Kael's blood smelled like copper and smoke.
Elara stared at the crimson stain soaking through his tunic, her vision narrowing to the rhythmic pulse at his throat. The Veil's voice hummed in her ears, sweet and venomous. "One cut. One sip. His life for theirs. Is that not fair?"
"Elara." Kael gripped her shoulders, his fingers pressing into the blackened veins creeping toward her jaw. "Whatever it's telling you—don't."
She wrenched herself free, scrambling backward until her spine hit the temple's cracked pedestal. The Thorn Pendant seared her skin, its heat a counterpoint to the icy corruption clawing through her veins. Around them, the corrupted children hissed, their stitched mouths leaking black sludge as they circled like feral cats. The Shadowfang loomed above, its smoke-fur bristling, but it did not attack. It watched.
"They wait for your choice," the Veil crooned. "The boy or the children. The knife or the needle. Decide, Weaver."
"Shut up," Elara growled, clapping her hands over her ears.
Kael lunged as the nearest child—a boy with hollow eyes and broken fingers—leapt at her. He tackled the child midair, pinning its writhing body to the floor. "Do something!" he shouted.
Elara fumbled for the needle, still slick with her own black blood. The spool of thread hovered, its starlight dimmed. She stabbed the needle into the Veil's tapestry in her mind, but the thread snapped, lashing her cheek. The backlash hurled her into the temple wall. Stone bit into her spine, and she crumpled, tasting iron.
"You are weak," her mother's ghost spat, materializing in a swirl of shadows. Lira's form flickered, half-corpse, half-memory. "You cling to sentiment. It will kill you."
"I'm not you," Elara hissed.
"No. You're worse." Lira's spectral hand brushed the corruption on Elara's neck. "I refused to sacrifice. You refuse to choose."
The Shadowfang struck.
Its claws raked Kael's back as he wrestled the corrupted child. He roared, rolling to shield the boy—why was he shielding it?—as the beast's jaws snapped inches from his face. Elara's pendant flared, casting a jagged beam of light that seared the Shadowfang's flank. It recoiled with a shriek, retreating into the shadows.
"Elara, the thread!" Kael gasped, blood pooling beneath him. "Now!"
She grabbed the spool. The thread resisted, coiling around her wrist like a serpent. "Use him," the Veil whispered. "His blood is strong. His fear is sweet."
"No."
"Then watch him die."
The temple doors exploded.
---
Villagers poured into the chamber, torches raised. Old Marl led them, his face a mask of fury. Behind him, Mrs. Harlow clutched a rusted scythe, her eyes wild.
"There!" Marl bellowed, pointing at Elara. "The witch and her demon!"
Elara froze. The mob's torches cast grotesque shadows on the walls, mingling with the Veil's darkness. They didn't see the corrupted children. They didn't see the Shadowfang. They saw only her—bloodied, black-veined, kneeling beside a fading boy.
"She's cursed Kael!" Mrs. Harlow wailed. "Just like the others!"
"Wait—" Elara began, but Marl hurled his torch.
It struck her chest. The flames caught her tunic, heat blistering her skin. She screamed, batting at the fire, but the Thorn Pendant *moved*. The chain slithered around her neck, the pendant itself burrowing into her sternum. Agony ripped through her as it fused with bone, its thorns piercing flesh.
"Accept the pact," the Veil demanded.
The world slowed.
Elara saw Kael struggling to rise, his mouth forming her name. She saw Marl raising a hatchet. She saw the corrupted children crawling toward the mob, their stitched lips curling into smiles.
And she saw the thread—her thread, silver and fraying, tethering her to the Veil.
She snapped it.
Power erupted.
The Thorn Pendant pulled, draining the heat from the flames, the breath from the mob's lungs, the light from the torches. Darkness swallowed the temple. Elara's veins lit like black lightning, her vision sharpening to inhuman clarity. She saw the villagers' souls—dim, flickering things—and the Veil's rot festering in their hearts.
"Take them," the Veil urged.
Mrs. Harlow swung the scythe. Elara caught the blade midair, her corrupted hand unbreakable. The metal shattered.
"Run," Elara whispered.
The mob didn't.
She pushed.
An invisible force hurled them backward, bodies slamming into stone. Marl's hatchet clattered to the floor. The corrupted children shrieked, swarming the fallen villagers, their stitched mouths tearing open to reveal rows of needle-teeth.
