𝑨𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒂 •

I don’t know when I stopped longing for the solitude of my coffin or when I allowed the days to slip so carelessly through my fingers.

There always seemed to be something worth rising for. Something worth losing myself in.

A man or a woman to seduce, another beautiful stranger destined for a fatal ending at my hands but this time… It was different.

If I left my coffin it was never to indulge in my own pleasures anymore. My kills were crueler and quicker. There was no pleasure to be found in them anymore. Only another corpse left behind before I returned to the familiar darkness under my coffin lid once again.

Something inside my chest had been torn open. It was the place where my heart had once lived.

Every breath felt like another slow hemorrhage, as though a gash had been carved through my heart and left me to bleed from a wound immortality could not mend. Every breath I drew seemed only to prolong the suffering, each passing second another reminder that even eternity could ache.

I suppose that is the consequence of taking the life of your own blood. It was not a grief unfamiliar to me but Avriel had been the last of my family. The last blood I had ever truly loved.

𝙏𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙢𝙚… 𝙙𝙤 𝙄 𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙬𝙚𝙖𝙧 𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡𝙮?

I remain inside my coffin, letting the silence swallow every sound I am too proud to make before anyone else. Swallowed by this darkness. I scream into it. I weep into it because it is the only thing that answers me without judgment.

I stay until the hunger begins burning through my throat like a punishment, until even my bones ache with such terrible insistence that the simple act of rising from my coffin becomes its own kind of suffering. By then moving hurts. Existing hurts.

Some nights it is terribly tempting to remain exactly where I am. To let the darkness keep me and let the centuries pass over my coffin until the world forgets there was ever a monster sleeping beneath it.

What purpose remains in rising when the only heart I wished to find has already stopped beating?

𝙄 𝙖𝙢 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙚. 𝙏𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙢𝙚… 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙞𝙩 𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙜?

You never truly recognize how alone eternity has made you until suffering becomes your only companion…and there isn’t a single soul beside you to witness it.

That is when immortality finally tells the truth.

I had spent centuries becoming a refuge for others. A place where broken souls came to empty themselves before returning to lives that no longer had room for me.

For all the comfort I offered I somehow remained far easier to leave than to love. Perhaps I became a burden long before anyone found the courage to admit it or I merely expected too much from creatures who had always been passing through my eternity.

Could I truly fault them for leaving me to my own reckoning? I could be a lot and besides there was never anyone I wished to have a front row seat to my downfall.

There is so much rage and anguish in me. So much that it gathers at the back of my throat until every breath feels like I am swallowing shards of something that refuses to go down. No matter how desperately I try, nothing is enough to make me swallow it down.

I don’t know where I found the strength but somehow I climbed out of my coffin tonight. Washed away the last few nights in the coffin, fixing myself up to be beautiful and fatal as I have always been.

𝙄 𝙖𝙢 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙚.

The fire clawing at my throat seemed determined to call me a liar.

I wandered into the night, hoping the sound of my heels echoing off the ground would be enough to drown out the thoughts that refused to loosen their grip on me.

Avriel’s 𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦. Avriel’s 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥. The look in his eyes as he drew his final 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩. . . and the terrible weight of his 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 still beating inside my fist.

I released a slow breath, my eyes wandering to the moon before settling upon the night ahead of me once again. Somewhere beyond the silence, music called to me. I followed it without thinking, allowing the melody to pull me through empty streets until I found the source. A lonely little bar, one of the few places stubborn enough to keep its doors open long after the rest of the city had surrendered to sleep.

I stepped inside, the warmth of the room washing over skin that had forgotten how to welcome comfort. Without a word, I claimed a seat at the bar. For a little while the music reached places my thoughts could not, loosening whatever chains the agony had around me. Then the final note dissolved into silence…and every ghost found me again.

The bartender approached, though I never bothered to acknowledge them. My eyes remained fixed upon the room, drifting lazily from one face to the next. Somewhere within these walls was a heartbeat capable of quieting the fire clawing through my throat.

For tonight that would have to be enough.

“Something dark.” I said without so much as glancing their way. “I don’t particularly care what it is.” Then I continued surveying the crowded room, weighing each stranger with the detached patience of a predator trying to decide where the evening ought to end.

The glass touched the polished wood with a clink. Only then did I turn. For the first time that evening, I looked at the bartender. My breath caught at their blonde hair that spilled over their shoulders exactly the way Avriel’s once had. The world seemed to hesitate.

For one treacherous heartbeat…

It was him.

My fingers tightened imperceptibly around the edge of the bar, my gaze refusing to leave the face before me as grief played one final, merciless trick upon my mind. Then I blinked and the illusion shattered. The eyes were wrong. The mouth was wrong.

The soul…entirely wrong. She had had never resembled him, she was just wearing the cruel coincidence of familiar hair.

𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙖𝙣’𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧 𝙢𝙚 𝙗𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪?

I reached for my glass and suddenly blood drenched my fingers, warm and impossibly fresh, slipping through the lines of my palm as though his heart had only just stopped beating. My breath caught somewhere inside my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut, drawing breath to steady myself. When I finally found the courage to look again, my hand was clean.

The blood was gone or merely chose to hide.

I lifted the whiskey to my lips, letting the dark liquor settle over my tongue before sliding down my throat, chasing the relentless burn with only temporary mercy. Just as I began lowering the glass, the world around me fell unnervingly still.

The music vanished, faint clink of glasses and murmured conversations were gone. Even the laughter dissolved into a dreadful silence.

I felt something pulsing in my hand, my eyes falling to see that it was no longer the glass.

It was Avriel’s heart pumping and bleeding down my finger tips. It rested in my palm as though the night had folded back upon itself, each pulse echoing through the silence until it drowned out every coherent thought. The warmth of it seemed terribly real for something that belonged only to memory. My fingers trembled.

My own heart lurched violently against my ribs. The air abandoned my lungs before I realized I had stopped breathing. My fingers gave way. The weight slipped from my hand.

A sharp crash shattered beneath me as crystal struck the floor, splintering into countless pieces. There had never been any blood nor a beating heart resting in my palm. Only a memory cruel enough to convince me otherwise.

𝙄 𝙖𝙢 𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙬𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙠, 𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙣’𝙩 𝙄? 𝙄𝙨 𝙞𝙩 𝙨𝙡𝙞𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜?

The world slowly found its way back to me. The music resumed as though nothing had happened, conversations flowed around me without interruption and somewhere nearby someone laughed. It felt almost offensive that life possessed the audacity to continue while mine had become trapped inside a single memory. I could hear every voice, every clink of crystal against crystal, yet they reached me as though I were buried beneath the earth listening from inside my own coffin. My throat burned with a hunger so relentless it seemed to devour more than blood. Maybe that was the answer. That I had simply waited too long to feed. Surely a fresh heartbeat would drown out the one that refused to stop haunting me. Surely it would end it all.

I rose from the bar without another thought, slipping through the back door into the night’s familiar embrace. The alley welcomed me with its damp stone and patient darkness. There was always someone wandering these forgotten places. Someone lingering a little too long. Someone careless enough to believe the night had no teeth. I stood there in silence, closing my eyes as the scent of living blood drifted lazily through the air until it settled somewhere deep inside me. My jaw tightened. My fangs ached. This had to end. I needed a pulse beneath my fingertips. I needed warm blood to silence the inferno clawing through my throat and wash Avriel from my thoughts, if only for one merciful moment.

I walked without direction until the night finally offered me someone foolish enough to linger alone. A man stood beneath the dim glow of a streetlamp, laughing drunkenly into his phone, blissfully unaware that the darkness had already taken an interest in him. Tall, raven-haired, dressed in black from head to toe. My eyes drifted through the alley one final time, ensuring no one else had wandered into our little corner of the night.

Only then did I move faster than his eyes could catch, slipping the phone from his hand and crushing it to pieces before he could make sense of my presence. “What the hell?” His protest barely had time to exist before I grabbed him and forced him back against the nearest brick wall. The impact stole the breath from his lungs, leaving only silence between us. My cold gaze settled into his.

“Don’t move.” I said quietly. “Don’t make a sound.” The command settled over him with effortless certainty.

𝘐 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱.

His body obeyed before another word could escape him. I turned his head gently to one side, fangs viciously tearing inside his throat. His blood eased the relentless fire that had been scorching my throat for days and for the first time since Avriel… the noise inside my mind grew quieter.

Only for a moment.

Only long enough to remember that some hungers can be fed…and others never leave.

I listened as his heartbeat surrendered its frantic rhythm, growing quieter with every passing moment. I withdrew my fangs from his throat, releasing him little by little until his weight slipped from my hands. Before he had fully fallen, something shifted before my very eyes. He no longer wore the face I had first laid eyes upon.

Long blonde hair rested upon his shoulders and the face staring back at me was no stranger. It was Avriel as I last saw him. His corpse cold, lifeless and haunted by the silence that had followed his final breath.

The sight alone stole whatever strength remained in me. My heart lurched painfully against my ribs as tears blurred my vision before I had the pride to stop them. “No…” The word barely escaped me. “No… it was supposed to make it stop. 𝙔𝙤𝙪 looked me in the eyes and told me I could survive this, Avriel! 𝙔𝙤𝙪 swore I’d be fine!”

I stumbled backward, unable to tear my eyes away from him. A terrible sickness rose inside me, until my body rejected every bit of blood I had so desperately believed would quiet the torment. I bent forward, vomiting the blood and it hard the ground in thick pools.

“𝑾𝑬𝑳𝑳, 𝑳𝑶𝑶𝑲 𝑨𝑻 𝑴𝑬!

𝑫𝑶 𝑰 𝑳𝑶𝑶𝑲 𝑭𝑰𝑵𝑬 𝑻𝑶 𝒀𝑶𝑼?”

My voice fractured against the walls of the alley as I cried into the nights

The sickness overtook me again, forcing me to double over and throw up more blood that stained the concrete beneath my feet. Tears blurred the world until I could scarcely tell memory from reality.

In one desperate motion, I seized him by the throat. “ 𝑰 𝑨𝑴 𝑫𝑹𝑶𝑾𝑵𝑰𝑵𝑮, 𝑰 𝑨𝑴 𝑺𝑼𝑭𝑭𝑶𝑪𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑵𝑮!” My voice broke again “𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑰𝑻 𝑰𝑺 𝑵𝑶𝑻 𝑭𝑰𝑵𝑬 𝑾𝑯𝑬𝑵 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑾𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑫 𝑻𝑯𝑰𝑺…”

I remember how he begged me for that final mercy. He had looked me in the eyes and asked for it. So why did every night since feel as though he was making me pay?

