Chapter 33:
Threaded Interlude — Corax
Corax drifted through the Veil in silence.
His shape was simple: a smooth, hovering sphere of black glass, rimmed in faint violet light. He made no sound, needed no wings or limbs. The Veil did not resist him. It never had. He was part of it, in the same way memory is part of thought, present, even when quiet.
The Veil itself was a plane unlike any other. It was not a passageway, and it was not a prison. It did not sit between Nyras and the Thirteen Hells, it surrounded them. It wrapped around both like a second skin, brushing the borders of the mortal and the damned alike. It was old, stable in its instability, and filled with remnants. Spirits, echoes, unfinished things. Corax understood it the way birds understand wind. He didn’t question how it moved. He just moved with it.
Below him, fractured terrain stretched in all directions — floating structures that never touched the ground, because the Veil had no ground. There were ruins here: broken keeps, shattered altars, things built in honor of gods who no longer answered. Occasionally, a shape passed in the distance. Not human. Not alive. Spirits that had lost purpose and wandered in patterns too old to break. Most were harmless. Some were not. Corax paid them no mind.
He had left Grace behind in the mortal world. He hadn’t told her why. He didn’t need to. She would assume it was disappointment or distance, and that was close enough to the truth. But what he had seen in her — in that dungeon, in the blood, in the smile — had unsettled something in him. He did not fear her. He did not love her. But he had watched over her since she was a toddler, and what he saw now was no longer a child learning power. It was something else. Something that reminded him of older dangers.
He was not here to think about her.
He was here to find answers.
There were spirits in the Veil that remembered things long before Corax had drawn his first moment. Corax knew some of them. He had spoken with a few. Most were broken. But a few were still coherent, not mad, not fading. And some of those had seen others like her. People marked by the Void. People pulled too deep. He needed to know if she was still herself — or if something else had slipped through with her.
So, he moved.
Not quickly.
Just forward.
And the Veil moved with him.
The castle sat at the edge of the shifting horizon. Its towers were collapsed, half-buried in the drifting stone that made up the floor of this part of the Veil. What remained of the outer wall hovered in uneven pieces, as if frozen mid-collapse. No banners flew. No wind passed through. But the structure endured.
Corax drifted through the archway without pause. He had been here before. Long ago. The entry hall was empty, just as he remembered. Pillars cracked from the top down. Floors scattered with ash that never settled. No traps. No guardians. Nothing living — or un-living — except for what waited deeper in.
He passed under the ruined arch of the throne room, and only then did something shift.
The room was vast, its ceiling still partially intact. Lightless torches lined the walls, unlit but somehow not dark. The throne at the far end was made of iron and obsidian, fused as if born that way. And on that throne, unmoving for what could have been centuries, sat a figure slouched, draped in mist, and utterly still.
Corax stopped.
The figure stirred.
Not abruptly, but with slow, coiled awareness, like something waking for the first time in a long while. The mist around it rolled back slightly. A faint glow opened beneath its hooded form.
Then a voice echoed through the chamber.
“You wear no name,” it said.
The figure stood now, posture rising with force, as if the act of standing reshaped the throne itself.
“Are you lost?” the spirit asked. “Or are you here to challenge me?”
Corax did not respond.
The figure stepped forward, slowly, a hand raised in warning.
“I do not recognize you.”
Its tone darkened. “But you are marked. You are not what you were.”
Then it stopped.
The glow behind its hood shifted. Silence stretched.
Corax hovered, still silent, then he drifted forward. The pulsing light beneath his surface dimmed slightly, a sign of recognition. He circled once through the air, then stopped.
“I seek you,” he said. His voice was quiet, but the kind that carried without echo. “Not for allegiance. For memory.”
The spirit tilted its head again. “You remember my name?”Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Corax answered without delay.
“Once, you were called Halveir. Bound to the throne of Carris, breaker of the last vow in the north.”
The spirit blinked, or something like it. Its form steadied.
“I did not expect to be remembered.”
“You were not the goal, old one,” Corax said. “But you are suitable.”
Halveir let out a sound. Almost a chuckle. “Suitable. How flattering.”
Corax hovered closer now, just enough to signal directness.
“I bring no threat,” he said. “But I bring a question.”
Halveir folded his arms behind his back. “Speak.”
“There is a girl,” Corax said. “Young. Touched by the Void.”
The words lingered longer than the sound.
Halveir’s form stiffened.
“Go on.”
“She was not born to it. She did not choose it. Yet it answered her.”
Corax paused. Let the weight settle.
“I need to know what she is.”
Halveir didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice had changed, quieter, heavier.
“Then you are too late to ignore it.”
Corax didn’t speak again. He hovered in place, silent, still, then began to shift.
The glow beneath his shell darkened to a deep violet, pulsing once like a breath. Thin strands of light stretched from his surface, curving and folding in on themselves. They wove into a flat disc before him, glass-like, hovering in the air between him and Halveir.
It was a mirror.
Not of reflection, but of memory.
The surface shimmered, then settled. Inside, a scene played.
A girl. Blonde. Small. Five years old. Dressed in velvet. Holding still while another boy screamed beneath her.
Blood. Magic. A smile that did not belong on a child’s face. Then her eyes began to glow pink, and behind it, something moved. Something watched.
