Dishonored: The Veiled Terror

Dishonored: The Veiled Terror is a third novel of a trilogy novel by Adam Christopher and is set after Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. The novel was released on September 25, 2018.

The story features Billie Lurk facing the consequences of the removal of the Outsider from the Void, as Hollows open everywhere throughout the Empire of the Isles.

Synopsis
''Billie Lurk has achieved the impossible: the Outsider has fallen. But now the Void is unbalanced, and soon the fate of the world is at stake.''

''From Tyvia to Serkonos, mysterious rifts in the fabric of reality have appeared—portals into the Void, with the potential to tear the world apart. Billie's search for the source of their instability sends her far from Dunwall, to a city cut in half by a rift, and to a kingdom recovering from civil war, where an uneasy truce reigns. A former assassin, smuggler, and bounty hunter, Billie's a born survivor, and she's the only one who can set things right—but to do so she must confront her own past, with world-altering results.''

Part One:
A year after the Death of the Outsider, Billie Lurk wakes in Dunwall from a nightmare. Since that event the Sliver of the Dead God's magic had gone silent and the Twin-Bladed Knife refused to answer her call, while everyone across the isles suffered from nightmares. To get meaningful sleep, Billie had resorted to a herb called the Green Lady, but her supplies was running low, so she needed to venture to Wyrmwood Way.

Entering into an apothecary there, one of the customers, Woodrow, begged the apothecary for Addermire Solution despite not having the money to afford it now that it was no longer being made and this a rare commodity. He attempted to claim that he would pay it later once his fellow Overseers had found platinum that was stored away, but the apothecary pointed out that the Empress had dissolved the Abbey of the Everyman while the Sisters of the Oracular Order had been hunted down and massacred by Royal guards that had seen something in their chambers after the death of the outsider. Woodrow, denied his fix, pulled out a knife shaped from void-stone and began to cast some form of rudimentary magic that roused the Eye of the Dead God by speaking in an unknown tongue as if in a trance and carving into himself.

Billie intervened and knocked Woodrow out, helping bandage him up while the apothecary claimed the knife for himself in exchange for a discount. She then departed to head towards the Academy of Natural Philosophy in order to try and appeal to the philosophers there about the danger the world was in. After the fall of the Outsider, a vacuum had been created and rifts in the fabric of reality were sprouting up where the two dimensions were being pulled apart.

Her appeal failed despite being an acquaintance of Anton Sokolov and she was prepared to leave when one philosopher sought her out. His name was Dribner, and he had been conducting his own analysis on the Void Hollows with information from Sokolov revealed that the rifts were linked and as the Void sheared away from their world while expanding it would soon be the end of everything. And because the Outsider had fallen, all those who were gifted magic through his mark were not left without it.

As Billie Lurk still held a link to the Void through her arm and eye, she was the only one who could resolve the issue. However, it meant that she couldn't indulge in using Green Lady as it dulled her mind and her connection to the Void. So with no other choice she chose to forego it as he directed her towards where the Void Hollows were being artificially expanded, Alba. There had been a civil war between the King and Queen that lasted for three days and left the city in ruins when a rift in the Void tore the city in half, and now they were taking in people from all over the world to help with the rebuilding,

Part Two:
Billie takes a boat from Dunwall to Alba, the trip lasting 40 days until she finally arrived and spotted the Leviathan Causeway that led straight into the Void rift. To investigate it she accosted a worker and stole his badge, entering the workplace until she spotted a particular worker being harassed as he tried to contact the head of the project, Severin. They were prepared to kill him until Billie stepped in and killed them to learn that Severin had been trying to get the project underway for years until the Three-Day war and once the Void rift appeared their work accelerated when it normally would have stopped.

With that information she continued her search, coming across Severin and his second, Uvanov as they discussed sending more workers into the Void to increase the yield of a substance called Voidrite. Billie followed them at a distance before losing track of them inside of a room where they had Runes and other magical artifacts taken from the Order of the Everyman and Norcross' collection after Daud had killed him. Using one of the Runes, she was able to enter into the Void and see they had created flying machines and that the workers were being warped as they harvest stone from the Void itself.