I slammed them down onto the concrete 𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦…𝘮𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘪𝘤𝘦. It was not until a ragged cough escaped him that the illusion finally surrendered its hold over me. The face before me was his own again. Not Avriel’s. Just a frightened half alive mortal whose heart, to my surprise still insisted upon beating. I stared at him for a long moment. How unlike me this had become…to not have the strength nor will to kill him at all but instead spare him in the midst of my own reckoning.

Without another word, I drew a thin line across my wrist and held it to his lips, allowing my own blood to mend what the night had nearly claimed, though there was nothing in this world capable of mending me. My mind continued to splinter in dreadful silence, just as it always had and just as it always would. Alone. I lowered my gaze to his once more, my eyes settling into his. “Forget me.” I whispered. “Forget this night. Let it become nothing more than an uneasy dream you’ll never quite remember.” I released him then, leaving him to the mercy of another sunrise.

𝙄𝙩’𝙨 𝙖 𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙪𝙡 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚… 𝙞𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙞𝙩? 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙨.

The memories that poison me by day and return to finish the job each night. 𝘈𝘷𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘭’𝘴 𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦. 𝘈𝘷𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘭’𝘴 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴. His dying heart beating in my hand. I have replayed that evening so many times I no longer know whether I am remembering it…or simply refusing to let it die. I belong to the emptiness now. To the guilt. To every wound that refuses the mercy of closing. Some nights I think this agony is simply another form of immortality. It never dies. It merely learns new ways to haunt you.

I returned home, my castle waited exactly as it always had. 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵. 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘺. I wandered its halls without seeing them before lowering myself into my coffin once more. The darkness engulfed me. I couldn’t keep down the blood and I didn’t have the appetite to try again. So as expected the hunger returned, burning through my throat as though reminding me that eternity has no sympathy for mourning. Feed. Sleep. Wake. Suffer. Repeat. Such is the dreadful rhythm of a monster’s existence.

Sometimes holding on wounds more than letting go.

I had spent a lifetime carving out a space in my chest for my brother. A wound that began when I was still human and he first vanished. They always told me to let him go but how could I release the one tether that ever made me feel safe? Every sign screamed surrender. Every instinct screamed to give up and I never could.

I knew he was still out there and I was right.

Here he is now. Both of us vampires, both of us 𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗻𝗲𝗱.

I remember the first time I found him years ago, though it feels like another lifetime entirely. He had chosen to rot in that abandoned house swallowed by shadows and self loathing and our reunion…It didn’t end well. Not in the way I had fantasized where siblings are supposed to collide after years apart. He greeted me with broken fists and a mind twisted by torment. He struck at me like I was the ghost of every mistake he ever made and I let him because part of me believed I had earned it.

That was the first time I realized love could feel like a knife held between your ribs.

Avriel told me to stay away and for once in my life I obeyed for a while. Until the first time he called out from his private hell needing me…and I ran and now here I am again dancing on the edge with him.

I watched over him still out and recovering from the nasty neck snap Sabine gave him.

I didn’t know what I’d do when he woke or what he’d become.

Sabine shoved a blood bag at me and

I let my disgust speak louder than words.

“Fine, go pale then.” she muttered, sinking into a chair with that infuriating boredom of hers. “Hm.” I rolled my eyes at her. “The last couple of days have been hell. You think cold blood is a reward?” Sabine scoffed, shaking her head but the humor died halfway through the motion. Her gaze was serious with something settling behind her eyes…it was concern. “What are you going to do with him, Alicena?” she asked quietly. “This room might hold him for now but whatever magic is threaded through him… it’s volatile.”

I already knew that.

Sabine exhaled, incapable of hiding her annoyance. “You’re not thinking this through and don’t pretend you’re alone in this. 𝐍𝐢𝐤𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐬 would. . .” I immediately cut in. “No.” I said to warn her and she hesitated only a fraction before pressing on foolish as ever. “He would care if something happened to you.”

How unfortunate for him. Making a mockery of my heart is something I don’t take lightly.

“Well, he forfeited the right to care. Don’t speak his name to me again.”

I knew she meant well. Sabine only warned when she cared and that was exactly why I needed her to leave. “Well, you’ve done enough.” I needed her gone now, so there was no mistaking the finality of what I’m saying. “This is my brother and he is the last thread of blood that still binds me to something I once called family. However this ends… it belongs to us.”

She looked at me like I had just offered myself to the grave. “You cannot be serious.” she said in disbelief. “You’re asking me to leave? Avriel is not who he was, Alicena.”

I had known that long before I stepped foot into this place. Known it the moment his name became something whispered instead of spoken. “I was aware of that before I ever came here.” My eyes softened for only a second because I couldn’t afford it to linger. “Your help… it hasn’t gone unnoticed but this is not yours to shape. I won’t have you standing between us when it ends.”

She shook her head as though she could already see the outcome I refused to acknowledge. Her hand found mine… it felt human in a way I no longer was.

“𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘧 𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶?”

I remained silent as I slipped my hand from hers. Emotion threatened in the space where her touch had been and I could not afford to let it take root. “It is an ending I can live with and one I will not regret.”

She searched my face like she was waiting for me to falter or change my mind but there was nothing there. So she said nothing more.

Instead she pulled me into an embrace, tight enough to feel like a farewell. . . and then she was gone.

Leaving me alone my brother and whatever ruin waited to claim us both.

Avriel shifted….just a twitch at first and then he was awake again. His eyes found me and for a brief fragile moment they were his eyes. The ones I grew up with that once looked at me like I was worth saving.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just waited.

“Alicena…” he said my name and looked away, like he was remembering what happened. “I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you again.” His apology sliced through me. . . 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻 because it wasn’t the first time he inflicted my pain with his own hands. A bad habit formed in his vampirism but never one from his life prior.

“Well, it’s not the first time is it, Avriel?” I finally said and he flinched. “I wasn’t in my right mind then just like now.” he muttered, looking down at the marks crawling over his skin like a curse he couldn’t outrun. “They succeeded this time. The binding took. I don’t know how long before I lose myself again.” He tried to sit up and winced. He was still in pain, it’s seething in his bones. I stepped forward and kneeled beside him. “You should rest. You’re safe here. Nothing will happen. You can stay until I can fix it.”

That struck a hard nerve, I could see it in his eyes.

“Fix it?” he snapped, I could almost taste his disgust. “Alicena, you have no idea what it was like there. What happened to you wasn’t even a taste of it. I don’t want this to be fixed. Not by you!” His command ricocheted off the room.

“You knew the risk and still led me here, Avriel!” I snapped back at him and it was true, he did lead me here…or so I thought.

“I didn’t do that!” he shouted, agony blistering through every word. He shattered right through the truth I thought I knew. “Not intentionally. That was 𝐌𝐚𝐞𝐥𝐤𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐬. That’s his name and he’s a sick twisted bastard and now he gets to toy with me anytime he wants.”

I could see it in his eyes he was teetering on the edge, the fight leaving him. I could taste his exhaustion, the bone deep ache of a soul pushed too far.

The way someone looks right before they decide to 𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗵.

“These marks are draining the life out of me, sister.” he whispered. “Every second I breathe, it feels like a blade dragging up and down my ribs. I suffered for months before you even found me… months before he even dragged me into this hell. My eternity has been nothing but pain. I won’t be his puppet and I won’t let you be either.”

I stared at him. “So cut the theatrics and let me fix this!” He stepped closer and I could see the tremble under his skin, the fracture in his spirit.

“𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐱𝐞𝐝! 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐞!”

It felt like he reached into my chest and ripped my heart out with his bare hands…and he may as well had. I stepped back, convinced that he just wasn’t in his right mind. There’s no way he’d believe that dying could be an option. He caught my wrist before I could dismiss this further. “I always promised I’d protect you.” he’s trying to plead his case. “Maybe I failed along the way… so let me protect you one last time.”

This was the last thing I would’ve wanted.

“This isn’t for me!” I shouted, tears burning down my cheeks. “You’re doing this so you don’t drown in your own guilt...and then what comes after? I just lose you again!”

He held my stare and it was heartbreaking but he had a point to make. I know him better than anyone. Avriel was sure of this and he would see it through.

“You know I’m right. . . and as much as you clung to the idea that you needed me to protect you, you never did. You’ve always survived me. Survived everything.”

I said nothing. Could say nothing.

Every memory of him was clawing its way up my throat. He gently guiding my hand into his.

“If this is how my story ends…then let it be by your hands, Sister.”

Rage detonated in me.

𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜 𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞.

I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t.

“You’re right…you’re out of your fucking mind, Avriel!” He didn’t let my outburst phase him. He just kept going. “Deep down, you know there was never another way. Even if I slip his hold here… what then? Am I meant to rot within these walls, caged in something I cannot outrun?” He shook his head and I can see the pain more clearer. All of this is his burden. “That isn’t living. It’s just another kind of suffering. I love you too much to leave you with that burden… with me like this. So love me enough to end it.”

𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗶𝗺. 𝗜 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗶𝗺. 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗶𝗺. 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁.

I knew the moment I killed him, something inside me would rot and never grow back.

The girl I once was. . . the one who believed in saving him would die with him.

I’m afraid of what comes after. If what’s left of my souls would be completely empty.

He took my hand before I could steady it, lifting it as though it were something fragile. He pressed it against his chest over the echo of what still resembled a heartbeat.

“You don’t have to do this alone.” he murmured. For a moment I almost believed him. The illusion nearly held. Then I tore my hand from him.

“Since when have you ever been one to falter?” I asked colder than anger. “Whatever this is… this weakness that’s taken hold of you. Get rid of it before I decide to remove it myself.”

He stepped back as if the distance might shield him from what I was becoming in front of him but I saw it. That fracture. The flicker of him… slipping. Something else pressing forward beneath his skin wearing him thin.

A sound left him then like he was amused.

“It’s almost pitiful.” he said, voice laced with something crueler like it did not belong entirely to him. “How you never quite have it in you to do what must be done.”

The words settled into me like a challenge…or a truth I refused to accept.

I saw him move and then I didn’t.