Halveir watched, too. He didn’t speak.
Not at first.
Then, softly, he said, “She passed through more than the Veil.”
Corax dimmed the image.
Halveir stepped closer, voice low.
“She is not only touched. She is threaded.”
Corax responded calmly. “Explain.”
He gestured at the fading mirror. “She is carrying more than herself.”
“The Void does not mark lightly. It does not linger without purpose. It wraps around what it wants. And when it finds something that can see it—”
Corax hovered in silence.
Halveir continued.
“It seeds.”
Corax hovered in place, unmoving.
“What does it mean,” he asked, “to be seeded?”
Halveir did not answer immediately. He turned back toward the mirror, now gone. The throne room seemed darker with it closed.
“When the Void seeds,” he said at last, “it begins to corrupt what it touches. Slowly at first. Quiet. Patient.”
His voice grew heavier with each word.
“It waits. It slips past thought and memory. Then it starts changing things. First the mind. Then the soul. Eventually... the body too.”
He stepped away from the throne, pacing now. His cloak trailed behind him like smoke that didn’t need wind.
“And once it’s taken hold,” he continued, “there is no turning back. The host becomes a creature of the Void.”
He stopped and looked at Corax.
“You’ve seen surly the old records young spirit. You remember the collapse of the fractured skies. The erasure storms. Entire threads of creation undone. That’s what they do.”
“The Void knows only one thing,” he said. “Annihilation.”
Corax’s glow dimmed slightly.
Halveir’s form shifted, tighter now. Sharper.
“But this girl,” he muttered, voice lower now. “She’s too young. Too new. She shouldn’t be Void-touched.”
He paused.
“She shouldn’t even be here.”
Corax tilted forward. “Explain.”
Halveir’s gaze narrowed.
“She’s not from Nyras. Not in soul. I can feel it now that I’ve seen her.”
He turned back toward the empty wall where the mirror had hung.
“If she’s been marked by the Void, and she’s not of this world, then there’s only one place left.”
His tone dropped to a whisper.
“She’s from the In-Between.”
Silence followed.
The kind that made the Veil feel too small.
Corax shifted slightly, the faint lines of light around him rotating in slow motion.
“What should I do?”
Halveir didn’t answer right away. He was still staring. Still thinking. But his form had begun to hum, a low resonance, like pressure building in stone.
His voice came softer now. Calculated.
“If she’s seeded... if the Void intends to use her... then the answer is simple.”
His eyes, faintly glowing, turned back toward Corax.
“She must be destroyed. Before the seed blooms.”
Corax didn’t respond right away.
He hovered in place, dimmed just slightly, his surface smoothing as if to hide any motion. The pulse of his light slowed. For a long moment, he didn’t speak, and Halveir didn’t press him. The silence between them was not hostile, it was analytical. Thought measured thought.
Then Corax spoke.
“I do not know where she is now.”
The words came steady. Smooth. Devoid of conflict.
But they were a lie.
He knew exactly where she was. He could feel her presence like a low hum on the edge of his being. She was in Ashford.
He did not correct himself.
“But now that I understand what she carries,” Corax continued, “I will act accordingly. I will not let the thread grow unnoticed.”
Halveir watched him carefully. No sound. No interruption.
“I will return to the mortal realm,” Corax said. “There, I will trace it. Confirm it. Warn the others if necessary.”
He paused just long enough to seem sincere.
“And if I find cause, I will end it myself.”
He didn’t believe the lie. But he said it cleanly. As if he had rehearsed it. As if it were nothing more than logic.
Halveir gave a slow nod, then turned away.
“Do so young spirit,” he said. “And do not wait too long.”
Corax said nothing else.
He turned. His light dimmed. And without another word, he drifted from the throne room, leaving the old spirit behind.
Corax drifted through the folds of the Veil, silent and unreadable. The strange light of the plane wrapped around him as he moved, but it did not touch him, not truly. He had always known he was bound to her, but not through chains or pact. No sigil. No contract. The bond was older, more personal. A toddler had called him with nothing but will. No name. No ritual. Just focus. She had willed him awake. And he had come. At the time, it was curiosity. He had watched her with the detachment of a spirit long untethered from meaning, but the years had changed him too. Now he knew she was not of Nyras. That much was clear. She was from behind the reality. From the In-Between, a place even he had only heard whispered among dying stars. And worse, the Void had touched her. Touched him. He didn’t want to admit that part, but he felt it now, a faint distortion in his being, a hollow thread humming with pressure. He couldn’t bring himself to harm her. He didn’t know if he could. She had pulled him from sleep, and now she stirred something deeper. Was it guilt? Attachment? Or just inertia, too long watching something become what it was always meant to be? He didn’t want to end the world with the wrong choice. But he didn’t know how to save it either. Not yet. Still, before he returned, he had to do one thing — leave a warning with an old friend. If Corax vanished, someone else would have to decide what came next.
Corax slowed near the edge of the Veil.
He hovered in silence, the folds of space around him shimmering with that subtle, patient tension that only this place carried.
He lingered there for a moment longer, not because he was unsure.
But because something about the path forward felt heavier than before.
Then, without sound or flourish, he turned.
And disappeared into the fold.