No sooner than she discovered that was she captured by guards and one of the transformed workers, the Twin-Blade Knife sending a shooting pain up her arm as if it refused to be called. Uvanov then has them take her to Severin, who intended to take her arm and eye until the Chief Constable arrived with a Royal Proclamation that allowed them to take Billie from the pair's custody and to the Queen of Morley, Eithne.

Eithne revealed she knew a staggering amount of information about Billie, such as her mother and father and her connection to Daud and Delilah, and how the Outsider fell. She was then shown to her quarters and given permission to move about somewhat freely until banquet with both the Queen and King of Morley, who had seemingly reconciled, and then feigned exhaustion to be given leave to go rest.

Part Three:
Suspicious of both the King and Queen, Billie used the opportunity to investigate and discovers a Void trail using the Eye of the Dead God that leads her first to King Briam in the Great Hall and then the Royal Tomb, where she came across the rift and was pulled into it. The rift led her through different moment in time as the Void Shadow attempted to change events, eventually confronting it only for it to nearly cut the Eye of the Dead God out of her head when a future version of herself appeared to drive it off.

The future Billie Lurk explained that the Void Shadow was the Queen of Morley using what she believed to be an artifact to traverse the Void in an attempt to change time itself and she had been going around correcting it, as due to the Knife and Eye they could enter the Void directly and exist outside of time itself. That was why the Shadow intended to take Billie's Knife and Eye to be able to gain full mastery and crystallize the changes to where they can no longer be changed.

Unable to remain, Billie's future counterpart instructed her on how to summon the knife once more before departing as the longer they were together the more time diverged, and Billie went to interrogate the King only to be accosted by Severin and Leviathan Company guards who confiscated the knife as they brought her to him. King Briam then revealed that he was in control of the Shadow and intended to use the knife, only for the Shadow itself to intrude and then drag him off.

Using the opportunity, one of the guards assists Billie Lurk after revealing herself to be Martha Cottings and Billie intended to interrogate Severin only for him to escape into the Void using a Rune. Billie followed him inside and eventually stumbled across the Royal Tomb within the Void where the Void Shadow sacrifices both the Queen's original body and the King to consume the Altar that was used to make the Outsider, becoming a more corporeal entity that intended to feed before disappearing.

Severin, under the circumstances, revealed the nature of the project and how they intended to originally create a rail system that would link to all parts of the empire and shift the balance of power from Dunwall to Morley. Then l the King discovered the Voidrite was could be used as a fuel source and distorted gravity around it. He intended to use it as a military capable of using the Void to cross vast distances, bomb locations using flying machines, and then having the army move in. The Queen discovered his intentions and began to mobilize her own forces, leading to the civil war, but once he got his hands on the Altar he used her as an experiment and controlled her with it until now.

Billie realized that the Shadow would need to feed on the Void and Voidrite and so they return to Leviathan's Causeway to see that the army was confronting it but being overwhelmed until one crate exploded and damaged the creature. Billie then had a flying machine loaded with as much Voidrite as it could carry and then ignited it as she flew it into the Void Shadow, but Severin pushed her out of the flying craft and instead sacrificed himself. The explosion destroyed the Void Shadow, but rendered Billie unconscious.

When Billie woke later on, she found that she was being escorted back to Dunwall by Martha where Empress Emily Kaldwin thanked her as she returned the Twin-bladed Knife. Dribner then approached her while stating they would be working on closing the rifts before Martha reminded Billie that she needed to go back in time to save her before she began fixing time as her future counterpart had. Billie then asked where she needed to go to retrieve her as the book ends.

Trivia

 * The release of this book as well as the previous one in the series was delayed months before the release of Death of the Outsider. It was initially set to be released on February 2017, was delayed to September 2017, October 2017 then February 27, 2018. The original synopsis read: "The official sequel to the new video game Dishonored 2, picking up the adventure where the game left off and weaving into the additional digital content the game studio will continue to release for a year after the game's release."
 * The book's cover reuses the main illustration for Death of the Outsider.