One breath he was across from me, the next his hand was at my throat lifting me like I weighed nothing before hurling me into the stone. The impact split through me, a violent crack echoing as the wall met bone.

My hand came up on instinct, fingers locking around his wrist twisting until felt it give beneath my grip with a vicious snap.

“Avriel, fight it!” I forced out desperate in a way I despised and he answered with violence.

His hand caught me again, dragging me forward only to slam the back of my head into the wall.

This time I heard it. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞.

A sickening hollow sound as my skull gave under the force, pain bursting behind my eyes. Blood spilled instantly, blinding as it ran down my face.

He wanted it. He needed it.

“What I need…” his voice cut through the haze. “…is for you to stop being weak.”

The world shifted as he threw me down, my body hitting the ground hard enough to rattle what little sense I had left.

Then his foot came down against me.

My ribs 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 beneath it.

A scream tore from me before I could stop it.

Again each time the fractures heal and come together.

Another 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐩. Another 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤 splintering through me like something breaking apart from the inside.

“Your entire life…”

𝑪𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒌.

“…has been a tragedy.”

𝑪𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒌.

His words landed with each impact, each blow more vicious than the last, as if he were carving the truth into me with bone and blood.

“You are nothing more…”

𝑪𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒌

“…than something to 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐝 for it.”

𝑪𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒌.

“To 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫…”

The pressure shifted mercilessly

“To 𝐟𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫…”

Another 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒌. I felt something vital give.

“To your 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫…”

He dropped down over me then suddenly, his presence closing in as his hand wrapped around my throat again.

“…to 𝐦𝐞.”

He lifted me just enough to make me feel the drop before slamming my head back into the stone beneath us. 𝐎𝐧𝐜𝐞. 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐜𝐞. The world fractured with it.

“After I kill you…” he whispered now, he speaks softly but I could hear his cruelty. It won’t stop here. My blood pooled beneath me. I feel it behind my head, through my clothes from bleeding wounds. “I’ll become something I never wanted to be.” His grip tightened. “And it will be because of you.”

That is why this could 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 be spared. What comes for us was always waiting patiently and inevitable.

I watched him turn into something I no longer recognized and the truth lodged in my throat harder to swallow than the blood pooling on my tongue.

I knew what he wanted.

Worse… I knew what had to be done.

I lifted my gaze to his, searching for anything familiar that still belonged to my brother. There was nothing. No softness. No memory. Just a hollowed thing wearing his face like a cruel imitation.

This was not Avriel.

A tear slipped free before I could stop it, cutting through the blood on my skin as I moved.

There was no hesitation in the motion itself. Only in the breath that came before it.

𝐌𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭. 𝐅𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐡 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝, 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧. . . 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐩.

“No…” My voice broke as my fingers tightened around it. “You won’t because I won’t let you.”

For the first time since this began… he stilled.

The violence drained from him in an instant, his body going rigid around my arm buried inside him… for a second I saw a flicker of what might’ve been him.

“Finally…” His said strained and fragile beneath the pain. “I… I’m almost proud.”

My hand trembled now, the reality crashing over me in waves I could not outrun. My brother’s heart… pulsing against my palm, each beat a reminder of what I was about to take from him and from myself.

He reached for me then. His hand closed around my wrist, steadying it to ground me in a way only he ever could.

“It’s okay, sister…” he murmured, sounding like the brother I once knew had finally found his way back through the ruin. He leaned his forehead to mine, tears streaking down his cheeks as he suddenly pushed memories into me. Our garden, the sunlight, iris petals brushing our ankles, laughter we’d forgotten how to make. This is who he wanted me to remember him as. Not the hollow creature vampirism carved out of him.

𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐦𝐲 𝐯𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐬, 𝐈 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐠𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐈 𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭.

I felt it still beating as I held it… felt the last echoes of him fighting to remain. . . and yet

when I looked at him there was relief.

It softened his face in a way I had not seen in years, something almost peaceful settling into the ruin. The veins beneath his skin darkened, spreading outward like fractures, like something inside him finally breaking apart. It crawled across him in jagged lines, as if his flesh could no longer contain what he had become.

I moved him gently then, lowering him beside me. I was careful like he wasn’t already gone.

I sank to the floor beside him, my body folding in on itself as I stayed there. Just as I had before when we were children. When father left him broken and bleeding into the ground. I sat at his side because I refused to leave him alone in it.

Nothing had changed.

Only this time…

𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭.

My will shattered and I cradled him as if my body could shield him from death’s final reach. A scream tore out of me so raw it scraped the heavens. . . it felt like if I bled hard enough through that single cry, the universe might flinch and take anything but him.

I held him like I could stitch life back into him with my grief. Like if I just shattered hard enough, he’d return but he didn’t. . .

and the night went silent around the sound of me breaking.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒏.

They didn’t just 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯 they rose and swallowed me whole. In this moment I wasn’t the vampire Alicena. The creature with a smile lethal enough to make kings kneel and sinners choke on their own devotion. No…this was the other me. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦.

The part of me that sickened me to think about.

The girl who used to curl into corners and pray her tears might drown her before someone else did. The one who begged her own bones to stop remembering.

It was all in my head again…𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 single scream, 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 drip of blood that wasn’t mine alone.

It looped in my skull like a record that had forgotten how to die. 𝘖𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳…

his voice, his promise and the pain.

I just wanted it all to stop.

I looked up and the world blurred around me. I’m forced into another memory, one where pale moonlight washed the sand. I had tried so hard to erase this one. When I met a woman, 𝐂é𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞. She had been kind to me, the first in so long to offer anything that resembled mercy.

Near her I’d forget what I was and that vicious hunger that erupts when my fangs are bared. She was innocence incarnate, a reminder of myself that had existed before immortality stole everything.

That night we wandered along the beach. She had smuggled her father’s violins, a sin I should have punished myself for. I told her I played. . . and what a mistake that was.

I lifted the instrument onto my shoulder, letting the bow glide slow across the strings. The melody was soft and sweet at first. A song for her alone but then as if the world demanded it, I let my speed consume me. My fingers danced impossibly fast, notes bending faster than a mortal ear could follow. My eyes darkened, veins crawling beneath like black rivers. It’s something she could not comprehend.

She gasped dropping the bottle of wine she was holding. “C’est toi! Tu es le 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞!” she screamed.

Her betrayal cut into my heart but perhaps the betrayal was mutual. The innocence she clung to a reminder of the humanity I could no longer claim.

She ran from me, screaming into the woods until her throat was raw.

“You do not have to run from me, Céline.” I called, sounding so calm that it felt more dangerous than what I’m going to do. “You don’t have to make me do this.”

and yet 𝑰 𝒅𝒊𝒅.

Enhanced speed carried me across the distance in a heartbeat. As she turned I drove the bow through her stomach, the wood splitting flesh. She froze with her eyes wide and pleading. I met them with nothing but hunger. I stared into her gaze as if my soul was emptied.

That night I killed her and with her, I killed the last fragile thread of the girl I once was. The part of me that felt human and wanted to be gentle. It died leaving only the monster I had always been.

I screamed and tore myself back into the present. My lungs burning, nails digging into my own skin as if I could claw the memory out. I wanted the torment to end. . . and suddenly 𝒊𝒕 𝒅𝒊𝒅.

The mark on my wrist flickered out like a candle. One breath it was there, the next it was gone but the emptiness it left behind felt worse.

A disappearance that felt like a warning.

“𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚…𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚…”

It was Avriel and his voice was so clear it felt close. Something in it felt wrong. It made the air around me bend.

“Help me…”

I could feel him like a pulse beneath my skin, like his footsteps echoed inside my bones.

He wasn’t far.

He was 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 me.

This could be another reason everything goes wrong but still I moved. Faster than fear or even a single thought. I tore through the trees as though the woods parted. Branches broke beneath my heels and I stopped the moment I saw his silhouette.

Tall. Moonlit. Long blond hair spilling down his shoulders like a whisper of light. Eyes like mine. No doubt it was my brother…or looked like him.

“Avriel…”

I didn’t walk to him, I 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘭 into him. He nearly collapsed in my arms. His body was shaking, flecked with dried blood but what struck me were the markings. Those symbols from the altar carved into his skin like some vile scripture.

He held me like he’d drown without the shape of me against him. For a heartbeat, I thought the world might forgive me. I felt relieved to have him again.

“Avriel! How… how did you escape?” I asked softly. He shook his head.

“I left…” He saw the confusion gathering in my eyes, so he forced himself to continue.

“The last thing I remember was screaming… the pain and then everything went dark.”

He withdraws himself a little to fully look at me. “When I woke, the chains were gone. The room was empty. No cultists. Not even him. The door was open. So I didn’t want to miss my chance. I just ran.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to hold him and pretend this wasn’t a story written by a god who hated us.

“It felt… almost too good to be true.” he whispered.

It all was too good to be true. Within a second his eyes were snuffed out from their beautiful shades of blue to a blinding white. Like someone had scooped out everything human and filled the void with winter.

His hand snapped to my throat. A merciless grip crushing my windpipe against his palm as he slammed me into the nearest tree. Bark splintered beneath my spine.

“And now all I crave..” he hissed in a voice that wasn’t his “is the sound of your dying breath.”

I hardly recognized him.

This thing in front of me wasn’t Avriel, it was whatever had crawled into him when I wasn’t fast enough, smart enough or strong enough.

𝐈’𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐦.

“Avriel! Fight it!” I choked, grabbing his wrist but he didn’t loosen. Instead his hand plunged straight into my chest, fingers about to curl around my heart. I screamed as he snarled. “You’ve always been an annoying parasite, sister!”

Then like a blur behind him there was a crack like thunder. His body went limp with his neck snapped cleanly.

I was saved by Sabine. She stood behind him, lowering his body carefully.

“It’s a quiet fix for now.” she said calmly, as though my heart wasn’t still stitching itself back together. “but he’ll wake up again.”

I pressed my palm to my chest, feeling the torn flesh knit beneath it. I was silent. I couldn’t find a single word to speak… couldn’t even show my appreciation for her showing up for me after everything.

“You could’ve told me it was Avriel. I would’ve helped.” She said to me and I shook my head.

“It’s bad this time. Involving you would’ve made it worse… trust me. This isn’t even the worst part.” She sighed while shrugging at me.

“Well, your friend let me know what was happening. Said you’d need me.”

