For as long as he could remember, Cael saw things he shouldn't have.
At first, it was like black-gold dust in the air — floating above people, places, trees — drifting silently, dancing around the world, as if reality was stained by something only he could see.
They called it imagination. Childhood trauma. After all, Cael was an orphan. Found one stormy night wrapped in an old blanket at the steps of a forgotten monastery, with nothing but a name stitched on a torn piece of cloth:
"Cael."
No surname. No documents. No family.
But he wasn't alone.
With him was a single object — aged, worn, but still gleaming at its center: a black-silver ring, carved with runes that none of the monks could decipher.
The ring seemed ordinary, but Cael knew better.
Whenever he felt fear, the metal warmed against his skin. When he dreamed, it glowed faintly, as if responding to a voice only he could hear. And on the darkest nights — when the world whispered secrets to no one else — the ring pulsed. Like an ancient heart, still beating.
The particles. The whispers. The ring. They were connected.
By age eight, he noticed the ring reacted to certain places. Some rooms in the orphanage felt wrong — time slowed down, sounds grew muffled, and the particles clustered in the air as if something unseen was watching.
At twelve, during a thunderstorm, the ring flared with silver fire. When he touched an old door in the basement, he saw it — for the briefest second — a symbol on the wood glowed to life: three eyes in a triangle, one weeping blood.
That was the first time he heard the voice.
Not a human voice. It was like the air itself had spoken, in a forgotten tongue his mind somehow understood:
"The blood calls. The Bond awakens. But the lineage… is silent."
After that day, he stopped telling anyone what he saw.
The world didn't accept the invisible. And Cael was beginning to realize he wasn't like the others.
But there was still something anchoring him. Something that kept him from diving into madness: the ring. Always the ring.
One night, he had a dream.
He stood before a massive tree — bark black as void, leaves made of shifting shadow. Around it, robed figures floated faceless, chanting prayers in impossible languages. And before the tree stood himself, older. Eyes unblinking. The same ring glowing like a star ready to collapse.
— "You are one of the Veilborn." — a deep voice whispered behind him.
He turned. No one was there.
— "But your name was sealed. Your bloodline, forgotten. The Angel sleeps, and the world bleeds."
He woke gasping, nose bleeding, a red mark burning on his chest — exactly where the ring lay when hidden beneath his shirt.
He didn't know who the Angel was. What the Veil meant. Who the Veilborn were.
But he knew this wouldn't be the last time he heard those words.
From that night on, he began recording everything. Drawing symbols, mapping particle activity, documenting each time the ring glowed. The attic of the orphanage became his sanctuary. The walls were covered in strings and notes, pages and drawings — like he was trying to piece together a puzzle he hadn't even seen the edge of.
Until his fourteenth birthday.
That morning, he woke up with the ring... boiling.
Not warm. Boiling, like molten metal. The particles around him spun in a storm. And then, time... stopped.
Everything froze.
No sound. No shadows moving. Not even the breeze through the window.
And then, he appeared.
A hooded man, eyes pitch-black, standing in the corner of the room — like he'd always been there.
— "You weren't supposed to awaken." — his voice was a thousand whispers in one.
Cael tried to move, to scream — but his body was paralyzed.
The man reached out a hand.
The ring blazed with violent light. For an instant, it shone like a dying star. A burst of silver fire engulfed the room — and time snapped back.
The man was gone.
But etched into the floor, in cold ash, was a single word:
"Awakened."
That night, Cael understood.
He wasn't just an orphan. Not just someone different.
He was heir to something ancient. Something the world had tried to bury.
The supernatural wasn't myth. It was a hidden system — powerful, forbidden, terrifying. And the ring… was the key. A remnant of a family the world had tried to erase.
From that moment on, he had a choice:
Live in the world of the blind...
Or cross the Veil — and find the truth.
Even if it shattered his mind.