Chapter 85 Veil in the Hollow

  Brother Renn had lived in many places—dusty cloisters, wind-battered chapels, the caravans where silver bought passage more than faith—but never in all his years had he seen a place transformed so quickly.

  Three days. That was all it had been since the villagers and freed folk had stumbled into this mist-laden valley with packs half-empty and spirits near to breaking. And yet now, when he leaned against the lip of stone that framed the camp, he could scarcely believe it was the same place.

  It started with the furnace. At first, Renn thought Caelen had lost his mind. The youngster just started tossing stones into a big pit, slapping on clay, and barking out instructions in that broken way of his. Renn figured maybe he was planning to cook a hog big enough to feed everyone. But no—what this strange boy ended up with was this wild thing: bellows, a crank, a new work. When they fired it up, the heat felt like it could melt the very bones of the earth.

  “They burn rock,” Renn muttered aloud, still half-amused at the absurdity. “Cook it. Bake it. As if the Lord’s own bread was to be made of stone.”

  Yet the impossible furnace had yielded its strange treasure. The dwarves, soot-streaked and grinning through their beards, showed him the gray-white lumps of “cooked limestone,” as they called it, and from that came mortar—thick and binding, more potent than simple mud. With it, they began to raise actual walls, not just piles of stone or lean-tos against the cliff.

  While the dwarves worked the quick lime mortar, others had turned to the ship. Picked clean, Renn thought with a chuckle. That was the right word. At first, they brought back food and barrels. Even the barrels containing spoiled food that stank, Caelen had them dump out and carry the empty casks instead. Barrels, he said, could be cleaned, patched, and used again. Every trip seemed to reveal a new prize—canvas, cordage, pitch, nails, pulleys. Even the copper plating ripped from the hull came back in loads, stacked and shining like looted coins.

  Renn had laughed when he first saw the villagers, backs bent beneath whole planks torn from the deck, tramping into the Hollow like ants carrying their prize. “Soon enough,” he had told Pit, “the boy will have you bringing the whole sea with you, one bucket at a time.” To his dismay, Pit only grinned and muttered, “Don’t give him ideas.”

  By the end of the second day, boards from the wreck had been sawn and fitted into a roof atop the row home. Pitch and tar sealed it, black against the pale stone, proof against the next storm. The smell was sharp and acrid, but the sight of a proper shelter lifted the hearts of all who passed.

  And through it all, Mirelle—stern and sharp-eyed—moved like a captain, lending Caelen her steadiness. When she was not inspecting that woman, bent over parchment spread before her, sketching furiously in a lean-to of canvas. Renn would pass by and see her surrounded by villagers and dwarves, listening intently as she drew cranes, pulleys, and walls. He never understood half of what she explained, but he marveled at the fact that she explained at all. This woman, who once was a bound slave, now lectured men twice her age on how to raise stone with ropes.

  The Hollow, once a place of mist and stench, now buzzed with life. Hammering, sawing, the grunts of labor. Fires smoked in corners where meals were prepared. Women laughed as they carried moss for bedding. It was like a festival of work, Renn thought, though it was born of hardship.

  And at the heart of it all was Caelen. The boy moved with purpose from group to group—checking a wall, testing a beam, showing Tib how to brace a trench, or kneeling beside the dwarves to nod at their stonework and constantly moving, always directing. Renn’s priestly instincts pricked uneasily at that. No fifteen-year-old should bear such a command. And yet… they all followed him. They all did.

  Renn folded his arms and looked out over the bustle, unable to help the whisper that escaped his lips. “This Hollow will not stay hidden long. Not with such fire in it.”

  He thought he should be afraid. But against his better judgment, a smile tugged at his mouth.

  …

  That night, as the fire cracked in the center of the Hollow and shadows bent against the limestone walls, Renn found himself listening to yet another of the boy’s visions. Caelen sat forward, eyes glittering in the firelight, voice halting in its broken cadence, but carrying a clarity and certainty that made every man, woman, and dwarf lean closer.