My brow raised confused because I didn’t have friends. “What friend?” She rolled her eyes. “You know… the other tall hot blonde. Has some of your mannerisms annoyingly so. Said his name was Lestat De Lioncourt.”

My heart skipped, betrayed me and yet I forced an eye roll with my tone dry as bone.

“He’s not my friend. He’s insufferable.” I lied…something was there but it was something I couldn’t afford right now.

“Right.” she muttered. “Friend.” We both knelt to lift Avriel’s unconscious body. “Anyway.” Sabine continued. “I have a place we can take him. If those marks are driving him mad, we need a space where no magic seeps through. Total dead zone.”

I nodded while staring down at him…at the brother I’d gotten back only to almost lose again in the same breath.

Even with him in my arms it didn’t feel like salvation. It felt like another corner I’d been forced into. Another trap closing around both of us. . . and I was still not fast enough.

I’d grown accustomed to puppeteering my world, staging it all to bend and bow beneath my will but fate has a talent for humiliation.

This chaos…this feral unpredictability cracked my delusion clean open.

My arrogance wasn’t power. It was the blade I’d been falling on for centuries. I had been warned but I simply thought myself untouchable.

A mistake that had teeth out for my flesh in the end.

The mark on my wrist seethed, like a mocking punishment for my own carelessness. Heat pulsed beneath my skin in waves, each throb a reminder of the same truth…

𝙄 𝙖𝙢 𝙗𝙚𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙.

I pushed myself off the alley floor. The night felt too thin around me like it could snap under the weight of what was coming.

I hear footsteps. Light. Predatory.

Two figures stepped into the alley’s mouth, looked to be vampires. Both men. “I smell blood…it’s the mark…” One of them breathed.

I had no time to register this mark or anything I’ve been through for the past couple of hours and now this.

The first one reached for me and I met him halfway, fingers hooking deep into his jaw.

Bone split beneath my grip with a cracking scream as I 𝙧𝙞𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙖𝙩 𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙣, tearing flesh from spine in a single savage pull. Hot blood sprayed across the alley.

He tried to gurgle something but I crushed his windpipe under my stiletto.

The second came for me, thinking anger made him brave…but anger made 𝙢 𝙚 unstoppable.

I caught him by the collarbone, fingers punching through skin with ease. The bone snapped in my palm like a brittle twig. He shrieked, clawing at me but grief had already hollowed out a palace in my chest and filled it with 𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞.

I dragged him forward so close our blood mixed in the air. “Wrong night…you should tell your master not to underestimate me!” I hissed and thrust my hand straight into his ribcage.

Ribs broke around my arm with a chorus of fractures, cracking open like a cage surrendering its prisoner. My fingers closed around his beating heart and I tore it free.

He dropped before the blood even had time to fall.

What was left of them hit the concrete in pieces. . . and now it was just me and the mark alone again.

I went back to the place I was staying, it wasn’t safe but hopefully it would buy me some time to think and process everything…but the mark burned hotter.

I looked down at it, frustration rising.

𝙒𝙝𝙮 𝙬𝙖𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙞𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜?

My body had mended horrors worse than this.

Suddenly the world tilted.

A seething ache ripped through my skull followed by a memory that dragged itself from the grave.

The old garden. Sunlight.

My brother laughing as petals tangled in his hair. Human again and small again.

Before immortality. . .before the hunger.

Before father’s cruelty turned our home into a battlefield.

I snapped out of it but the intrusion didn’t stop. The layered voice slid into my head, like a serpent wearing the mask of a choir.

“𝐈’𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬.” It said. “Get out of my head!” I said aloud, feeling the room spin around me.

Its amusement slithered through my bones.

“𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮… 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐦𝐞. 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮? 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦?”

I pressed my palms to my temples, trying to block him out but his voice seeped through the cracks.

“𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐯𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥… 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧’𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮?”

I said nothing, hoping silence would buy me time but silence wasn’t a shield. It was an invitation.

“𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐞.” the creature hissed. “𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐲.”

It feels like I was dragged and thrown into another 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲.

I hit the floor first…my younger self.

Bruises blooming across my skin like some twisted garden of pain. Father’s voice thundered above me.

“Let it go, Avriel! I’m only giving her what she deserves!”

Avriel’s hands wrapped around the metal, holding it back with a desperation only love could make holy. “No! I won’t let you strike her again so strike me instead!”

Father turned on him, darkness in his eyes.

“You’re starting to disgust me as much as she does! She’s a poison, Avriel! She weakens you. . .” To him, I was never a daughter at all. He never hid what he thought of me. That I was just an error in his bloodline, a life that should’ve been ended the moment it began.

“She is your daughter!” Avriel yelled. “Sometimes it seems you forget that!”

Father’s silence was colder than any blow.

“You are the weakness.” Avriel breathed, fury shaking his voice. “Your hatred is what’s ruining this family.”

The world snapped.

Father’s rage exploded and he beat Avriel until his screams carved themselves into my bones.

Until his body crumpled like something precious being broken on purpose.

I felt my own breath stutter. My eyes burned.

I tore out of the memory with a choked, trembling gasp. “Stay out of my head!” I screamed at the presence. “𝐇𝐦…𝐈’𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝. 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭.” It said as it pulled me into another memory.

This time he dug deeper, another human memory.

The room came back to me in pieces.

A flicker of dim yellow light. The smell of rot.

I woke on the cold floor, breath shallow and my bones aching as if someone had scraped out the marrow. My fingers twitched against something soft…it felt like flesh. I was too scared to look.

When I finally lifted my head, I saw them all. Dozens of women. Slumped against walls, strewn across the floor, their faces pale replicas of my own. Blonde hair. Hollow eyes. Blood drying in the same patterns.

It was like my future lined up like a prophecy.

When I tried to sit, pain rippled through me like broken glass grinding under skin. My dress stuck to my thighs and dread curled in my stomach. I lifted the fabric with shaking hands.

Blood between my legs, smeared down my to my inner thighs. A memory I refused to let surface clawed at the back of my skull of what he had done…𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙙 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙣.

Tears pricked at my vision, turning the room into a blur of red and shadow. I got the feeling that I would die here.

Suddenly I heard footsteps nearing.

I pressed my back against the nearest cold body, trying to disappear into the rot. “I… I’m going to die here.” I whimpered. “I’m going to end up like them… aren’t I?”

The footsteps stopped inches from me.

His voice came down soft and almost tender.

The kind of softness nightmares use to seduce you.

“Worse, Alicena… I’ve decided you are 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥.”

I felt him kneel. I forced my head up and saw only half his face and his fang. The rest hidden behind long dark tangled hair. His hand slid along my leg, then he gripped and snapped the bone clean.

Agony split me in half. He leaned in close, voice warm against my cheek “Special.” he whispered…”in the way you break.”

The memory tried to drag me deeper but I tore myself out of it before the rest could surface. Before he could rummage through everything,

My heart slammed against my ribs like it wanted out. I tasted blood.

I hadn’t allowed myself to ever think of what happened before I was turned…

but the creature hunting Avriel rummaged through my mind like it was a graveyard, kicking open crypts I had sealed shut.

And he saw it.

He saw him.

He saw me.

His voice slithered back into the present, layered and cold enough to bruise.

“𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐀𝐯𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥’𝐬 𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫. 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮… 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐬 𝐈’𝐥𝐥 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐦.”

It didn’t feel like a threat.

It felt like a vow.

Then silence filled the room, leaving me trembling and curled on the floor with my knees to my chest.

There are wounds even immortality can’t erase.

It was as if Avreil breath had brushed my neck. Like a invisible thread connected us and is alive enough to pull at the marrow of my bones…tonight I got another one of those nightmares while in my coffin. It wasn’t like the others. It didn’t flicker in fragments or hide behind fog.

It swallowed me whole.

I saw him…his blood seeping into the carved symbols, veins of red feeding something ancient. He grunted through clenched teeth, refusing them even the dignity of a scream.

Then 𝘵𝘩𝘦 voice.

It sounded like many. Layered. Wrong. Like a demon trying on human speech but failing.

“𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧… 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐤… 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐞𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞.”

Avreil didn’t answer. He only glared at them with that stubborn fire we shared.

“𝐄𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐯𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫… 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭. 𝐈’𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭.”

They began to chant. The symbols crawled from the altar like serpents, climbing his flesh. He screamed, I saw the pain split him open. His eyes turned pitch black, void swallowing all color.

But then the symbols 𝘳𝘦𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘮. They slid off and snapped back onto the altar like they’d been burned.

“𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠!” the voice hissed. “𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞? 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐫?”

Frustration twisted them. They drove a blade straight into Avreil heart and twisted. My brother winced but didn’t break.

“𝐈’𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭… 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞-”

They stopped.

Their head snapped toward where I was standing, they weren’t actually looking at me but they felt me.

As if I wasn’t dreaming at all.

“𝐈’𝐦 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞… 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬… 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐨?”

Darkness swallowed the room and I woke.

I’m finally realizing that these aren’t nightmares. They’re warnings.

I am haunted by his scream. Enraged by his pain and tormented by the truth. I’m not even close to finding him, even if I were…I can’t. If I don’t hide myself first, whatever has him will find 𝘮𝘦.

Lestat was right about one thing I didn’t want to admit…I have to protect my thoughts or I’ll be the one dragged screaming across that altar next.

There was only one person who could help me here. Someone I cared for too deeply to ever stay with.

𝑺𝒂𝒃𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝑴𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝑳𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒙.

I paid her a visit tonight, admiring her home for how beautiful it still was. Sabine looked exactly as she had the last time I tasted her. . . dark hair cascading like midnight water, same hypnotic gaze. I made myself a drink the moment I walked in. She snatched it from my hand and sat across from me with all the bite I deserved.

“Don’t pretend you’re here to see me. You’ve been back and you didn’t spare me a single thought.” It’s starting already. I smirked. “I can sense you’re still angry with me.” It wasn’t something I needed to point out but I still did.

“What do you want, Alicena? Let’s not pretend this is sentimental.” Her honesty was a blade…I’d always loved her for that.

My eyes drifted down her hair, then back to her eyes. “I need you to do a spell.” I didn’t ask, I just demanded it. My audacity. “You’re the only vampire I know who also happens to be a witch.”

She scoffed. “There are plenty of witches in this city.” And she was right.

“Well, you’re the only being I trust.” I confessed while leaning back

Another scoff left her. “What have you gotten yourself into this time?” She knew me too well.

