The Veil had thinned.
Not broken—
not yet—
but stretched in a way it had not been for centuries, a trembling membrane between realms made fragile by a power it had once contained.
He felt it the moment she woke.
The girl with the flame in her blood.
The one the prophecies whispered about in dying tongues. The one whose heartbeat could shake the old wards and turn the sleeping things restless.
He watched her through the last remnants of shadow as the keep glowed faintly with her heat. Small flickers of fire spilled from her like threads, invisible to human eyes but bright to him—pulses of color, echoes of strength she did not yet know how to wield.
She stood near the window, her silhouette outlined by moonlight, and the ember beneath her skin burned. The dormant fire—his fire—answering a call she had never meant to send.
The Watcher inhaled, and the magic in the air shifted.
He had waited lifetimes for this.
For the moment when the Forsaken Flame would rise again, not in a creature of the old realms but in a fragile-bodied human who did not understand what she carried. Her potential clung to her like a storm waiting for lightning.
Through the fractured space between worlds, he saw the boy beside her—the marked male, wounded, tethered to her soul. Their bond flickered unsteady, but there was strength in it. Too much strength. Enough to be inconvenient.
His lip curled.
Kael was not part of the prophecy. Not part of the plan. A misaligned thread. A complication.
But he could be cut away.
The Watcher extended a hand, fingers brushing the surface of the Veil. It rippled like black water touched by wind, resisting him with a groan of old enchantments. He pushed harder, feeling the pressure sing against his bones.
Not yet.
The crossing would cost too much right now.
The flame-bearer was raw, new, untempered. If he reached for her too soon, he risked shattering her—and she needed to break in the right direction.
His direction.
So he waited.
And he watched.
Nyra's energy surged again, bright enough to sting his eyes. A heat that shook the air around her. A question buried in her pulse, as though she sensed she was not alone, even if she could not yet see him.
Good.
Let the fear grow.
Let her feel hunted.
It would make her hunger for strength—and strength would make her malleable.
The Watcher's gaze drifted to Kael once more.
The boy stirred, leaning into her presence. Their bond pulsed—soft, warm, disgustingly intimate. It connected them with light.
Light was always the hardest to sever.
His expression darkened.
If the male refused to weaken, the crossing might need blood.
A tremor ran through the Veil, sharp and resonant. The Watcher tilted his head, listening. Her fire had brushed the boundary again, stronger this time. As if she reached for something without knowing she reached at all.
The bond.
The flame.
The awakening.
Everything was aligning.
He smiled—slow, thin, hungry.
Soon, the Forsaken Flame would turn its eyes to him.
Soon, she would see him clearly.
And when she did…
She would understand the truth.
Nyra was not the one being hunted.
She was the one being claimed.