  “Water—bad water—must go.” He gestured south with a sharp flick of his hand. “Cut here, storm made start. We dig, widen. Fetid pool, hot spring run-off, all go out. To sea. Gone.”

  The denizens murmured at that, a low ripple of voices. They understood the pool and the stink, but coaxing it out of the Hollow itself was a different story. That was no small task.

  Caelen did not pause. He lifted his hand again, pointing toward the Hollow’s mouth. “Fresh water—too much. Pool here, wash down, make waste. We trench. Flow into river. Not mix with bad. Two waters. Two ways.”

  Two trench systems. Renn’s mind turned over the words like stones in his palm. The boy spoke of carving the Hollow itself into order, of cutting its veins so that poison and clean would never touch again. And then, as if that were not enough, came the oddest word yet.

  “Latrine.” Caelen spat the syllables as though they were some foreign curse. “Pit. For waste. Not here, not there. South cut. Bad water take it away.”

  The silence that followed was thick, broken only by Pit’s snort of laughter. “A shit ditch,” the boy muttered, not quietly enough. “That’s his grand plan.”

  Several of the freed folk chuckled, though uneasily. Mirelle silenced them with a glare, her sharp braid catching the fire’s gleam.

  Renn did not laugh. His stomach had gone tight, colder than the evening wind. He had spent his life listening for the whisper of the Veils, the unseen boundaries of the world, the lines men were not meant to cross. And here sat a boy, fifteen years and barely grown, speaking of drawing streams into new courses, of banishing poison creeks to the sea as if he were some king or saint of legend.

  Renn thought: This is not human vision. This is something else, human arrogance.

  He glanced about the circle. The freed slaves nodded, some doubtful but willing. The dwarves muttered to each other in low tones, but their eyes gleamed with the challenge of stone and soil. Even Mirelle, that sharp-eyed girl, sat rapt as if she were learning a holy lesson.

  Only Renn seemed to hear the danger in it.

  The boy wasn’t merely clever. He was becoming arrogant. He spoke of reshaping water as if it were his birthright, as if the Veils themselves had no say in the flow of earth and sky. And that arrogance—Renn’s chest tightened—it stank to him of blasphemy.

  He leaned back, arms crossed in his robe, and watched the firelight catch Caelen’s face. It was not the face of a dreamer now, but of something harder, sharper.

  Fifteen years old, and yet he spoke like a lord of ages. Renn could not shake the thought that one day, soon, the Veils themselves might take offense at this boy.

  And when they did, what tempest would they send?

  The following two days were quieter—not for lack of labor, but because the work was scattered across the Hollow. From dawn to dusk, the sound of picks and shovels echoed off the limestone ridges, punctuated by the rasp of saws or the low thud of hammer on copper.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Renn kept mainly to the edges, walking when his body allowed, though every step reminded him that healing was a slow, obstinate thing. His eyes, however, missed little.

  Mirelle took three of the dwarves and set off toward the southern ridge. They carried baskets piled with stone and buckets of mortar, their voices floating back now and then—sometimes singing, sometimes squabbling. Renn glimpsed their progress: stone walls rising where there’d only been open ground before, the first signs of something new coming into being. Caelen saw it too and just nodded, a strange, proud look in his eyes. He didn’t linger. You could tell he trusted Mirelle to figure out what he wanted.

  Caelen stayed behind with Pit, Tib, and a few freedmen, digging into the southern cut. Renn stood at the edge for a while, leaning on his staff, just watching them work. This wasn’t any shallow ditch. They lined the walls with clay and set in flat stones, pressing everything down as if they meant it to last—like they were making a channel for water, not just digging a hole. Caelen called it a trench, and the way he said it, his eyes bright, Renn could see there was more to it than just the task. There was hunger there, something more profound than simple excitement.

