The tavern was full.

Not just with the stranded travelers—though they were still there, growing increasingly restless despite Thalia’s assurances—but with locals who’d braved the strange forest to reach the Lodge. Word had spread, as word always did in the mountains, that something was happening at the Veilwalker’s Lodge.

Something important.

They came seeking sanctuary. Seeking answers. Seeking the comfort of familiar walls and warm fires in a world that was growing increasingly unfamiliar.

Marra moved between tables with practiced efficiency, serving stew and bread and Harl’s latest brew—a dark ale that tasted of autumn and smoke and something faintly magical. She’d left the bow upstairs, hidden in her room, but she could still feel its weight. Its presence. The knowledge of what it meant.

What she meant.

Warden’s daughter.

Keeper of the Guardian’s weapon.

Protector of something she was only beginning to understand.

“You alright, lass?” Harl asked as she passed the bar.

Marra managed a smile. “Just tired.”

“Liar.” But Harl’s expression was gentle. “But I’ll let it pass. For now.”

Across the room, Belvik sat in his usual corner, tuning his lute with fingers that trembled slightly. He’d been quiet all day—withdrawn in a way that wasn’t like him. The events in the shrine had shaken something loose in him, and Marra could see the fear in his eyes every time someone looked his way.

The Herald.

That’s what they were calling him now.

The one who would call the Guardian home.

It was a lot of weight for a bard who’d just wanted to sing love songs and make people smile.

Thalia caught Marra’s eye from across the room and nodded toward Belvik. Check on him, her expression said.

Marra finished delivering her tray of drinks and made her way to Belvik’s corner, sliding into the seat across from him.

“Hey,” she said softly.

Belvik looked up, startled. “Hey.”

“You don’t have to perform tonight if you don’t want to. People will understand.”

“Will they?” Belvik’s laugh was bitter. “They came here expecting music. Expecting normalcy. If I don’t sing—”

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The Lodge hummed.

Not audibly—at least, not in any way normal ears could hear. But everyone felt it. A vibration in the floorboards. A resonance in the walls. The sense that the building itself was awake and paying attention in a way it hadn’t been before.

Thalia felt it most strongly in the early morning hours, when she made her rounds and found doors that hadn’t existed the night before. Hallways that turned at new angles. Windows that looked out onto views that weren’t quite right—forests that were too green, skies that held too many moons.

The Lodge was remembering.

Remembering what it had been built for.

Remembering what was coming.

She stood in the main room, watching the hearth fire burn in colors that shifted between amber and blue-gold, and tried to decide if she should be terrified or reassured.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Thalia turned to find Marra standing behind her, the Guardian’s bow still slung across her back. The barmaid looked different now. Older, somehow. Not in years, but in weight. Like she’d picked up a burden she’d been avoiding her whole life and was finally learning to carry it.

“Beautiful?” Thalia echoed. “The Lodge is rearranging itself and you think it’s beautiful?”

“I think it’s alive.” Marra moved to stand beside her, both of them watching the fire. “And I think it’s been waiting for this. For whoever’s coming.”

“The Veil Breaker.”

Marra nodded. “My mother used to tell me stories. About places that existed between worlds. Sanctuaries for those who didn’t quite fit anywhere else. I thought they were just stories.”

“They weren’t.”

“No.” Marra’s hand moved unconsciously to touch the bow. “They weren’t.”

The fire flared suddenly—bright blue-gold—and both women stepped back.

And in the flames, just for a moment, they saw something.

A figure.

Flowing hair. Fierce eyes. Battle-worn and beautiful and burning.

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Morning came with frost on the windows despite it being too early in the season for it.

Thalia noticed first—she always did—standing in the main room and watching ice crystals form delicate patterns on the glass. Not natural frost. Not weather-frost.

Veil-frost.

The kind that appeared when reality was forgetting how to be real.

Behind her, the Lodge was already stirring with anxious energy. The stranded travelers were growing more restless by the hour. Gareth lay in Harl’s study, drifting in and out of fevered sleep, muttering about things no one wanted to hear. And the crew—her crew—looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with lack of sleep.

They looked haunted.

Thalia turned from the window to find Astrae descending the stairs, his pale hair catching the morning light. He looked worse than usual—if that was possible—with dark circles under his ice-blue eyes and frost clinging to his clothes despite being indoors.

“You feel it too,” Thalia said. Not a question.

Astrae nodded, moving to stand beside her. “It’s getting worse. Faster than I expected.” He placed a hand against the frosted window, and the ice patterns shifted, reorganizing themselves into symbols. Runes. Guardian-era script.

