Veil-walking
"Breathe in," Doya said from across me. "Now exhale."
Cold air filled my lungs, sharp and biting. I released it slowly, watching my breath fog between us. The wind had calmed, but the air still carried the sting of frost. Snow crunched faintly beneath my boots as I shifted my stance.
He had been preparing me for this mentally. According to him, veil walking was not about force. It was about control.
We remained near the corner of the ice wall where we had spent the night. Since I would be veil-walking us back to the Temple, there was no need to travel further.
"Imagine the stele over there," he instructed, pointing toward the stone marker standing at a distance from us. "It doesn't have to be perfect. Just close enough that your mind recognises it."
I closed my eyes.
The wind brushed against my face. I could still smell damp stone and frozen earth. I pictured the stele, half buried in snow, the grooves of its carvings, the strange symbols etched deep into its surface. I imagined the frost clinging to its edges. The silence surrounding it.
"Good," Doya said softly. "Now call on the veil."
My brows tightened. "I don't know how."
"Think about leaving this place," he said, his voice steady, grounding. "Think about stepping from here to there. Draw the veil toward you. Do not chase it. Let it respond."
I swallowed, then I imagined absence. The absence of this place. The shift. The in-between.
My pulse began to quicken.
"Channel your power," Doya added quietly.
I reached inward.
The energy inside me stirred, warmer than the air around us. It flickered beneath my ribs, like embers disturbed by breath. I tried to gather it, not forcefully, but deliberately. My fingertips tingled. A faint hum began in my ears, low and distant.
I thought about the stele again, the snow, stone and symbols.
Then something shifted.
The air around me thickened, like invisible fabric brushing against my skin. The space before me seemed to blur at the edges, as though reality itself had begun to soften. The world felt thinner. The hum grew louder.
The cold no longer touched me the same way. Sound dulled. Even the wind seemed distant, as though I were standing behind glass.
"I feel something," I whispered.
"Do not be afraid of it," Doya said. "Step into it."
I leaned into the sensation, letting my weight shift forward, letting the hum swallow me—
And then suddenly it snapped.
The pressure vanished in an instant. The cold rushed back over my skin like icy water. Sound crashed into me, the wind howling.
I stumbled slightly with breath catching in my throat.
The veil was gone. Completely.
"What happened?" Doya asked sharply.
"I don't know," I said, still trying to steady my breathing. "It just… stopped. The hum, the thinning, everything. I felt it. It was right there but it stopped."
My fingers were still tingling, but the warmth inside me had retreated, shrinking back into something quiet and unreachable.
For a brief second, I thought I had imagined it all.
"Okay, it's normal," Doya assured me gently.
Kumbuye sat by a nearby tree, watching with a sharp, unblinking focus.
"Let's try again," Doya said. "Exactly as I told you."
I nodded.
I steadied my breathing. Inhale. Exhale. I pictured the stele again, the carved symbols, the frost clinging to its edges. I reached inward, searching for that warmth beneath my ribs.
"Focus," Doya said calmly. "Do not let your mind wander."
I gathered the power and pulled.
The hum returned, stronger this time. The air thinned rapidly. The world began to blur at the edges—
Then the veil swallowed me whole.
Everything vanished. There was no snow, no wind, no sound.
I was suspended in something that wasn't darkness and wasn't light. It was absence. A vast, suffocating in-between. I tried to move forward but I couldn't.
I felt stuck between where I had been and where I had meant to go. My body did not belong to me. My feet touched nothing. My lungs expanded, but I could not feel air.
Panic surged within me. It felt like I was nowhere, trapped in the space that holds places together.
"Doya?" I tried to call but no sound left my mouth.
The silence was total.
The limbo pressed tighter around me, squeezing and pulling at my edges as though trying to unmake me.
Then suddenly, cold slammed into me. Sound crashed back. Gravity returned all at once.
I hit the ground hard.
Pain exploded through my body. Not sharp in one place, but everywhere at once. Like thousands of tiny needles piercing through my muscle and bone. I had no wounds, no blood, but it felt as though I had been torn apart and forced back together incorrectly.
"Dana!" Doya's voice cut through the haze.
