Before the Veil Breathed - Smoke That Thunders, #0.5

Before the Veil opened, the falls were already whispering.

At Victoria Falls, where luxury eco-resorts glitter beside sacred rainforest and helicopter tours drift above endless rainbow mist, Thryn Mosi guides wealthy travellers through the beauty of Mosi-oa-Tunya — the Smoke That Thunders. To tourists, the falls are breathtaking spectacle. To Thryn, they are alive. The river remembers grief. The mist carries voices. And something ancient beneath Devil's Pool has begun waking beneath the strain of climate collapse and human greed.

Meanwhile, elegant investor Selene Vey arrives promising sustainable innovation and a new future for the region. But beneath her polished charm lies a dangerous obsession with the hidden crossings buried under the gorge. As storms transform the falls into walls of silver mist and blood-red rainbows, Thryn and the guardian Sipho race to stop forces already tearing the sacred balance apart.

Lush, haunting, and emotionally immersive, Before the Veil Breathed is an eco-fantasy prequel novella filled with ancient magic, climate dread, mythic mystery, and breathtaking danger set five years before the events of Mistbound Hearts, the first novel in the SMOKE THAT THUNDERS series.

Because long before the woman destined to change the Veil arrives at the falls, the river has already begun calling her name.