Chapter 1
Part IV
The air in the corridor still stank of fear.
His torch had fallen in the flight, its soul-flux sputtering red and dull on the stone floor. The trail was clear—bootprints smeared through ancient dust, smudged by the frantic scuffing of a young man running in too-tight shoes.
Velrona stood just past the crypt threshold, her new host body stiff and wrong in all the ways that mattered. The bones were splintered in places—her right femur clicked with every step. Ligaments pulled like dry paper. The jaw hung at a slight angle, incapable of closing fully. This body could not speak. It could barely walk.
Still, it moved at her will. Still, it obeyed.
The corridor curved sharply after a short incline, leading upward through a carved tunnel of basalt and clay—the original burial passage for high-ranking Veil disciples. Ritual symbols lined the ceiling like a thousand judging eyes, some glowing faintly with residual spirit-craft. Her craft. Once sacred. Now desecrated by time and ignorance.
Her bare footfalls echoed soft and hollow.
She reached the fallen torch.
Its enchantment was flickering, sputtering like a candle choked by its own wax. She knelt, picked it up in her crumbling hand, and turned it toward the passage.
Ahead: the light caught movement.
A figure. Pressed to the wall. Breathing hard. He hadn't gotten far.
Velrona watched him for a long moment. Erlin, the taller grave-robber, was hunched beside a cracked funerary arch, clutching his hand where she—he—had bled earlier. His chest heaved. Not with pain, but confusion. Horror.
He had felt her inside him. Knew something had used his body like a mask.
Now he saw it walking toward him—wearing bones.
Moving with familiarity.
Head tilted just so.
He whispered something. She couldn't hear what.
It didn't matter.
Her steps clicked.
He backed into the arch.
"Don't—please don't—I didn't know," he gasped. "We just heard stories. We didn't know you were real."
Velrona paused.
Real.
She looked down at her borrowed hands. Skin like peeled bark. Fingers ending in bone. No blood ran beneath this skin. No breath misted the air before her.
And yet…
She still chose.
She dropped the torch.
Its light flared once, then snuffed.
Darkness swallowed them.
She moved fast.
The boy screamed.
Not a long scream. Not a cinematic wail. Just a bark of shock, fear, a note of realization too late. She hit him low—her dead frame a battering ram of brittle wrath. They tumbled.
Her left arm snapped at the elbow. Her jaw dislocated.
But she was already climbing him.
He kicked. Elbowed.
A good effort.
Too late.
She pressed her hand to his throat.
Not to choke.
To feel.
To draw.
System: New vessel detected. Viability: 92%. Initiating override.
Warning: Host soul resistance 46%. Risk of psychological fracture.
She ignored it.
Her presence surged from bone to blood.
It felt like being pulled through broken glass—back into warmth, into resistance, into breath.
Then—
Eyes opened.
Hands. Young. Whole.
Lungs pulled air.
She coughed.
Erlin gasped beneath her, wide-eyed, trembling. His mouth moved silently, begging through unspoken words.
Velrona sat back.
She flexed her fingers. Rolled her shoulders.
Alive.
Not her. But better than bone.
He reached for her—perhaps to stop her. Perhaps to plead.
She looked into his eyes.
And for a single moment, she hesitated.
She remembered a child's voice once. Begging her not to end his mother.
She'd done it anyway. Mercy, she had called it.
"You don't deserve this," Erlin whispered.
She smiled.
Then struck.
One sharp blow—knuckle to temple.
He fell limp.
Not dead. Not yet.
But close.
Velrona stood, settling into the shape of the body. It fought her. Softly. The soul beneath it still present—tangled and flinching.
System: Possession unstable. Conscious conflict likely. Recommend memory suppression or host soul fracture.
She inhaled.
The taste of dust and blood filled her throat.
She had not tasted in so long.
Above, daylight filtered faintly through the tunnel's end—real sunlight, not torchlight.
Velrona turned her face toward it.
She would walk in the living world again.
Not as Velrona the Saint.
Not as Velrona the Mother.
Not as Velrona the Monster.
But as a shadow wearing a smile.