Thalia’s jaw tightened. “What do they say?”

“Warning. Boundary. Threshold.” Astrae’s expression was grim. “The Veil is trying to communicate. Trying to tell us where it’s thinnest.”

“Can you track it?”

“I can try.” He pulled his hand away, and the runes faded back into random frost. “But Thalia—when we find the tear, if we find it—we need to be prepared for what that means.”

“Which is?”

“That we’ll be standing at the edge of two worlds. And things on both sides will know we’re there.” Astrae met her gaze. “The creatures will come. And they won’t just circle this time.”

Footsteps on the stairs made them both turn.

Marra descended, and Thalia’s breath caught.

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Dawn came reluctantly, as if the sun itself was uncertain about rising over a Lodge under siege.

Marra stood at the kitchen window, watching grey light seep into the forest, and tried not to think about the scratching sounds that had persisted through most of the night. The creatures—whatever they were—had tested every door, every window, every possible entrance to the Lodge with methodical patience.

And then, sometime around the deepest part of night, they’d simply... stopped.

The silence that followed was somehow worse.

Behind her, the kitchen was a disaster of organized chaos. She’d been making breakfast for the stranded travelers—seven of them, caught at the Lodge when the creatures appeared—plus the usual crew. Feeding people kept her hands busy. Kept her mind from spiraling into the thousand questions she didn’t have answers for.

Kept her from thinking about the bow.

“You’ve been up all night.”

Marra didn’t turn. She recognized Harl’s gravelly voice, could hear the concern beneath the gruffness.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Seemed more useful to bake bread.”

“Aye, well. Fear makes for good kneading.” Harl moved to stand beside her, both of them staring out at the forest. “They’re gone. For now.”

“For now,” Marra echoed. “Why did they leave?”

“The Lodge wards held. They realized they couldn’t get in, so they retreated.” Harl’s hand moved unconsciously to his rune-burn scar. “But they’ll be back. Things like that don’t give up easy.”

Marra’s fingers tightened on the windowsill. “Harl. Last night. In the forest. I saw—”

She stopped. How did you explain visions? How did you put into words the bone-deep certainty that you were connected to something ancient and terrible and sacred all at once?

“The bow,” Harl said quietly.

Marra’s breath caught. “How did you—”

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The Lodge felt different after the faceless thing.

Not physically—the walls were still the same warm wood, the hearth still crackled with its usual amber flame, the floors still creaked in their familiar patterns. But there was a weight to the air now, a thickness that made breathing feel like work and turned every shadow into a potential threat.

Marra felt it most acutely in the hour before dawn, when she should have been sleeping but instead found herself standing in the eastern hallway, staring at the wall where the door had been.

The door to the room with the bow.

Except there was no door anymore.

Just smooth wood paneling, unmarred and innocent, like the room had never existed at all.

Marra ran her fingers along the wall, searching for seams, for the telltale warmth she’d felt before. Nothing. The wood was cool and solid under her touch, and the hook where the key had hung was gone too.

“Looking for something?”

Marra spun, knife half-drawn before she registered Harl’s voice. The old dwarf stood at the end of the hallway, arms crossed, expression unreadable in the dim pre-dawn light.

“I—” Marra stopped. What could she say? I found a secret room last night with a magical bow that showed me visions of my dead mother? “Couldn’t sleep.”

Harl’s gaze moved from her to the wall and back again. “The Lodge does that sometimes. Shows you things when it thinks you’re ready. Hides them when you’re not.”

Marra’s throat tightened. “And if I’m never ready?”

“Then it’ll wait.” Harl moved closer, his footsteps soft despite his bulk. “But in my experience, the Lodge doesn’t show you something unless you need to see it. Question is—what are you going to do about it?”

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Skivvit’s workshop looked like a rune had exploded inside it.

Which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

Papers covered every available surface—tacked to walls, spread across workbenches, hanging from the ceiling on bits of string like a deranged mobile. Each one bore Skivvit’s frantic attempts to recreate the symbols he’d seen on the metal scrap before Ashwhisker had decided it made a good snack.

The goblin himself was perched on a stool that was far too tall for him, his tongue poking out in concentration as he scratched another variation onto parchment with a piece of charcoal that was more stub than stick.

“No, no, that’s not right either,” he muttered, crossing out the symbol with aggressive strokes. “The curve was sharper. Or was it rounder? No, definitely sharper. Unless—”

He grabbed a different piece of paper—one of seventeen “definitely accurate” sketches he’d made in the three seconds between seeing the rune and watching it disappear down a cat’s throat—and compared them.