“It’s…nothing.” I lied. “I need my mind protected. I need certain thoughts to stay sealed. Let them see only what I want them to.”

She stared silently. A little too silent. She’s ticking and she just might explode.

“So we’re not being honest.” she said finally. “Can you at least give me that? You have some damn nerve to break my heart and ask for my help. No apology. Nothing.” Her lips curled. “𝙐𝙣𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙥𝙚 𝙜𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙚 𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙘 𝙪𝙣 𝙘𝙪𝙡𝙤𝙩 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚”

I suppose I earned that as well as her rage. I was horrible to her but right now isn’t a time I can rehash our past.

“You’re under the impression I’m here to talk about ‘us’ and I’m not.” I stated coldly and I watched her jaw tighten. “Oh? and you’re under the impression you’re welcome here. Welcome enough to demand favors. You aren’t! So if that attitude is what you brought into my home, get out! You never needed me so don’t need me now! Get out, Alicena!”

Her words hurt more than any blade could.

Sabine was the one person I should’ve kept far away from this horror…and yet she was the one person I needed more than I wanted to admit. She turned me away and it was a mercy I didn’t deserve.

It felt like she reached into my chest and crushed my heart with her bare hand. If only she knew that right now is when I really needed her most.

I didn’t say another word as I pushed myself to my feet, turning away from her. I had barely taken a single step before she moved in front of me just to let her tongue cut me with one last wound… or so I expected.

But when she spoke, her tone wasn’t the same as it was before. It was softer.

“I don’t have a good feeling this time. Whatever you’re walking into… don’t get yourself killed, Alicena.”

The warning landed heavier than any insult she had ever thrown at me. It was genuine and raw in her eyes. Her love was real. I knew that as surely as I knew the darkness in my own blood. . . but knowing who I was meant knowing what I couldn’t promise.

So I said nothing.

I left in silence, carrying the same hollow truth that had been gnawing at me for months…Avriel was no closer to being found and I was no closer to saving him.

𝘈𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵.

𝘈𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘴.

𝘈𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘴.

𝘈𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘬𝘶𝘭𝘭.

The ache pulsed in my pounding heart like a curse. I have survived many things…but this? This was the first that felt like it might break me. I’ve survived centuries.

I’ve endured torture, betrayal, heartbreak…even worse. Nothing has ever broken me.

So why does this feel like it’s killing me now?

I walked and walked until something inside me snapped, a deep marrow level ache that made my bones throb like they were remembering a pain I hadn’t lived yet. Then my wrist ignited. It was burning blister hot as if someone pressed a brand into my skin from the inside.

Images tore through my mind.

That the layered voice sounded in my head again. It’s never happened like this before. This doesn’t feel like Avriel is doing it.

“𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐯𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐞, 𝐀𝐯𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥…”

The creature dragged a blade across his wrist, carving a symbol into his flesh.

“𝐖𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬…𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝-“

The mark seared onto 𝘮𝘺 skin in the same instant, heat flaring bright as a brand.

Blood welled from my wrist. “…𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐈 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦.” I gasped, staggering backward. 𝑴𝒀 𝑶𝑾𝑵 𝑺𝑲𝑰𝑵 𝑺𝑷𝑳𝑰𝑻 𝑶𝑷𝑬𝑵 , blood welling up in the exact same pattern.

A perfect mirror.

“𝐀𝐡…” the creature purred. “𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐬.” His attention shifted toward me, through my brother, through the blood we shared. “𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐡𝐞𝐫. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞?”

I gasped out a broken sound as the pain seared deeper, my back hitting something solid as I stumbled. The world blurred. My voice cracked into a scream I couldn’t swallow.

“Stop it!” Avriel’s voice ragged desperately and suddenly the carving stopped.

The entity studied him, annoyed.

“𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠… 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥.”

He turned away, tone dropping into something colder than death. “𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐦…𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐧. 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦. 𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞.”

The vision tore itself out of me, leaving me choking on air. I was curled against a filthy brick wall in some forgotten alley, my wrist bleeding openly, the symbol pulsing like a heartbeat carved into my skin.

A mark no one could possibly overlook.

A curse.

Rage has a way of curling into the ribs like a feral hand carving you open. I welcomed the ache. I needed its teeth.

New Orleans had a pulse tonight… I feel it in my bones throbbing with fire and sin. It lived in the distant music like it was seducing me. A nightclub that should’ve never revealed itself to my eyes 𝑳𝒂 𝑵𝒖𝒊𝒕 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒇𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒆.

A den of creatures who neither hid nor pretended to be human.

Vampires. Witches. Things without names.

Feeding. Fucking. Bleeding.

All of it moved to a rhythm that lured you in with pleasure, marked you with pain and devoured you in ruin.

I wasn’t here for pleasure but rage is a kind of hunger too.

Somewhere inside between ecstasy and carnage, had to be someone who knew something. Someone who seen the symbols and crossed paths with what I’m looking for.

If I played this right I could earn more than whispers.

Images of Avriels eyes so hollow bloodied and emptied of everything they’d stolen from him was enough to summon every ounce of rage I needed.

I listen to the words of the music. . .

Your flesh and bone welcome me in. . . Welcome me in

Are you in pain like I am?

Will we remain stuck in the throat of gods?

Will the pain stop if we go deeper?

So let's get swallowed whole.

Bass vibrated through floorboards like a heartbeat I could taste on my tongue. It was dark and hypnotic. Bodies writhed together under red and violet strobes, teeth in necks, hands in hair, tongues exploring blood.

Eyes turned toward me the moment I entered.

Like a predator seeing another predator and deciding whether to devour or worship.

My hips found the rhythm before my thoughts did, swaying through shadows of desire and violence. Hands brushed my waist as I moved deeper into the crowd, the scent of blood almost intoxicating around me.

I wasn’t afraid. Fear was useless now.

I had rage and that was a weapon. . . La Nuit Profonde would respect a weapon or they will try to destroy it.

I let my hips melt into the music, each sway catching a different pair of feasting eyes. A red headed woman drifted beside me, her fingers brushing my waist as if she already owned it. Then a man pressed in behind me, long dark hair grazing my shoulder with cold breath against my neck.

They didn’t just approach me.

They closed around me like a trap… but it was one I allowed.

“Young vampire…I don’t believe we’ve ever seen this pretty one before.” The woman murmured, red lips nearly touching my ear. “Have we, Vale?”

He chuckled against my other ear. “No, Elisa… we haven’t.” His hand grazed my hip. “The question is… does she seek pleasure or pain?”

I smirked leaning back just enough to feel his heat, letting my fingertips trail up Elisa’s wrist. If they wanted to cage me, they should’ve known cages only tempt me to misbehave. “And if I said both?” I purred.

Letting them wonder which part of me was going to bite first.

Elisa’s nails dig in my hips, tracing a slow line along my hips as if she were mapping where she’d bite first. Vale’s hands settled on my waist, like he was already imagining how I’d taste with my back arched and my throat bared.

If they wanted to play the predator’s game, I’d let them. I was born to make predators forget they were hunters at all.

Suddenly everything around me stilled.

Vale’s hand on my hip, Elisa’s breath on my neck. I was about to push it further and let their wicked little trap turn into something worth bleeding for when a voice slid into my mind.

A voice I had never heard before.

A voice that made my heart skip hard enough to hurt.

𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨… 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘺𝘮𝘣𝘰𝘭𝘴… 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳.

Cold shock rippled through me.

My own thoughts stumbled. Before I even registered what I was doing, I replied telepathically.

𝘏𝘰𝘸… 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵?

Then I saw him.

Tall and devastating. Blond hair catching the strobe like spun gold. Eyes like winter carved into glass. He walked through the crowd with the arrogance of a god and the hunger of a monster slipping between Vale and Elisa as if they were nothing.

His hand came to my waist anchoring every part of me that had been unraveling.

“Alicena, I see you’ve attracted unwanted company.” he said my name like he was truly familiar with me.

Vale and Elisa fell back instantly, their confidence collapsing and how disappointing was that to see. This man must be someone they fear.

“Sincerest apologies… Lestat.” they murmured before they pulled away, disappearing into the crowd.

The name set fire to my chest. Lestat.

He drew me close, moving us off the dance floor with a predator’s grace and I could feel his hands, his heat and the impossibility of him pressing against me. My pulse raced as he whispered in my mind again.

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦…𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘈𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘢.

I didn’t answer. I let my body speak first. I arched into him slightly, our hips brushing, his fangs glinting for just a fraction under the lights. Desire traveled through me…I could feel him marking his territory without touching a single inch of skin.

“What were they planning?” I asked aloud not really caring if they were still nearby.

He leaned down, lips brushing the shell of my ear, barely touching but already destroying.

“Thinking of fucking you…” His breath was fire down my neck.“…dismembering you…”

My pulse stuttered. “…and then making love atop your bones.” His fangs grazed my throat. I thrilled at the danger. The words were aching to hear, a delicious thrill running along my spine.

Then within a blink of my eyes, he had me away from the crowd. The city lights blurred around us as he moved with impossible speed, until we stopped under the pale moonlight. The chaos of the club replaced by stillness.

I looked at him…. and this time I can really see him for how devastatingly handsome he was. I had to remind myself I wasn’t here for this.

“How… how did you use my mind to speak with me?” It was the first answer I wanted and the last one I could stomach.

He only smirked, a knowing curl of his mouth that felt like a finger dragging down my spine. He reached up and brushed a strand of hair from my face like it belonged to him. “Every vampire eventually can.” he murmured. “You’re young. A little naive to walk into a place like that with your thoughts wide open begging to be read.”

His voice has a way of sinking inside my mind and I 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 how my pulse reacted.

How his eyes made me feel flayed open and desired in the same breath.

I rolled my eyes, pretending I wasn’t quietly aching. If my mind was accessible, then I was weak and that’s a fate I won’t accept.

“You’ve seen the symbols before.”

He nodded slowly like the memory burned.

“I have…and if you were wise, you’d never go near them again.”

But wisdom has never guided me…only obsession and blood.

“Not going near them isn’t an option.” I said coldly. “My brother’s suffering. I won’t stop until he isn’t.”

He studied me with that gaze that felt like claws tracing the inside of my chest. Hungry. Intrigued. Like he couldn’t decide whether to kiss me or consume me whole.

“What you’re searching for is a cult.” he said softly. “Vile creatures. They infest places like the club you walked into. I never go… but I followed you.”

