The Veilborn Saga

Chapter 4 Malekhar

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Content warnings: psychological distress, confinement and brief depictions of self harm related behavior.

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Chapter 4

Malekhar

The Hum began before he spoke. It always had.

Only now after so many cycles in the dark, it no longer sounded like memory, it was recognition. The air tasted of minerals and smoke. Somewhere in the corridor a faint light flickered, a lone witness to a mind splintering in the dark.

“Quiet,” he whispered to the air, to the wall, to whatever part of him still obeyed. “Quiet, quiet, quiet—”

A pulse answered beneath his ribs, not his own.

Break it, Malekhar. Break what binds you. Break what forgot you.

He was bleeding when the door groaned.

The first breath from above didn’t rush in. It hesitated, as if waiting for his permission to enter. Or perhaps not his permission at all. The warmth clinging to the cavern floor retreated, chased back into stone as the cold slipped in behind it. It carried a taste that didn’t belong–dry and bitter. Not unlike the quiet laughter that welled within his throat.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

“Drip drip drip. Drip flows the blood when the heartbeat stiffs.”

Then–

footsteps.

A short gait—measured, too quiet for the usual visitors. He hooked his fingers into the hollowed place where skin clung to his ribs, clutching at the hard curve of bone. He pressed his forehead to stone. The cold steadied him for half a breath before the echo of laughter—his own, or not his own—rippled back from the dark.

The steps were closer, now. The scent of her filled his senses. He smiled. Something alive had entered a tomb.

At last, Hum’s voice surged in his skull, my kin has found me.

He doubled over, crawling to the deepest corner, nails clawing at his ears like ripping them from his flesh might relieve him of the sound within.

Then nothing. The footsteps were gone.

The Hum was gone.

The hammering ceased.

The silence fell so sudden it rang. He gasped, eyes wide and blackened with terror. The blood on his hands cooled against his skin.

“Quiet quiet quiet. Too quiet—“

He roared and lunged toward iron bars, eyes fixed on the woman before him.

Time staggered around him as her cruel features resolved out of the dim. Her eyes froze him in place, like a vision torn from the sky he no longer remembered. Velvet evergreen framed marled tresses, curls he yearned to seize—to prove she was real, that this wasn’t another illusion.

Instinct snarled in him as she leaned toward the cage and placed a hand upon his. He moved to strike on anticipated command, hunger blazing behind black eyes—but the Hum remained silent. And he faltered under her touch.

Malekhar hissed, doubling backward as the cavern rushed back into his ears–echo, breath and sound.

But it had not left him. The Lunafel wasn’t appeased.

It was …listening.

“Malekhar Kahruthen.”

He nearly choked hearing the name. Hand of Kahru-el, the Hum spoke once.

But the woman’s voice, something about it drew him in. Like a memory from a life before these bars—unyielding, and carved from purpose. She spoke his name the way his mother had, before Hum became too loud to bear.

Clarity began to creep through static. Her hands and face unmarked, unmarred, untouched by the constellations that chained the rest of their kind to the Avarin’s mercy. For the first time in an age, he felt something other than hunger. Her skin was as bare as his—freed, he thought, of the burden of the Creator’s intentions.

He uncurled from his crouch, unfolding his frame with deliberate grace. The silence still clung to her. He moved closer to the bars molding himself to a thin line to catch more of her presence. He watched blue eyes remain unmoved. The closer he drew to her, the deeper he fell into them, desperate to hear his name again.

She did not bristle at his proximity, no inkling of fear beneath the chasm of blue. She met his gaze with confidence so profound it rooted him in place.

“This pit they’ve reduced you to…” she said softly, almost reverent, “The world fears your name because it remembers what you are, and what they cannot cage forever.”

His fingers twitched, instinct driving them to tear, to claw—but he folded his hands behind his back and set his mouth into a smirk.

The woman smiled up at him once more, sending his heartbeat ablaze.

“You have endured much at the hands of Kahru-el, and at the hands of a usurper. You question it–question no more.”

She reached through the bars, offering her hand.

He clasped it immediately, greedily. She lifted it to his cheek, turning his face over with the gentle inevitability of command. Warmth spread beneath her fingers. She tilted her head slightly, a look of endearment washing over her amber features.

“It is time.”

Her eyes fluttered briefly, then opened as she whispered something near to worship: “Malekhar Kahruthen, the Fel king the world tried to bury. Time to reclaim what was stolen from you.”

Her delicate fingers stroked his cheeks through the bars once more, he leaned into it.

She tore her touch from his skin, retreating in measured steps. Evergreen glow ignited between her palms, illuminating more of her features as recognition tore through him.

“S-Samara.” Her name slithered from his lips, twisting her own into a curve of dark delight.

Felscrit fell from her mouth like a native tongue, carving the air with a thickness he might grasp. A deep vibration resonated in his skull, spreading to the edges of his body. She finished the spell as the lock on his gilded cage turned. The bars split apart, and the air itself seemed to draw breath for him.

He staggered forward, slow. Once. Then another. One step beyond the cage and his knees buckled, sending him crashing into the dust beneath.

She stepped towards him. For a heartbeat he was certain he would tear her throat out. But what she made of him, what she commanded, turned the thought over and over in his mind—pure and radiant fury that died at the altar of her gaze.

Her proximity and disregard for the animal that could end her, it brought him peace. The first peace he had known in a thousand screaming nights.

“Rise, my king.”

She whispered it, though her body was already sinking to her knees before him. “You were caged so that the Avarin might never witness what you’d become. Now let them remember why.”

Samara’s palms met the floor along with her gaze. He stood, and the air around him bent to his will. The Hum inside his skull turned to a low, rolling cord.

Felveil. The name burned through the silence.

When he spoke, the walls bent outward.

“Show me,” he said quietly, “what the gods fear.”

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