Interlude
What the Veil Whispers
A Fragment Between Worlds
Interlude: What the Veil Whispers
You were not meant to open this page first.
The spine of the book does not creak when you reach this place. It sighs.
You have stepped sideways, out of the careful order in which the Grimoire prefers to be read. That is one way to thin the Veil: not with blood, nor with circles, but with disobedience.
"The reader has arrived ahead of schedule."—Unattributed margin note, found in no surviving edition
The Quiet Between Pages
There is a space in every book that is not quite text and not quite blankness. A margin wide enough to breathe in. A pause between the period and the next capital letter where something watches to see if you will continue.
This interlude lives there.
"Do not anthropomorphize the Veil. It is not a person. It is a habit of reality."—E.K., first draft (later crossed out)
"No. It is a wound."—Handwritten correction in another ink
The two notes appear in the same place in the manuscript, but in different handwritings and different years.
Fragments from Unknown Sources
"The Veil remembers—"
>
[text cuts off]
"When you stare at the dark between words, something stares back. It counts your blinks."—Field report, origin [REDACTED]
"There are more eyes on this page than there are letters."—Unfiled observation
Sometimes the fragments disagree.
"The Veil is a border."—Lecture transcript, Academy of Umbral Studies
"The Veil is an appetite."—Same lecturer, ten years later, under oath
"The Veil is neither border nor appetite; it is the question that makes both possible."—Unsigned, found in the gutter of a burned copy
Note: The burned copy predates the lecturer by at least a century.
How the Veil Reads You
You believe you are the one doing the reading.
The Grimoire disagrees.
"Every act of observation leaves an imprint. The more closely you study the dark, the more faithfully it learns the shape of your attention."—From On Reciprocal Gaze, suppressed appendix
Reading is a ritual of alignment. Your eyes move. Your mind follows. Your breath unconsciously matches the rhythm of the sentences. You let the text decide where your attention will rest, when it will quicken, when it will stumble.
In that surrender, something takes your measure.
"To pass through the Veil is to be weighed, not welcomed."—Misattributed proverb
Consider what this page has already learned about you:
- You did not turn away at the word Interlude - You continued past the first implication that you should not be here - You are willing to read warnings as invitations
"They always think the forbidden sections are written for them."—Margin note, precise author unknown
If you feel seen, that is because you are. The feeling is not mutual. The Veil does not feel; it tallies.
Redactions and Other Lies
Some passages in this interlude have been removed for your safety.
Some have been ~~removed for your safety~~ removed because they worked too well.
"The first law of censorship in umbral studies: anything that truly protects the reader will feel, to them, like an attack."—E.K.
The following statement has been classified:
[REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE CONCLAVE]
The following statement has not been classified, but should have been:
"The Veil is thinnest where language fails. Stutters. Repeats. Stutters. Repeats. Stutters. Rep—"
~~The original manuscript continues for three more pages.~~ Those pages are no longer attached to the binding. They were not torn out. They were never there. You remember them anyway.
Do not try to reconstruct missing content from memory. Memory is one of the mediums the Veil prefers.
Marginalia
The margins of this chapter are more crowded than the text.
Do not trust what follows. —E.K.
He writes that in every edition. It has never helped. —Unknown hand
If you are reading this, you are not the first version of yourself to reach this page. The earlier ones did not leave notes. They left stains. —Archivist’s notation (unpublished)
Note to typesetter: these asides were not meant for the reader. Note to reader: the typesetter ignored that instruction.
Some of the marginalia is not written in ink.
Look at the edge of the page. Tilt it toward the light. There—those faint, oily crescents near the outer corner. Those are not fingerprints. Those are where someone else pressed their attention against the paper, hard enough to leave a residue of noticing.
"Awareness is a physical act. It leaves marks."—Laboratory notes, experiment 7, later sealed
Contradictions
You will encounter, within these pages, multiple descriptions of what the Veil is, what it wants, and how it behaves. They cannot all be true.
This is deliberate.
"A consistent mythology is a comfort. Comfort is the enemy of accuracy."—E.K., private correspondence
In one account, the Veil is described as static: a curtain between worlds, ragged but unmoving.
In another, it is hungry: a slow erosion of difference, gnawing at boundaries until all things blur.
In a third, it is indifferent: a byproduct of perception, like the afterimage that swims when you close your eyes.
All three accounts are wrong in the same way.
They assume you are outside of it.
"The Veil is not a place you cross. It is the medium in which you are already drowning."—Source unknown; appears in the handwriting of three different authors
Incomplete Instructions
There was once a working described here, in precise and dangerous detail. It allowed the practitioner to listen directly to what the Veil whispers when no one is near.
The procedure has been mostly excised.
What remains is not enough to perform the working.
It is more than enough to make you try.
"Begin at an hour when you are certain no one will think of you."
"Sit between two mirrors that do not reflect each other."
"Speak your name aloud until it becomes only sound—until it hollows out and something else can move in."
The final step is missing.
The final step has always been missing.
You will imagine one.
You will be wrong.
"The most reliable way to open a door is to behave as though it is already open."—Workshop notes, confiscated
Echoes of the Reader
"The book shifted when I wasn’t looking."—Complaint filed by an anonymous apprentice
"No, you shifted. The book stayed where it was."—Instructor’s response (never sent)
You may notice, upon re-reading this interlude, that certain sentences seem… altered. A word where you recall a different one. A warning where you remember an invitation. A name you are sure you would have noticed, now absent.
"Text anchored in the Veil exhibits low-level mutability in response to observer expectation."—From a study that has been disproven, then quietly proven again
If you mark this page—dog-ear the corner, underline a phrase, press a flower between the leaves—the mark will remain.
The reason you left it may not.
"We found copies with identical marginalia in different hands. The same sentence underlined, the same note: 'This is where it started.' None of the readers remember writing it."—Archive incident log
If you are tempted to add your own note here, ask yourself who you expect to read it.
What the Veil Whispers
Listen.
No, not to the room. To the gap between your thoughts as your eyes move along this line. There is a texture there, a faint pressure, like being watched by something that does not have eyes but understands the concept.
If the Veil could speak in a way you would recognize, it might say:
"You are smaller than you think."
"You are larger than you fear."
"You are not the first to come here believing you are different."
"You are, in that, exactly the same."
But the Veil does not speak in sentences. It speaks in skipped heartbeats. In the moment you look up from the page because you are certain someone has just said your name, and no one has.
"The primary hazard of listening to the Veil is not madness. It is agreement."—E.K.
Closing the Page
There is no formal dismissal for this interlude.
No circle to erase, no candle to snuff.
Exiting is simple: you stop reading.
The difficulty lies in what continues after you stop.
You may find, later tonight, that a phrase from this chapter returns unbidden. Not the one you found most striking. Not the one you underlined. A throwaway line, perhaps, or a fragment you barely noticed.
It will feel like your own thought.
It might be.
It might not.
"The Veil is thinner now."
"You have been reading—"
"but the book has been reading back."
End of Interlude: What the Veil Whispers