My vision swam. I wasn't where I had started.
I had crossed.
Kumbuye stood upright now, alarm flashing across his face.
"Are you alright?" Doya asked, rushing toward me and grabbing my arm to help me up.
The moment his skin touched mine, pain shot through me again. I winced sharply.
"I thought…" My voice trembled as I finally forced the words out. "I thought I was lost."
"You weren't," Doya said, a proud warmth in his voice. "You did it, Dana. You veil-walked at will."
Kumbuye remained at the far end, watching quietly, his expression unreadable.
"Let's try again," Doya continued, pointing toward Kumbuye. "This time, you'll cross to him. Are you ready?"
I shook my head immediately.
The memory of that in-between still clung to me. The silence. The absence. The feeling of being stretched into nothing.
"I don't want to go through that again," I admitted.
Whenever Doya had taken me through the veil, I had felt nothing. Just movement. A shift in space. Even the first time I had gone through the veil with Kumbuye, I was the one stepping through, I was the key, but it had been easy. It had felt swift, smooth, like moving from one place to another without resistance. But this… this was different.
"The first time I walked through the veil wasn't like this," I said, unease threading through my voice.
"Fear and instinct carried you then," Doya replied calmly. "That was different. The veil responded to urgency, not intention." He stepped closer, lowering his tone. "What you're doing now is deliberate. The veil is more demanding than you realise, and your body hasn't adapted to it yet."
"Did you always feel that?" I asked. "That emptiness?"
He shook his head slowly. "At the beginning, yes. During training, it felt exactly like that. Like being torn apart and held together at the same time." A faint, distant smile crossed his face. "Over time, it became easier. It still drained me. It always will. But the pain lessened."
He studied me carefully.
"The first time you crossed, fear dulled the cost. Your mind was focused on survival, so your body ignored the toll. Now there's no fear driving you forward. Only focus. So you will feel everything."
The truth of it settled heavily in my chest.
My shoulders slumped slightly.
"It will get better," he added gently.
I searched his face, trying to decide whether I believed him.
The ache still pulsed through my body, faint but persistent, like a reminder of where I had just been.
I forced myself to stand, brushing snow from my clothes with unsteady hands. My limbs felt heavier than they should have. Doya's eyes never left me.
"Again," he said quietly.
I nodded.
I closed my eyes, steadied my breathing, and repeated the process exactly as before with my focused directed at Kumbuye's side.
I reached for the veil.
This time, when it took me, the emptiness did not linger as long. The absence still pressed in, but it did not swallow me whole. It felt thinner. Quicker.
Then abruptly, there was impact.
I dropped beside Kumbuye, my knees slamming into the frozen ground. The shock rattled through my bones.
Doya hurried toward us.
"You need stamina," he said, as he approached me. "If you don't build it, you'll keep collapsing after every crossing."
I tried to respond, but my body felt unbearably heavy. Drained. Like all my strength had been scooped out of me.
A strange metallic taste filled my mouth.
Doya's expression shifted. He pointed toward my face.
"You're bleeding."
I lifted my hand to my nose. Warmth met my fingers. When I pulled them away, they were streaked with red against the snow.
My hands trembled.
I swallowed hard, trying to steady myself.
"I'm fine," I muttered, even though I did not believe it.
The exhaustion ran deeper than muscle. It sat somewhere beneath my ribs, hollowing me out. But I refused to give in.
"I'll go back to the stele," I said, pushing myself upright. "I'm ready."
Doya hesitated for only a second before nodding. He began directing me again, his voice calm but tighter than before.
I followed every instruction carefully. Breathe. Picture it. Draw inward. Do not chase.
The veil answered faster this time.
The absence wrapped around me, thinner now, less suffocating. I felt the pull, the shift, the strange weightlessness between spaces—
Then the world snapped back into place.
I hit the ground hard.
But this time, the pain was worse.
A sharp, violent surge tore through me, and a scream ripped from my throat before I could stop it. It felt as though something inside me had been stretched too far, pulled beyond its limit.
Snow burned against my palms. My vision blurred. A piercing ring split through my head and my ears snapped with the shock of it.