  The blacksmith, Bran, had been given another task. Renn saw him at the forge’s side, sweat glistening on his massive shoulders, as he cleaned and hammered sheets of copper into broad, shallow pans. Their purpose puzzled him. He asked once, and Bran only grinned, wiping his brow with the back of a dirty hand. “Salt, boiling, something or other. The boy says it works. Don’t ask me how.”

  Renn did not. He simply watched the hammer rise and fall, shaping copper to a purpose he did not yet understand.

  And then there was the northern ridge. A cave had opened there during the storm, filled with sand and dry earth. A band of villagers had taken to clearing it, hauling basket after basket out into the sunlight. Renn had gone to see once and had felt a cool, steady draft against his cheek. The cave was shallow, but promising. What they meant to do with it, he did not know.

  Everywhere he looked, the Hollow was changing. Every sound, every movement spoke of purpose.

  And yet, one phrase lingered in his ears, souring his thoughts.

  “Soon,” Caelen had told him, voice low but certain, “valley not broken. Renn not broken.”

  The words struck him like a hammer blow. Not broken.

  Renn stood long in silence after that, beneath the sharp face of the northern ridge. His ribs still ached when he breathed too deeply. His body bent more slowly, rose slower. He was healing, but haltingly, and he did not understand what the boy meant. Why tie Renn’s brokenness to the Hollows? Why speak as though mending one meant mending both?

  The arrogance of it made his skin prickle. Caelen spoke like a visionary, yet he was only a boy. A clever boy, yes—too clever, perhaps—but mortal flesh all the same.

  The Hollow groaned with their works, reshaped by their will. Renn could not tell if it was the sound of rebirth… or the rumble of some great offense taken by the Veils.

  On the third day, the kiln was re-fired, its throat glowing red as more and more stone was shoveled into its hungry mouth. The smoke curled into the hollow, acrid and bitter, stinging Renn’s eyes. He shook his head at it all. Mortar, mortar, mortar—always mortar. He could not understand why they needed so much of the stuff. The row of houses had already been raised, walls straight and roof sealed with the ship’s planking. They were dry, they were sheltered. What more could stone paste add?

  Everyone else had moved into the row—everyone but Caelen. The boy still kept to that first cave, as though the shadows there belonged to him. Renn thought it odd, but no one seemed to question it. Perhaps they were too busy to care.

  The hollow was changing by the day. He noticed that the villagers had claimed the smaller, cleaned-out cave on the northern ridge, turning it into a storage house. Baskets of grain, bundles of tools, wrapped tarps of rope and cordage—all stacked neatly away where rain could not touch them. Renn smiled faintly at that. Order had come to the hollow, at least in some things.

  But elsewhere… strangeness brewed.

  He saw Caelen working with the dwarves, bent over some contraption of wood and rope that made little sense. A long frame, a stout box open at top and end, and—of all things—a wooden screw as tall as a man. The freed folk clustered about, chattering with excitement, while the dwarves measured and cut, their hammers tapping with quick precision.

  Renn leaned on his crutch and watched from a distance, baffled. “A box and a screw,” he muttered. “Vails preserve me, what’s it for?” No one explained, nor did he ask again. He had learned by now that the boy’s plans would be revealed in their own time, whether one wished to know them or not.

  And then came another mystery. Near the southern ridge, they marked out a space for yet another kiln—but not like the first. This one was to be roofed, with flues and stone channels. Renn overheard snatches of talk as he passed, freed folk and dwarves alike hauling clay in baskets, setting aside piles of brushwood.

  At supper that night, word spread at last. It would be a kiln not for stone but for clay. Firing clay, they said—pots, tiles, and a strange word, fictilis.

  Renn stirred his bowl, listening, unable to keep the sigh from his lips. A furnace for stone, now another for clay. Mortar, houses, trenches, presses, kilns upon kilns. His mind spun with it all.

  “Quick,” he whispered, tasting the word with unease. “Too Rapid.”