He took one step closer and I felt him before I saw him. All that heat…hunger. A gravity that pulled at something deep inside me.

“I couldn’t resist.” he whispered. “Your thoughts were too loud.”

His hand slid to my waist, fingers curling into my body like he meant to anchor me to him. He pulled me closer until the air between us tightened, heated and begged to combust.

And so achingly and helplessly…

I let him.

Because he looked at me the way no one ever dared. Like I was danger incarnate, like he wanted to kneel and bleed for me. . . like he wanted to ruin me in ways that felt almost holy.

The heat between us was a warning and an invitation and I knew if I stepped any closer. . .

I’d never leave moment as the same monster who walked into it.

“Your brother Avriel… he lured you here. He nearly killed you the last time you faced him. And you… still you chase him?” He had been inside my thoughts, peeling them back like petals and inhaling every secret I didn’t grant him.

I didn’t sense it. Not even a whisper of intrusion. If this is what I’m up against, I’m already halfway to my grave.

I met his gaze, refusing to let him see fear in me. Fear is what they smell before they feast.

“He’s worth saving, Lestat.” His name almost tasted like passion on my tongue. “He doesn’t have to be worth it to you. Just tell me where to go and I’ll handle the rest.” And if he didn’t… he’d learn quickly that I am not the kind of creature he should provoke.

His faint smile carved shadows across his face. A cruel beauty. He brushed a knuckle along my jaw light as a whisper.

“He knows the danger, ma chérie… and still he let you walk straight into its jaws.”

A soft tsk. Was it amusement? Mockery?

“I know the direction you crave. But I won’t gift it to you. That restraint alone makes me a far better man than he could ever pretend to be.”

Something in me snapped. I slapped his hand away. “You don’t understand!” I hissed.

𝘝𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘷𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘭 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵.

𝘏𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘴𝘺𝘮𝘣𝘰𝘭𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘩.

𝘏𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘺 𝘵𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦.

“I can’t look away from it. I won’t. I’d rather burn alive than turn my back on him.”

His sigh was maddening, as if he’d already predicted every desperate word that would rip from my throat. He shook his head slowly, like he’s disappointed… or just unsurprised.

“You have a beautiful insanity.” he murmured. “And I’ve wandered your mind long enough to adore it. I will not kill you…nor will I lead you to your death. Be careful, Alicena. We share this enemy… but they cannot kill me.”

Heat surged beneath my skin, a rage lethal enough to slice bone. If I didn’t know precisely what he was capable of, I would have ripped his throat open for daring to waste my time.

“Then you’re of no use to me, are you?”

The disgust in my voice was almost sweet.

“Pathetic.”

He tilted his head, lips curving into that exquisite feral smirk. A predator admiring the animal brave enough to snarl back.

“Careful, little princess.” he purred. “If you cut me… I will bleed on you.”

I brushed past him without a second thought. He was nothing more than noise in a city already full of it. I wouldn’t let him get to me.

Let him look at me and mistake me for prey. Let them all make that mistake.

I would remind them I wasn’t.

Anger is a thirst that cannot be drowned. It seeks a vessel, a sacrifice and if no blood is given… tears will pour instead.

The shapes and patterns gnawed at my mind, curling and unraveling like obsidian threads pulled from the wounds of the earth. They were cruelly familiar… but never whole. The harder I pressed my memory, the further they dissolved, leaving only fragments of themselves. Shards of something lost.

Except one.

One image burned in my mind like molten ink, deeper than the ache in my veins. 𝐀𝐯𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥. 𝐌𝐲 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫. Bound and bleeding above those ancient unholy symbols. His blood etched itself into stone, each drop a covenant I could not unlearn. This was no dream. No pale illusion born of slumber. This was a summons. A wound in the marrow of eternity calling me forth.

I have to answer.

My hand trembled as I dipped my pen into the warm blood of the man before me. He still breathed, though his life clung to him like a dying shadow. His pulse was a muted drumbeat faint and slow. I drank him with my eyes before I drank his blood with my art, the ink of my vengeance staining the pages of my sketchbook in living red.

For two nights I defied my coffin, refused the lull of sleep and the taste of blood… until last night, when even defiance began to decay. I could not resist it. That ache within me was no hunger of flesh. It was a hunger of purpose. I had to risk it, to see if my brother would claw his way through another dream just to reach me.

The dream returned.

Candles. Shadows that curled like serpents in a cathedral of stone…and then him. My brother, broken and bruised, bound to an altar of silence. His head turned from me, his voice a rasp drawn from marrow and dust.

I hated seeing him like this. Fragile and desecrated. A god brought low by mortal hands. He never deserved this torment. I can’t let this be his eternity. My existence has been nothing but a cycle of losing him and clawing through the dark to find him again. I’m so damn tired of fate’s cruelty. How it toys with my bloodline, how it laughs as it breaks us apart. I need to be strong for us both.

I have to save him even if I have to burn the world to ash to do it.

“You have to go, Alicena.” he said, each word a blade of air. “They… punished me because they know I’ve reached out to someone.”

I pressed my forehead to his, willing him to meet me. “Give me something, Avriel. Anything. Let me pull you from them.”

He shook his head, a shadowed smile brushing his lips. Blood fell in rivulets to the stone. Then came a vision. A flash, a name, a place that was gone before I could hold it and the I was pulled from the dream. Though it felt like he pushed me out.

Now I sit before my sketchbook, fingers still and heart hammering. The shapes I draw are no longer vague, they are certain. A cemetery. A place I have walked in dreams and nightmares both. A place I have seen before.

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐎𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬.

I cannot crawl back into that city of bones. Not where something tore me once.

I have not walked that city since my heart was in two. I swore I would never return. I swore I would never return for that reason. . .

but this is not for me.

This is for Avriel.

I will find my brother. I will rend the darkness that binds him. I will carve the world open and bleed into it if I must.

Even if it costs me every drop of blood in my veins.

𝘿𝘼𝙈𝙊𝙉 𝙋𝙊𝙑

It was a quiet day for once. Only because I let it be. No blood, no screams and no apocalypse on the calendar. Just me and my brother, a pool table and a glass of bourbon that was already halfgone. Stefan was lining up his shot.

For one rare moment, I let myself breathe.

Then I felt it. Something changing the air like someone slit the fabric of the room open and poured in something I’d spent a decade trying to drown.

Her. Alicena.

The name I never said out loud. A ghost I never managed to kill.

I looked up and there she was. . . flesh and bone where she’d only ever been a dream. Blonde hair like spilled sunlight, eyes oceanic blue and merciless and god help me…it was worse because in my head, she was always perfect. Seeing her standing there for the first time and breaking the image I’d carved into my skull. . . it was unbearable.

Those eyes locked on mine and the world shrank. Augustine. Cages. Pain. Secrets murmured in the dark when we thought death was closer than dawn. Every memory slammed back into me with a violence I wasn’t ready for.

Then came the hunger. The filthy unholy urge to throw her across the pool table, to tear into her like she was the last taste of life I’d ever get, to kiss every inch of her body until the sun came and turned us both to ash. Elena was just down the hall. The one bright thing I let myself keep. I loved her. I did. . . but in that second I wanted to rip the bond apart and burn in the wreckage.

“Guess we aren’t finishing this game.” Stefan muttered with a smirk. I forced my mouth into a grin. “Oh, we are, little brother. Been beating you for centuries, why stop now?”

My eyes betrayed me. My thoughts betrayed Elena.

Our talk didn’t go as planned. She took the worst. Convinced I’d abandoned her to rot. I wanted to tell her otherwise, to tear the lie from my chest and hand her the truth but I hesitated. Truth would have opened doors I do not know how to close. . . Elena deserves for me to do right by her.

When Alicena finally turned from me, I caught the flicker of disdain on her face like I was nothing but rot in her path and something inside me cracked wide open. I hated it. Hated the way she walked away. Hated the silence she left behind.

This woman… always just beyond reach and now she was real enough to hate me. Real enough to leave.

A voice pulled me back. I blinked and there she was, brunette hair falling straight down her back and warm brown eyes looking at me. The antidote to everything acidic inside me.

“Damon, everything okay?” she asked softly. I turned to her, forcing a smile that didn’t touch the storm inside. “Yeah, babe. Everything’s fine.”

The lie burned like vervain on my tongue because nothing was fine. Nothing would ever be fine again, not after seeing Alicena in the flesh and knowing she could still undo me with a single glance.

Beneath it all…guilt gnawed like an old wound. I had gone back for her. Augustine was ash when I returned, bodies and blood burned into the stone. I tore through it, searching for her…praying, begging and cursing. But there was nothing. No trace. No whisper.

I thought she was dead. For years I carried the weight of that guilt that I had left her to die screaming… and now here she was breathing and staring at me with eyes filled with loathing. Believing I never came. Believing I never cared.

That was the part that gutted me. She thought I hadn’t come back. She thought I’d abandoned her and maybe that was worse than death.

I should’ve let it roll off me. Should’ve gone back to the game, poured another drink, kissed Elena goodnight and let her warmth erase the ghost. That’s what a sane man would do.

Sanity and I have never been on speaking terms.

So I drank. Glass after glass until the burn in my throat was the only thing louder than her voice echoing in my skull.

𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦.

Back then I clawed through the wreckage and the screams that still clung to the walls but Augustine was gone. Everything torched. 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗻𝗲 and the world doesn’t give second chances, especially not to people like me.

So I buried it. Buried 𝙝𝙚𝙧. Let myself believe she was dead because anything else would’ve destroyed me.

I should let her go. Let her keep her anger, her disdain and her clean break. That’s the kind thing to do but I’ve never been kind.

Deep down under the smirk, under the bourbon and under Elena’s soft touch. . . 𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙧. I want her the way a drowning man wants the ocean fully knowing it will kill him.

I know. I’m an asshole for it.

I tip back the bottle, let it spill fire into me. The room is empty now, Stefan gone and Elena asleep upstairs. Just me and the ghosts I can’t drown.

I keep hearing the click of her heels, the sting in her eyes and the silence of her walking away. I should hate her for it. Hell maybe I do but it doesn’t matter. Hate, love, guilt. . . it’s all the same poison in different bottles.