"Stop!" Kael limped toward her, his face pale. "Elara, you're killing them!"
"They deserve it," the Veil hissed.
A child sank its teeth into Marl's arm. The old man screamed, his flesh graying where the teeth pierced. Elara stumbled forward, her body moving without consent. She seized the child, her corrupted hand closing around its throat.
"Feed," the Veil commanded.
Black tendrils sprouted from Elara's palm, burrowing into the child's skin. It thrashed, then stilled as the corruption drained from its body—into hers. The child's eyes cleared, its stitches dissolving, before it went limp.
Dead...
Elara recoiled, dropping the small body. "What did I do?"
"You saved it from the Unseen," the Veil said. "A mercy."
"Elara!" Kael grabbed her arm. "We have to go. Now."
The remaining villagers fled, dragging Marl and Mrs. Harlow. The Shadowfang melted into the shadows, but not before locking eyes with Elara. "We will meet again, Weaver," it seemed to say.
They fled into the woods, dawn a distant rumor. Elara's legs gave out halfway to the stone wall. She collapsed against an oak, her body shuddering as the pendant's thorns retracted, leaving jagged wounds.
Kael tore his tunic, pressing fabric to her chest. "You're burning up."
"It's the corruption," she rasped. "It's… changing me."
He hesitated. "Can you control it?"
"I don't know." She stared at her hand—the skin now charcoal, the nails claw-like. "I killed that child, Kael. I drained it."
"It was already dead," he said fiercely. "You saw its eyes."
"That's not the point!" She shoved him back. "The Veil—it's not just a force. It's using me. And I let it."
Kael sat beside her, his shoulder warm against hers. "Then we find another way."
"There is no other way." She pulled her mother's journal from her satchel, its pages bloodstained. "The answers are here. I just… I can't read them."
He took the journal, squinting at Lira's frantic script. "Most of it's gibberish. But here—" He pointed to a sketch of a thorn-circled well. "This symbol. It's carved into the old well in the village square."
Elara stiffened. "The well that went dry the day I cut my hand."
"You think it's connected?"
"Everything's connected." She stood, swaying. "We have to go back."
Kael stared at her. "They'll kill you on sight."
"Then I'll die solving this."
They reached the village by midnight.
Thorn Hollow lay silent, windows shuttered, the square lit only by the moon. The old well stood at its center, its stones mossy and cracked. Elara's pendant warmed as they approached, its glow reflecting off something metallic in the well's depths.
"Give me the rope," she whispered.
Kael secured a frayed line to a post, lowering her into the darkness. The well air stank of decay and wet iron. Her boots hit water—a shallow pool, ankle-deep. The pendant's light revealed symbols carved into the walls: thorns, veils, and a woman's face with empty eyes.
"Here lies the First Weaver," the Veil murmured. "She who bled to birth me."
Elara's breath caught. At the bottom lay a skeleton, its bony fingers curled around a rusted blade. A blade identical to Kael's dagger.
"You found it," Kael called down.
"Not it. Her." Elara pried the blade free. The moment she touched it, visions erupted.
...
A woman knelt in the meadow, her hands bloodied. The Veil stretched above her, pristine and golden. But the shadows beneath it writhed, hungry. "I cannot hold them," she wept. "The Unseen are too strong."
A man approached—Kael's face, but older, harder. He pressed a dagger into her hands. "Then bind them. Use my blood. Use our child's."
The woman screamed as he sliced her palm. "No! I won't sacrifice her!"
"You must," he said. "Or we all die."
The child—a girl with Elara's eyes—reached for her mother. The Veil trembled, and the First Weaver plunged the dagger into her own heart. "I choose me," she gasped. "Let the Veil take me. Let my daughter live."
The Veil drank her blood, and the Unseen howled.
...
Elara resurfaced, gasping. "The First Weaver was your ancestor. And mine."
Kael paled. "What?"
"The Veil was born from a sacrifice. A mother's choice." She climbed out, clutching the dagger. "But the Unseen never forgot. They want revenge."
"How do you know?"
"Because they're here."
Figures emerged from the shadows. Not villagers. Not Shadowfangs.
People with gray skin and stitched mouths.
The corrupted children. And leading them—Mrs. Harlow, her eyes hollow, her lips sewn shut with black thread.
END OF CHAPTER 4
Next: The corrupted villagers force Elara and Kael into the heart of the Whispering Woods, where the Unseen's true avatar awaits—and the line between salvation and damnation blurs.