The living sometimes think that the dead have unfinished work. They don’t. Each death is a punctuation, not a pause. The dead have no pulse, but truth has. When you chase it too far, it will chase you back.

  Ignorance is mercy. There is peace in not knowing, yes. But to those who dream of changing the world, ignorance feels like chaos. So they chase truth anyway.

  And the worst of them? They try to cage it.

  But truth cannot be caged. It resents captivity. You can seal it in books, bind it in wards, drown it in silence. But sooner or later, it leaks through the cracks. It whispers itself into dreams, into ravens, into the trembling hands of those who think they’re strong enough to hold it.

  Cedran tried to hold it. The Council will try to bury it. But truth does what it always does—escapes. And it always remembers who tried to cage it.

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  The Veil knows — 11 months before The Convergence

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  The infirmary walls pressed close around Iakob like a cage built of good intentions. Clean white walls, the lingering scent of healing herbs, the soft crackle of the brazier in the corner. Yet he felt more restless now, more than when the axe hurled him across his chamber.

  He sat on the edge of the narrow bed, legs swinging, the bandage at the back of his head already feeling too tight. His fingers traced patterns in the air—small conjuring that required no effort, sparks that danced between his palms. Child's magic. Safe magic. The kind that wouldn't shatter windows or bring concerned adults running.

  But Iakob knew he was no longer a child. Not truly. The hands that conjured harmless sparks now itched for more.

  He stood abruptly, pacing to the narrow window.

  Beyond the glass, Wolfpit Castle's grounds stretched in moonlit splendor—gardens and training yards, the glimmer of the Lake of the Still Moon in the distance. All of it familiar, all of it suddenly feeling too small.

  The bandage pulled at his scalp as he shook his head. Loti had fussed over him for hours, checking his pupils, testing his reflexes, muttering about "foolish boys and dangerous toys." But her concern, however genuine, felt suffocating now. Everyone wanted to protect him, to keep him safe… small and manageable.

  His hand moved, fingers circling a pattern—Headhunter materialized in his grasp, humming faintly with contained power of the dragon scale.

  The Headhunter—it had been sleeping before and now slowly waking up.

  Iakob glanced toward the door of the infirmary that held him in place, then back at the axe. Loti said to rest, to stay put until morning, yet all he could see was the moonlit grounds waiting beyond the white walls.

  He moved to the door, cracking it open just enough to peer into the corridor. Empty. The infirmary wing had always been quiet during the dark—tucked away in the castle's older sections where few people wandered without purpose.

  Without hesitation, Iakob slipped out, Headhunter held close to his side. He knew every twist and turn of these passages. He had explored them during countless sleepless nights when nightmares or excitement kept him from his bed. Tonight felt like both.

  The service stairs led up to a small courtyard between the infirmary and the main castle. Moonlight painted everything silver and black, shadows sharp as blades across the cobblestones.

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  Iakob lifted the axe, feeling its balance, the way it seemed to anticipate his movements. During training with Grex, he'd managed basic forms, simple cuts and blocks. But there had been moments when the weapon had felt like an extension of his own arm, when power had flowed through it like water through a riverbed.

  A young oak stood at the courtyard's center, its trunk thick, the bark pale in the moonlight. Iakob studied it, then lifted Headhunter above his head.

  The swing came down clean, guided by instincts he didn't fully understand. The blade bit deep into the wood with a satisfying thump—then stopped. The oak swayed slightly but remained upright, the axe embedded barely a hand's width into its trunk.

  "Come on," Iakob muttered, working the blade free. His father had cleaved through Baku's scales with this weapon. Surely a tree shouldn't present such difficulty.

  He tried again, putting his full strength behind the blow. This time Headhunter struck at an angle, brushed off the bark, and the recoil sent Iakob stumbling backward. His foot caught on an uneven stone, and he went down hard, the axe flew clattering across the cobblestones.

  Pain shot through his already-tender skull as his head struck the ground. For a moment the courtyard spun, stars wheeling overhead in dizzy spirals.

  Legend. Hero. Pathetic. The last one echoed in his mind with brutal clarity.

  He raised his hand, fingers moving in the dismissal pattern. Headhunter dissolved into shimmer, then reformed in his palm a moment later. At least that still worked. At least he could manage basic conjuring.

  As he sat up, nursing his bruised pride and aching head, something caught his eye—light spilling from windows in the castle where the older stones met the hill's bones. The Council chamber was also there, but the meeting ended hours ago.

  Curiosity overrode caution as Iakob picked himself up and crept closer to investigate. The lower chambers had narrow windows set high in their walls, meant more for ventilation than visibility. But by standing on a stone bench and pressing his face to the glass, he could just make out what lay within.

  His breath caught.

  A small group of people stood in what looked like a preparation chamber—not the grand Council Hall, but one of the side rooms where bodies were laid out for funeral rites. At the center, on a plain wooden table, lay a still form draped in white cloth brought here by the Lauritian delegation under Lady Evelyn's solemn escort.

  Lady Evelyn knelt beside the table, her hands moving with gentle precision as she folded back the mantle. Even through the thick glass and flickering candlelight, Iakob could see her tears falling silently onto the stone floor.

  Grex stood nearby, his face grave, arms crossed over his chest. His usual easy confidence was nowhere to be seen.

  His grandfather Hortew paced slowly around the table, his staff trailing threads of silver light while speaking, probably of chants and rituals. Iakob had seen him use his oracle powers before, but never like this—never with such intensity, such desperate focus. The old man's face was haggard, every line deepened by concentration and grief.

  And there in the corner, barely visible in the shadows, stood Montzy. His usual easy grin was absent, replaced by a tension that made him look small, like a boy shrinking back from the weight of grief around him. A raven perched on his shoulder, its black eyes reflecting the candlelight.

  Cedran, Iakob realized with a chill when he saw the familiar plump hand. That's Grand Meister Cedran's body.

  He'd known, intellectually, that the Grand Meister was dead. But seeing Evelyn's gentle hands, hearing her muffled sobs—suddenly Cedran wasn't just one of the cloaks in crimson, a political figure, or a name in a report.

  He was someone's father. Someone's teacher. Someone's husband, or son or someone whose absence left a hole. That kind of absence that nothing could ever truly fill.

  Through the window, Iakob watched Montzy step forward at Hortew's gesture. The raven spread its wings, eyes rolling back until only white showed. For a moment the bird seemed to convulse, then its beak opened and sounds emerged—not bird cries, but fragments of human speech, echoes of memory played back in eerie mimicry.

  “...the Book of Veils... Convergence in months... someone must warn...” The rest splintered into cracks and murmurs, coarse and unraveling like torn cloth, but these fragments were all the bird could carry.

  The raven's head snapped around suddenly, as if seeing something that terrified it. Its harsh cry filled the chamber, and Montzy staggered as the connection broke. When he straightened, his face was pale as bone.

  "There was someone else there," Montzy said, his voice barely audible through the glass. "The raven saw a hand, like a black smoke—reaching for Cedran's papers then it took something. But the shadow… like a man… but just shadows…it…"

  He shuddered, unable to continue.

  Iakob pressed closer to the window, his heart hammering against his ribs. This wasn't just grief and remembrance—this was investigation. They suspected something. Someone had murdered Cedran, and whatever they'd taken from him might be crucial to understanding why.

  The weight of it settled on his shoulders. The Council's discussions suddenly seemed less abstract, the political maneuvering less like a game. People were dying. Secrets were being stolen. And somehow, impossibly, he was supposed to be part of the solution. He knew it even without anyone telling him.

  A hand fell on his shoulder, and Iakob nearly jumped out of his skin.