I lean back in my chair, let my head fall and then I whispered into the dark like a curse I’ll never break

𝑮𝒐𝒍𝒅. 𝑮𝒐𝒓𝒆. 𝑮𝒐𝒅𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔

I wasn’t born, I was summoned.

From altar ash and broken throats, I rose with blood in my mouth and the devil’s kiss on my crown.

𝑫𝒂𝒎𝒏𝒆𝒅. 𝑫𝒓𝒊𝒑𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈. 𝑫𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒆

I don’t need to rule. I consume.

I take devotion. I let monsters worship at my feet and men die to touch the hem of what they’ll never deserve.

𝑹𝒊𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍. 𝑹𝒖𝒊𝒏. 𝑩𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅.

You wanted my skin?

Let me peel you something better.

Let me dress you in a mask stitched from your failure and feed your soul to the mirror.

She tried to become me the way a ghost tries to wear skin. . . 𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑠𝑖𝑙𝑦, hopelessly and without soul. Her imitation is a mockery, a child smearing entrails on her lips pretending it’s lipstick.

I should’ve let it go. I usually do. I’ve let moths flutter around my flame before but this 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 in heels had the gall to speak in my cadence, dye her hair in my shade, even try to perfect the way I kill and mirror it.

A mimic with no music in her.

She didn’t just steal my image, she was butchering it but tonight is the night I stop allowing her this little dance. If this is the way she chooses to spend her vampire life then so be it. Now she has to deal with me.

“Stand.” I commanded and she did, trembling twitching, eyes wide like a lamb realizing the slaughterhouse isn’t metaphorical anymore. She really thought I wouldn’t find her. Like one day she wouldn’t have to face me. I circled her slowly, fingers trailing the air between us.

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 is the side of me you wanted, right? Your favorite merciless damned bitch. The one you tried so hard to summon with your petty theft and painted smiles. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 pushed. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 picked. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 made up lies about me all in hopes of what? Replacing me?

How…pathetic and foolish. It’s clear you 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 to hate me.

“You don’t want to be you?” I whispered against her ear, a half laugh curled around the words. “Fine...but you’re 𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 at being me.”

She opened her mouth to protest, I silenced it with the back of my hand.

“Shh. You’ve said enough. You’ve 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒏 enough.”

With one smooth motion, I shoved her backward. Her spine met the wall, her breath caught in her throat like prey in a trap. I stepped forward with serpentine elegance, sliding the thin blade from the sheath hidden at my thigh.

I lifted her chin with the edge. “You wanted my face…but you’ll never earn it. So I’ve brought you a better one.”

From the bag, the one she didn’t notice when she was busy watching herself in the mirror practicing her terrible imitation. I pulled a mask. Cheap porcelain, painted like a 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐧. Crimson smile, hollow eyes. Hideous. Honest.

Her horror was delicious. I could feel her bones tremble.

𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐫. I even gave her time. Grace…but kindness means nothing to vultures who want to feast on your identity. She wanted my life? Then she could choke on the performance.

“Oh, don’t look so surprised, love. Clowns are tragic things and that’s exactly what you are, isn’t it? A tragedy with a laugh track.”

She begged and sobbed, finally shedding the skin of imitation and for the first time, she was 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒍𝒚 herself. A cracked porcelain doll with nothing left to mimic.

I feasted on it.

Deep down, beneath the facade of living to piss me off, was just a scared insecure little girl. One who wanted to matter. Who wanted to be enough. Who thought wearing my skin might earn her meaning.

I almost pitied her…but then I remembered all the times she paraded herself like a reflection of me. The way she twisted my light into vanity, my darkness into melodrama.

No, darling. You don’t get to be pitied. You chose this performance.

So I carved off the lie she’d worn so proudly. I pinned her down, straddling her like a lover would, blade gleaming in the low light.

“This is mercy.” I whispered, “I’m giving you what you want. A new face. One people will 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓.”

The first cut was divine. Skin peeled like satin. Like I was unwrapping a gift that just wouldn’t stop bleeding. She screamed until she couldn’t and when her vocal cords gave out, I sang for her. My lullabies are always the last thing they hear.

I carved around the bone slow and torturous. I wanted her to feel it all…every nerve, every surrender. Her face peeled in ribbons, her identity dripping onto the floor like melted wax.

And when the face was gone… when the beautiful illusion she failed to earn lay lifeless in my palm, I pressed the clown mask gently to her mutilated skull.

“Much better.” I whispered as I threaded the needle. I sewed it on. Stitch by stitch. Seam by seam. Each stitch was a kiss of permanence.

Each tug of the thread a punishment. I embroidered her downfall into her skin, one blood soaked loop at a time. Until it was permanent. Until she could no longer run from what she’d become a bad copy sealed behind a better lie.

“I hope you rot beautifully.” I said at last, licking the blood from my fingers. “But next time, darling…”

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝘄𝗼: 𝘼 𝘽𝙚𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙪𝙡 𝘿𝙞𝙨𝙧𝙪𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣

The scent of caviar and counterfeit charm drifted through the private villa like cheap perfume trying to masquerade as elegance. I could smell the desperation before I ever stepped through the gilded doors. Men with wealth but no poetry in their blood, women with diamonds for hearts and smiles stitched from the same needle as their insecurities.

Florence, you do know how to host the soulless.

I arrived uninvited…of course I did. Invitations are for those still clinging to propriety and I had long since let that corpse rot.

The hall fell quiet the moment I entered, like a cathedral mid blasphemy. My heels struck the marble, a sound that stole breaths and bent necks. Eyes flickered toward me. Some in awe, some in fear, some in desire too dangerous to speak aloud.

But his… his eyes didn’t waver.

𝐍𝐢𝐤𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐬 𝐌𝐢𝐤𝐚𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐨𝐧.

He sat at the head of the table like the devil presiding over his final supper. His suit was black, immaculate like sin. He looked up at me with all the warmth of a blade and I smiled because I knew he felt it too. The crackle of tension between us, volatile as lightning sealed in crystal.

I tilted my head slightly, the moonlight kissing the edge of my jaw as I reached the table. My fingers grazed the back of an empty chair before I leaned in, lips curling into a smirk.

“This dinner of yours is incredibly boring.” I said mockingly “I thought you of all people would know how to keep a pulse going.”

He didn’t say a word. Not immediately. His gaze sliced through me, jaw locked, expression unreadable. Then too calmly he rose from his chair and excused himself from his guests with all the grace of a man resisting the urge to break me.

His hand found my arm firmly and in silence, he led me through the side doors onto the stone balcony that overlooked the city. The moment the doors shut behind us, everything changed.

We were alone and the storm could finally begin.

He released me, took a step away from me and then turned cold.

“Why are you here, Alicena?” He already snapped at me, like he held no patience for me right now. “You made it perfectly clear I was of no interest to you. You left.”

I laughed, walking past him to lean against the railing, staring out at the view of Florence.

“You’re playing games again.” I said while shaking my head “But I saw your little gift at my studio. Quite the masterpiece. Skin instead of canvas, blood in place of paint. Poetic…𝑎𝑙𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡.”

He turned to face me fully now. “What are you talking about?”

My gaze flicked toward him. There it was again. That glimmer of something behind his fury. It’s confusion…but why is he confused?

“Don’t insult me, Niklaus. You left me a painting made of human skin. A heart. A basin of wine and blood soaked irises…my 𝑏𝑟𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 Avriel’s favorite flower. Your message was quite literal this time or are you going to tell me you have a twin who’s just as psychotic?”

I expected fury. I expected lust masquerading as rage but not this.

Not his confusion.

Not his refusal.

“I don’t know what you saw… but it wasn’t from me.”

For a breathless second, the night didn’t move. Not the air, not the city, not the venom in my lungs.

My heart, this damned stubborn organ fluttered once like a moth against a blade but I didn’t show it. I simply laughed, the sound lacquered in disdain but I felt it. That slip beneath my ribs. That ache I couldn’t quite crush.

“So now you’ve graduated from sinner to saint? You’ve erased the blood, rewritten the message?” I scoffed．

He stepped toward me, the moon casting half his face in shadow. “Let me make one thing clear.” he said low and lethal. “𝑌𝑜𝑢 denied 𝑚𝑒. After I saved your life. After I gave you something real. You shattered it and walked away.”

He was so close now I could taste the bitterness in his breath. The ache in his silence.

“I am not the kind of man you seek out.” he said, eyes boring into mine “and I do not take lightly to people destroying what I build.”

The ache inside me twisted cruelly. I wanted to strike him. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to fall to my knees and devour him just to quiet the screaming pulse in my throat.

His eyes raked over me then. Like he was memorizing my ruin or he was trying to remember the woman who once bled for him in flame.

“You came all this way.” he murmured and his voice had changed. Softer. Hungrier. “Wearing that dress. Interrupting my evening. Making a spectacle.” His gaze dropped to my mouth, lingered there like he was tasting the sin of memory.

I should’ve gloated. I should’ve said something cruel but all I could do was breathe because I felt it too.

The draw of him. The gravitational pull of something unfinished. Unforgiven.

“You think I did it to lure you?” he said, stepping closer. “You think I bled a heart and carved a canvas just to see you walk through my door like a curse? Don’t flatter yourself, Alicena.”

I flinched.

It was barely perceptible but I did…because it hurt. Because for a moment, I almost believed it. That it wasn’t him. That he didn’t want me like I thought he did.

And that was the cruelest cut of all.

𝐻𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑑𝑛'𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑏𝑎𝑑．

The same man who dragged me from the fire, who kissed me like he could taste the centuries in my soul, was now standing inches away… untouchable. I had dreamed of that night way too often than I should’ve. He wants to act like it’s nothing now?

My throat tightened but I steadied myself with a smile.

“I don’t like to be lied to. You’re lying…” I whispered. “or worse… you’ve forgotten me.”

He said nothing. Just watched me. That storm of want in his eyes barely chained…and I hated that I ached for it.

“I never forget what’s mine.” he said softly. “But that doesn’t mean I chase it when it runs.”

There it was.

The truth between his teeth.

He wanted me but he’d rather let pride be the noose around our necks.

I stepped in again, close enough that my breath stirred the collar of his shirt. My fingers brushed the edge of his lapel and I whispered “And what if I didn’t come to be chased?”

He didn’t move. Didn’t even breathe but I saw the fire in him crackle to life.

I was getting under his skin again. Peeling him open without even trying.

Something deeper began to stir in me. A realization blooming and it’s fragile.

