The Wanderer Without a Name

The plain had not ended when the Shadow dissolved.If anything, it had grown stranger.
Veren’s footsteps cracked the glassy terrain with each step, ripples echoing far too long, as if the ground itself remembered every movement. Aeris walked beside him, her silver hair dulled by the Veil’s dim light. Ren trailed behind, unusually quiet, his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets like he could keep them from trembling.
None of them spoke for a long while. The silence pressed in, as heavy as stone, as endless as sky. Veren wanted to break it, but he feared his words might be swallowed, stolen by the same whispers that had mocked him in the fractured plain.
At last Aeris glanced his way.“You’re bleeding again.”
Veren looked down. The cut from the shard still burned across his shoulder. The fabric around it was stiff with dried blood. The pain throbbed in rhythm with the glowing marks that still climbed his arms.
“I’ll live,” he said.
“Don’t be so sure,” Ren muttered. “This place doesn’t let people ‘live.’ It just… keeps them long enough to unravel.”
Aeris gave him a sharp look, but Veren couldn’t deny the truth in it. Every step deeper into the Veil made him feel less like himself. The name Lucen already felt like someone else’s dream.
Still, he kept walking. Because stopping meant breaking.

---
They reached a ridge of jagged shards that rose like frozen waves. Beyond it lay a valley darker than shadow, filled with drifting motes of pale light. At first Veren thought they were fireflies, but when he squinted, he realized they were eyes. Dozens. Hundreds.
The lights moved, circling, their glow catching on shapes too swift to see clearly. A low growl reverberated through the valley, vibrating in his ribs.
Ren cursed under his breath. “Tell me those are just echoes.”
“They’re not,” Aeris said softly. “I know these. Starhounds.”
The name chilled Veren. The shapes slipped into view—a pack of beasts made of broken starlight and glass, their bodies shifting between form and fracture. Their eyes glowed like constellations half-remembered. Every time they blinked, a faint trail of forgotten memory fell from them like ash.
“They hunt dreamers who wander too far,” Aeris whispered. “They don’t kill. They erase.”
The nearest hound raised its head, and Veren’s own reflection flashed across its jagged body—except it wasn’t him. It was a younger version, wide-eyed, standing beneath a classroom window. Another hound shimmered with an image of his mother’s face, blurred as if through water.
Veren staggered back. “They’re feeding already.”
The pack closed in, circling. The valley echoed with their crystalline growls.
Ren lifted a shard of glass like a knife. “We can fight them, right?”
Aeris shook her head. “Not with blades. Not with fire. Only with memory strong enough to outshine theirs.”
Her gaze slid to Veren.
He swallowed hard. He knew what she meant. Another spell. Another piece of himself burned away.
The hounds lunged.
Veren raised his arm, words already trembling on his lips—words he hadn’t known seconds before but now felt etched into his bones.
“Elyndor.”
The symbol on his forearm seared with silver fire. Light burst outward, not in flame but in threads—golden strands weaving through the air like constellations. They spun around him, forming a radiant net that flared as the hounds struck it.
The beasts howled as their bodies splintered, fragments scattering into the dark. For a moment, the valley shone with a false dawn.
But the cost came immediately.
Veren’s knees buckled. His vision swam. Something slipped loose inside him, small but sharp, like a bead falling into a bottomless well. He struggled to hold onto it—but it was already gone.
When the light faded, the hounds were scattered into dust. The valley fell silent again.
Ren ran forward, grabbing Veren by the arm. “Hey! Don’t you dare collapse now.”
“I’m fine,” Veren lied. His voice shook. His chest felt hollow.
“What did you lose?” Aeris asked, voice tight.
Veren tried to remember. He closed his eyes, forcing the memory to surface. There had been… a song. Someone’s voice humming softly near his bed. A hand stroking his hair. His mother’s lullaby.
It was gone. He could see her face, but not the sound of her voice.
He forced himself upright, jaw clenched. “It doesn’t matter. We’re alive.”
But Aeris’s eyes said otherwise.

---
They crossed the valley quickly, none daring to look back. The motes of lost memory still drifted faintly in the air, like snow that never melted.
The further they walked, the stranger the Veil became. Towers of glass twisted up from nothing, bending in shapes no architecture should allow. Bridges hung over abysses that reflected not the ground below, but scenes from half-forgotten lives—weddings never held, promises never kept, futures that had never been lived.
Ren kept his gaze fixed forward, muttering under his breath. Aeris whispered fragments of old incantations, testing the air like a scout.
Veren just walked. His steps felt heavier than before, not from exhaustion but from emptiness. Every spell left him less whole. He wondered how many fragments of himself he had left to spend.
That was when they saw him.

---
At first, Veren thought it was another shard-born echo. A lone figure sat slumped against a broken column, his cloak torn and ragged, hair hanging in tangled strands. But when the man lifted his head, his eyes were alive.
Barely.
“Stay back,” Aeris warned.
The man coughed a laugh. It was dry, brittle. “I’ve no claws left. No teeth. You’re safe from me.”
Veren stepped closer despite her warning. Something about the man pulled at him. His face was gaunt, but not monstrous. His eyes flickered with recognition he couldn’t place.
“Who are you?” Veren asked.
The man tilted his head, as if considering the question. Then he gave a hollow smile.
“I don’t know. I lost my name three spells ago.”
The words struck Veren like a blade.
Aeris’s breath caught. “A dreamwalker.”
Ren’s jaw tightened. “Or what’s left of one.”
The man pushed himself up with shaking arms. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you? Every word you cast steals more than it gives. Memory burns faster than fire. I thought I could outlast it.” His smile cracked. “But the Veil always wins.”
Veren’s skin crawled. The marks on his arms pulsed as if in answer.
“What do we call you?” he asked quietly.
The man’s eyes searched his. For a long moment he looked like he might weep. Then he said:
“Kaelen. That’s what I think it was. Or maybe that’s just what I wish it was.”
Aeris lowered her gaze. Ren muttered something that sounded like a curse.
Kaelen’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Leave this place. Before you end like me. Names hollow. Memories dust. A body wandering until even that breaks.”
Veren felt his throat tighten. He should have stepped back. He should have listened. But instead, he asked:
“What happens if we don’t?”
Kaelen’s cracked lips curved into a shadow of a smile. “Then you’ll find what waits at the end of forgetting.”
And in his eyes, Veren saw himself. Alone. Empty. A shadow walking through endless glass, searching for a name he no longer knew.

---
They camped that night in the hollow of a shattered tower. Kaelen stayed a distance away, silent, staring into the nothing above.
Ren refused to sleep. Aeris kept her hand hovering near her spell-weave.
Veren sat awake, tracing the glowing marks on his arm. Each one pulsed like a heartbeat. Each one was a memory he no longer held.
When he finally closed his eyes, he dreamed of a lullaby he couldn’t hear.

---
Author’s Note:This chapter deepens the cost of magic in the Veil. The Starhounds embody forgotten fragments feeding on memory, and the spell Elyndor both saves and scars Veren, stripping away his mother’s voice. Kaelen’s introduction foreshadows Veren’s own possible fate—wandering nameless through the Veil. The tension between survival and sacrifice is rising, with the 14th chapter pushing the trio toward their next trial.