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Chapter 2. Theft of Freedom
The shimmering light of the Veil illuminates everything in a ghostly glow, making it seem as if the walls themselves are alive. Tom knows he's alone. He's gone to great pains to make sure he is alone and undisrupted. And yet, as he stands before the Veil of Death, he is filled with the uneasy sensation of being watched. Trepidation leaves his heart thudding heavily in his ears, thunderous in the silence of the empty room.
Yet, despite his concern, the Veil calls to him like a siren's song, promising an escape. It can give him a solace from the war — a place where he can be something other than the orphan Tom Riddle, mistrusted and underestimated. Nothing holds him to this time or place, to the many cold buildings he's supposed to call home. The opportunity to escape can't come soon enough, adulthood too far away for him to suffer through the hardship. Here, he is nothing. There, in the unknown future, he can be someone.
The only cause for hesitation is the one glaring unknown: he doesn't know what sits on the other side of the Veil. Even those researching it barely know. The few papers he has managed to steal, through charming Ministry officials into giving him tours and books, have only been theoretical, a list of questions and their guesses for answers. No one really knows what it is or where it came from. No one has been brave enough to find out.
Will he be the first? Perhaps there were others before him, they just didn't live to tell the tale. The Veil, after all, is widely believed to be tied with Death. The primordial god, in myth, has been known for playing games, making promises that twist the minds of its victims and bring them right into its palm. A trick toying with his desperation. And he's just desperate enough to risk it. After all, he can't die. Not really. The diary in his hand and the ring on his finger ensure that.
But will he just be torn to pieces for all eternity within the arch? Will he be sent to a purgatory, neither living or dead, denied heaven and hell, a damnation in his own loneliness?
Perhaps the true eternal prison is being stuck deliberating in front of it, caught between his desire and his rationality. Best to take the plunge.
Tom reaches out a tentative hand, fingers brushing the cloudy surface of the Veil. Cold mist laps hungrily at his fingertips, colder than death itself. It consumes him, pulling him closer and closer with no control or care, only the ravenous intensity of a starved beast. The sudden jolt forward catches him off guard and the diary, loose in his hand, drops to the ground. He has no opportunity to retrieve it, sucked into the Veil like a vacuum.
The transition only lasts a few seconds. The silence of the Ministry disappears with a pop, filling with shouts and scuffles, a fight clearly occurring. An unfortunate time to be stepping — or falling — through. Tom is spat out on the other side, thrown into something that had been standing in front of the Veil. They fall to the ground, rolling down the edges of the dais in a tangle of bodies. Rocks and limbs dig into Tom's skin, bruising. Their fall ends, predictably, with a bump; Tom's head hits a rock, the man hits him, elbow to the face. All around them, silence falls.
