#Chapter 178: The Red Veil

Amelia They told me I’d been asleep for days, but I didn’t believe them. Time felt warped, stretched thin, like I’d been drifting through someone else’s nightmares. When I woke, it was to low, echoing chants and the taste of iron in my mouth. The air was frigid and too still. My breaths scraped against my ribs like they didn’t want to go in. The chamber walls curved inward like they were closing in, carved from crimson rock that pulsed faintly beneath my hands. Candles burned in bowls of dark water, casting shadows that flickered in ways my mind couldn’t follow. The air smelled of rust and rot. Strange symbols were branded into the walls, alive somehow, shifting when I blinked too long. I wasn’t restrained, but my arms felt submerged in ice, and my legs wouldn’t respond when I called on them. Vasha sat on a raised pillar beside me. Her posture was unnervingly perfect. She looked more like a statue that had been waiting for me to wake than any living person. Her silver hair hung s