  Yet when he looked around the fire, faces shone with light—not just from the flames but from something brighter: belief. In the boy. In his plans. In a future none of them had dared dream before.

  And Renn wondered, not for the first time, whether he was watching the work of providence… or the hubris of a child building a tower too tall for men.

  ..

  The night air pressed close on Renn as they climbed, heavy with the smell of wet stone and pine resin. The southern ridge loomed dark above them, its slope steeper than Brother Renn guessed, each step burning his leg. The wound throbbed hot and raw, every stumble sending a lance of pain through his body. Twice, he nearly told them to stop, to let him rest, to turn back. A third time, he faltered hard enough that Pit and Tib had to seize his arms, dragging him up with rough laughter that stung his pride.

  His heart thundered—not from the climb, but from the gnawing question. What were these boys doing? What had they unearthed here in this hollow? Was this hubris? Were they walking paths forbidden by the Veils themselves? By the time he drew breath to rebuke them, to speak of boundaries and sin, Caelen stopped.

  The boy turned, pale face touched with shadow, and his smile—thin, strange, unsettling—caught Renn off guard.

  “Almost there,” Caelen said in that broken cadence. Then his eyes, dark and sure, fixed on Renn. “Reason Renn came to hollow.”

  The words struck like a blow. Renn staggered. Reason? How could the boy know? He had come to Avalon wandering as always, tracing whispers of the Veils, sensing faint touches in river and root. He had come here because something had called him. Something buried deep. But he had told no one.

  They crested the last rise and entered a plateau hidden from below. Renn gasped.

  Pools lay before them—three in a row, carved of stone and shaped with crude boards and channels. One steamed, white tendrils rising into the twilight. Another, lower, flowed away in a narrow cut, its waters spilling down the mountainside. And that water—O saints, that water—glowed. Not like firelight, not like moonlight, but like the Veils themselves had bled their radiance into the earth. It shimmered in threads of blue and silver, alive, holy.

  By the Veils! The cry tore from Renn’s chest, a raw hymn, half terror, half ecstasy. He fell to his knees, arms lifted, tears on his face. His whole life, he had sought signs, and here it poured before him like revelation.

  Caelen gestured, quiet but pronounced. “Hollow. No longer broken.”

  Pit and Tib drew him forward, their grips firm now, almost reverent, as though they handled something fragile and rare. Together they guided him to the lip of the central pool. Steam rose to meet him, brushing his face—sweet with minerals, biting with heat. He sucked in a sharp breath, unprepared for it.

  This was more than water. The power thrummed here, deep and patient. He felt it in the hollow of his chest, in the ache of his wound, in the marrow of his bones. The air itself seemed to pulse, slow and certain, as if the place were breathing him in—measuring, awakening, remembering.

  Shaking, Renn tore at his robes, letting them fall in a heap at his feet. Naked, humbled, he stepped into the water. At once, warmth embraced him—not the burn of heat, but a cradle of strength, coursing through every vein. He sank deeper, tears spilling again, his voice breaking into prayer.

  “What is this?” he whispered, half to himself, half to the boy.

  Caelen crouched at the water’s edge, eyes alight with something older than his years. “Valley was broken,” he said softly. “Now fixed.”

  The words rolled through Renn like prophecy. The hollow—scarred, poisoned, abandoned—renewed by the hand of this boy. Not arrogance, no. Blessing.

  As he sat in the glowing water, the wound on his leg eased, the angry red fading, the ache loosening its grip. He gasped, clutching at the rim of the pool, unable to believe what his own flesh told him. The Veils were here. The Veils had touched this place.

  He looked at Caelen-this—this strange, broken-tongued child, this leader, this vessel—and for the first time, he no longer doubted.

  This was not the work of men. This was a revelation of the divine.

  And Renn wept as the waters healed him, the glow of the Veils shimmering on his skin like fire caught in glass.