Doya reached me quickly, Kumbuye close behind.
"I think you should rest now," he said, kneeling beside me. His expression had softened, concern breaking through the composure. "The veil is draining you."
"No," I forced out, my breath uneven. I tried to push myself up again, but my arms trembled beneath my own weight. "I'll keep going. I have to master this. We need to get back to the Temple as soon as possible."
"This isn't mastery," Doya said quietly. "This is you tearing yourself apart."
"I don't care," I shot back, though my voice wavered. "If I can't control this properly, I'll only slow us down."
My heart pounded wildly in my chest.
I pushed through again and again. Each crossing struck harder than the last, the veil resisting my will, my body punishing me for every attempt. Until finally, it no longer answered, and I crumpled into the snow, shivering, exhausted, and hollowed.
"Dana…" Doya's voice trembled as his hands gripped my shoulders. "Please. Stop." I tried to respond, but a harsh cough tore through me, and warm blood slicked my lips.
Kumbuye dropped beside me at the sight of blood, steadying my trembling body. That was enough. I had gone too far. My limbs were heavy, distant, and I could barely move or breathe.
Doya pulled me close, his warmth seeping through my frozen clothes. "Easy," he murmured near my ear. "You're safe. Just breathe."
Kumbuye draped his cloak around me, trapping what little heat I had left. The world dimmed. Wind faded. Voices softened. Despite the cold and ache lingering in my veins, sleep claimed me, and this time, I let myself fall.
I woke to a smell before I opened my eyes.
Smoke. Grease. Meat.
For a moment, I thought I was dreaming.
The cold bit sharply at my nose and cheeks, making my eyes water as I forced them open. The sky above was a deep, endless black; night had fully settled.
Doya sat close to the fire, calm as ever, turning something over with a stripped branch. The glow reflected softly on his face, warming it against the chill.
My stomach tightened. "What is that?"
He glanced at me, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You wake at last," he said.
"What is that?" I repeated, pushing myself upright, shivering from the lingering cold.
"A hare," he replied simply. "Kumbuye caught it."
My eyes drifted to Kumbuye. He crouched a few paces away, his fingers working stubbornly at the hide of another portion they had yet to set over the fire. The skin clung to the flesh, and he pulled at it with slow, deliberate strength. Every movement was measured, his muscles tensed under the firelight.
"You should have seen the way he did it," Doya said, crouching lower to shield his hands from the wind while the flames licked at the branch. "No spear. No sword. Not even a proper blade."
I looked sharply at him. "Then how?"
"He found its path beneath the snow," Doya said. "Hares run the same narrow courses, little tunnels beneath the drift. He watched long enough to learn it."
The fire snapped, sending a scatter of sparks upward.
"He bent a small birch along the hare's usual path," Doya continued, my eyes flicking toward Kumbuye. "Tied a loop of rope to it, leaving the loop right where the hare would run. When the hare ran through, the tree snapped upright, pulling the rope tight around its neck. By the time Kumbuye reached it, it could barely move."
I breathed out, impressed. "Mmmm," I murmured, nodding proudly.
"He brought it back before the body froze stiff," Doya added, leaning closer to the warmth. "Worked the skin off with nothing but patience. I thought his fingers would fail him before he finished."
The hare blistered over the fire, fat dripping into the embers with a sharp hiss. The smell curled into my nostrils, rich and smoky, making my head swim with hunger.
I knew Kumbuye was a skilled hunter, but I had no idea he could be this resourceful, even without a weapon.
I sank closer to the fire, letting its warmth seep into my frozen limbs. Kumbuye, who had been sitting apart, moved closer and settled near us, sharing the heat. Doya handed me a piece of the meat, and the first bite was grounding. My body, still trembling from the veil, began to steady, each swallow anchoring me back to the world. The exhaustion still hummed in my veins, but the cold receded, replaced by a fragile sense of safety.
For a while, we ate in silence, only breaking it to marvel at Kumbuye's skill as a hunter. We didn't speak of the struggles I had faced earlier. Later, we settled near the fire's warmth, and sleep came gently, carrying us into the quiet of the night.