They were all different.

Spectacularly different.

“Okay,” Skivvit said to the empty workshop, because talking to himself helped him think. “Okay. So. The first line was definitely... curved? Angular? Curvi-gular?”

He drew another attempt.

This one looked vaguely like a drunk chicken had walked across the page.

“Perfect,” Skivvit declared, and pinned it to the wall with the others.

His Emberfreckles were glowing—not brightly, but enough to cast a faint golden shimmer across his workbench. They always did that when he was excited or stressed or caffeinated, and right now he was thoroughly all three. He’d been up since before dawn, fueled by determination and the remains of yesterday’s honey cakes, trying to solve what was rapidly becoming the most fascinating puzzle of his entire life.

A Guardian-era rune.

On a ward marker.

That had spoken.

And then been eaten by a cat.

It was, objectively, the best thing that had ever happened to him.

The door to his workshop creaked open, and Marra’s voice drifted in. “Skivvit? You alive in here?”

“Extremely alive!” Skivvit didn’t look up from his current sketch. “I’m having a breakthrough! Multiple breakthroughs! So many breakthroughs I might actually be broken through!”

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Dawn came cold and grey, the kind of morning that made the mountains look like they’d been carved from slate and shadow.

Marra had been awake for hours.

She stood in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a mug of tea she hadn’t actually drunk, staring at nothing in particular. The Lodge was quiet in that heavy, waiting way that came after a night when no one had slept well. The fire in the main room had been coaxed back to its normal amber glow—Harl had seen to that personally, muttering dwarven curses under his breath the whole time—but the memory of that blue flame lingered like a bruise.

She could still feel the cold. Could still hear that strange not-wind whispering outside the walls. Could still see Belvik’s tattoos blazing gold while he sang a note that shouldn’t have been possible.

And the stranger.

Gods, the stranger.

Marra’s fingers tightened around her mug.

The man who’d walked through the door—Astrae, he’d said his name was, after Thalia had finally lowered her bow and demanded answers—had spent the night in the Lodge. Thalia had allowed it, though “allowed” might have been the wrong word. More like she’d decided that keeping him close was better than letting him wander off into the night where they couldn’t watch him.

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The hearth had been burning the same for forty-three years.

Thalia knew because she’d been tending it for most of them, adding split oak in the morning and birch after the dinner rush, banking the coals before bed with the kind of practiced efficiency that came from repetition so deep it lived in her bones. The fire was as much a part of the Lodge as the stone walls or the warped floorboards that creaked in different keys depending on who walked them.

She’d seen that fire burn gold in summer and amber in winter. She’d watched it flare when storms rolled down from the mountains and settle into patient embers during the quiet hours before dawn.

But she had never—not once—seen it turn blue.

Thalia straightened from where she’d been wiping down the bar, the rag going still in her hands. The main room of the Veilwalker’s Lodge was in that comfortable lull between the dinner crowd and the late-night stragglers, the kind of hour where the air itself seemed to soften and settle. A handful of regulars nursed their ales near the windows. Old Corvin was dozing in his usual corner, chin tucked to his chest. The scent of rosemary bread and roasted root vegetables still hung warm in the air, mingling with wood smoke and the faint sweetness of Harl’s latest brew.

Everything was exactly as it should be.

Except the fire.

It flickered—just once—and the flames shifted from their usual warm amber to a cool, pale blue that didn’t belong in any hearth she’d ever seen. The color held for three heartbeats, maybe four, then bled back to orange-gold like watercolor bleeding into parchment.

Thalia’s fingers tightened on the bar rag.

No.

Not now. Not again.

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If you’re reading this, it means you now stand inside one of the rarest spaces beneath the Veil.

Most readers discover my worlds only when they are bound, printed, polished, and placed upon shelves.

By the time they wander through my stories, the ink has dried, and the endings are already chosen.

But you…?

You are here while this world-between is still forming.
Before the dust settles.
Before the doors are locked.
Before the tales decide what shape they’ll take.

You are not simply a reader.

You are a witness of the weave.
A Keeper of first light.
A traveler allowed into the Lodge before the rest of the realms even know it exists.

🔏 Beyond this door, the story unfolds in real time. Only Circle-Keepers may enter.

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Step closer, Veilwalker.

Only those who carry flame in their blood find their way into this circle.
Here, behind the Lodgefire, you’ll gain access to the deeper layers of the realms:

• early chapters from upcoming books

• companion novellas (in full)

• lore that has never touched the public page

• character letters

• audio readings

• prophecies and secrets too powerful for the common rooms

This month, we begin with:

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