scream for herself. Only for others.”
I don’t realize my hand has curled into a fist until I feel my nails in my palm.
“And now me.”
“You were dormant,” he says. “Quiet. Whatever thread of that bloodline survived in you, it hid itself well. Your grief was...loud. And grief always opens the oldest doors.”
“You said my voice woke Oblivion.”
“No,” he says. “Your existence did. Your voice simply told it where to find you.”
The chill deepens, crawling across my skin like recognition. “And now?”
He studies me, unreadable. “Now you’ve bonded to War. Now the gate is weakened. Now the veil listens when you breathe.”
I exhale slowly. “What does that mean for me?”
“It means,” he says, stepping closer, “you are a living sigil and your voice doesn’t just open the veil…” His gaze sharpens like a blade. “It invites what’s waiting on the other side tostep through.”
My pulse is a drumbeat behind my eyes now, steady and sick. My hands shake, but it’s not fear anymore. It’s fury.
“Why are you the one telling me this?” I ask, my voice low. “Why not Riven?” Vale doesn’t answer right away. His silence stretches until it cuts. So I press harder. “Why hasn’t he told me any of this? The veil. The sigils. The banshee blood. Why the fuck is he keeping secrets from me?”
Finally, Vale speaks.
“Because Riven’s afraid,” he says simply.