He didn’t leave the bloody heart or any of it.

Which meant someone else did and they knew how to mimic his madness.

Someone else had watched me. Studied me. Loved me or hell even ℎ𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 me enough to twist our story into something monstrous.

Naive enough…I fell for it. If this were a trap, I had fallen into it with ease and now I was standing on the balcony of a man I shouldn’t provoke. I was lucky enough to survive this encounter because many don’t.

His hand came up as if to touch me then dropped instead by his side.

“Something is amiss.” he murmured, eyes narrowing. “If what you’re saying holds any truth and isn’t some desperate ruse to draw me out, then something, or someone, wanted you here. Wanted you to believe it was me. The question is… why?”

He tilts his head, a cruel smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “What game are we playing now, love?”

I tilted my head, letting my gaze drag over him. As if I’d stain my hands with blood just to crawl back into his orbit.

He thinks this is about him.

As if the world spins on his paranoia instead of mine.

How’d this turn on me? He says he didn’t do this and I wanted to believe him.

Deep down it terrified me more than anything because if it wasn’t him… then who the hell was it? Why the effort? Either they wanted to kill me or drive me crazy. Maybe this person wanted both.

Now one question remains.

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗢𝗻𝗲: 𝗔 𝗣𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘁 𝗟𝗲𝗳𝘁 𝗧𝗼 𝗥𝗼𝘁

𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑤𝑛，𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑. . . 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑦 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑．

The night hung over Florence like an old painting, smudged and cracked with time. I stood upon the balcony, the city stretching out before me like a painted lie. Quieter than I was accustomed to…

as though even the shadows held their breath in my presence. Silence always unnerves the wicked…we’ve grown used to the noise of our sins.

I would thrive in the spotlight, feed on the fevered adoration of mortals and monsters alike but time has a curious way of folding us inward. Even the boldest flame can learn to dance behind the curtain.

The stem of the wine glass pressed cool against my fingers, delicate as a throat before the bite. I tilted it slowly, drinking it down in one languid pull.

A violin cried somewhere in the distance, its notes haunting the dark streets like a long lost memory. The wine did nothing to drown the memory that had bled into my thoughts since the moment I arrived here.

𝑁𝑖𝑘𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑠 𝑀𝑖𝑘𝑎𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑜𝑛 (0nyxEternity)

Our lips met as my old studio was swallowed by fire, flames licking the sky like the tongues of devils hungry for something beautiful. He had pulled me from that inferno, his hands still hot with ash and I remember thinking…this is how it feels to be 𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑛. To be 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑.

In his kiss, there was ruin and reverence. He made me feel seen. For a moment I wanted to fall into him. I wanted to believe there could be a fairy tale at the end of all my carnage, even if it was written in bone and betrayal.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I tore myself from his grasp and whispered a lie sharp enough to cut us both.

“How sweet of you to think this is all it would take. This was nothing to me. You are 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 to me. So forget me as I’ll forget you. ”

I watched something fracture behind his eyes, like the kind of wound that never bleeds but never heals. He didn’t fight me. He let me walk away…but there are still nights when the memory of his face claws through my dreams.

Sometimes… I wonder what might’ve happened if I had taken his hand.

I exhaled slowly, the last sip of wine staining my lips like the echo of a sin I couldn’t quite cleanse. I set the glass down with a care I did not feel, as though the ritual might somehow protect me from the ghost of that kiss. But it didn’t. It never did.

I needed to forget or at the very least pretend I could. I need to occupy my thoughts with something other than the memory of his mouth or the way he made the fire behind me feel like a cradle instead of a warning. Perhaps a visit to my new fashion studio would suffice. Maybe I’d even find something worthwhile there…something that didn’t require bleeding someone out like paint on marble.

With a flick of my wrist, I abandoned the glass. I turned, heels clicking like a metronome for madness.

The elevator descended and silence coiled around me. When the doors parted, I stepped out into the night and onto streets veined with shadow and whispers. Florence breathing beneath my feet like a beast that never truly sleeps.

There was a kind of reverence in the way my heels kissed the stone streets, each echo a hymn to the life I had buried and the one I wore like a shroud. Florence had a pulse beneath its bones, a rhythm that trembled just beneath the marble facades and golden light.

The statues watched, of course. They always did. Eyeless and eternal, carved to honor gods long forgotten, unaware of the monsters who now walked beside them.

I finally reached my studio, ready to escape all the memories of him in my head. My fingers paused on the handle when a strong scent of blood hit me. Nothing too fresh but potent enough to catch my attention. I pushed the door open cautiously. I could already feel that something was off.

My eyes couldn’t miss the 𝑎𝑟𝑡. It greeted me first.

A painting standing alone in its grotesque beauty took my breath away. It was my style unmistakable, except the canvas was no canvas at all. It was human skin, stretched and sewn together with painstaking precision. The blood in the brushstrokes shimmered in the dim light, like the memory of agony captured in each curve and line. I felt a chill spread through my chest.

Beneath the painting sat a basin of wine, rich and dark, its surface disturbed by the weight of something else. 𝐀 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭. It was still warm but pierced by a wolf’s fang… that wasn’t what made my chest tighten. It was the irises. Blood soaked petals. My brother Avery’s favorite flower. Our flower. The only thing that had once made me believe there was something pure and untouched in a life that had long ago shattered.

I stepped back, my body refusing to breathe.

This was twisted…even for me. A grotesque love letter scrawled in sinew and blood, a desecration masquerading as devotion and still something inside me stirred.

It should’ve been rage but beneath the anger, like a cracked note in a haunting song, my aching heart skipped. A beat lost to the familiarity of his chaos. The way he saw me in my darkness and didn’t flinch… he answered it. Matched it. Magnified it.

I hated that he could do this. That his madness could find mine across cities, across silence and still pull me to the edge.

What a sick beautiful curse he is. . . and what a fool I am for feeling it.

My gaze shifted to the far wall and smeared in blood was a message. A reminder that I had not been let go. I was merely released on a leash long enough for illusion.

“𝑻𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒆 𝒂𝒈𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈. . . 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝑰 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒃𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒔 𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒕𝒉."

I had an idea of what a man like Niklaus Mikaelson was capable of. A thousand whispered stories of carnage but none had prepared me for the peril of being chosen. To be desired by him was not a blessing…it was an eclipse and now I stood at the center of it. The muse in a madman’s gallery. The obsession he would rather destroy than release.

I felt it then…the flare beneath my ribs, slow and venomous, blooming like a bruise across my bones.

He knew what this place meant to me. This studio wasn’t just walls and fabric. It was my exhale after centuries of suffocation. My cathedral of creation and out of all places, this is where he chose to bleed his message. To leave his stain, his mark and his madness like some twisted proclamation of possession.

As if to say. . . If he cannot have me, then he will take what I love.

If this was his game then so be it.

He will unleash the part of me I have caged behind a thousand false smiles.

I was not made to bow. I was born of fire.

𝐃𝐚𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐝...

𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐲𝐩𝐭, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐞𝐧𝐝.

The cold crept into my bones, curling between my ribs like something alive. Each stroke of my pencil grew harsher until the lead finally snapped in my grip.

My emotions sank heavy. My thoughts clawed.

I thought returning home would soothe the noise inside my head. I imagined that perhaps, nestled between the bone laced mannequins and blood spun silk, I might remember a version of myself that hadn’t yet drowned in ghosts.

I was wrong.

I had only built a mausoleum here.

My fashion studio. A shrine of aesthetic violence had become a place where I fed the last living traces of my bloodline to the altar of memory. I slit her throat like I sketched. Carefully. Methodically. Gorgeously.

But tonight, I spared her.

I found her once more, only to release her from the torment I dragged her through each night.

It felt like something inside me had worn thin, exhausted from reliving everything with Avery.

My hands trembled as I finally understood what this all was. This studio wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a sanctum of sorrow, dressed in elegance to disguise its rot. It was time to 𝑏𝑢𝑟𝑦 it.

I threw the sketch I had been working on across the room, the paper slicing the air like a scream.

I stood up from my desk, moving slowly across the room. My fingers dragged across the seams of gowns stitched from ruin. Beads like dried tears. Threads pulled from the backs of the dead. I had built a legacy in horror and still…I wanted to cradle it one last time.

Each step I took felt heavier than the last. The weight of memory. Of failure. Of love too spoiled to rot.

I stood before it all now. This altar I once believed was my salvation…but maybe it was only ever my cage and it’s time I set myself free.

My gaze drifted left. A small box of matches, left by none other than Ms. Devareux. Of course. Always her, lingering like a final omen.

Perhaps this was always how it was meant to end. In ruin and in flame. Maybe that’s why I came back home. . .to 𝑑𝑖𝑒 where it all began.

I struck the match. Its flame bloomed as I let it fall onto my desk. The fire hesitated as if uncertain whether it was welcome in a room that had long since burned in spirit but then it rose.

Like a sudden gnawing inside my brain came the voices. They always came out to taunt. To play.

𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢？

A hiss behind the walls of my skull. I stood still as the flames licked the floor. Like they’d been waiting for my permission to swallow me.

𝑀𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡.

𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑡𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒．

My fingers curled, nails biting into my palms.

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑨𝒗𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒍 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑦𝑜𝑢．．．𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑎 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑑．

With every word, I walked deeper into the heat.

𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑛 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜𝑢𝑐ℎ，𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑦. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝒚𝒐𝒖'𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒌! 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒！

The smoke thickened. My eyes burned. My throat tightened and I sank to the floor. I stared at my hands. Covered in paint, in blood, in memory. They trembled as I whispered.

“You…you all win.”

The fire, like a god finally satisfied, roared louder. That’s when I felt it. A presence. Something colder than the flames and my sorrow.

@0nyxEternity stepped through the smoke like he was been born from it. The fire didn’t touch him, it recoiled. His gaze cut through the haze with amusement and when he finally spoke, it was with a drawl that slithered beneath the skin.

“You do know, love, that most people call the fire brigade when the house is burning…not make a throne from the ashes.”

I looked up as he walked closer, so calm that it disturbed me. Couldn’t I die in peace? “You light your own funeral pyre like it’s theatre. I have to say, it’s… bloody beautiful.” He said as he crouched before me.

“I’ve seen a lot of carnage in my time, sweetheart. But you—” he smiled slowly, it almost felt cruel. “You make destruction look like seduction.”

I tiled my head, eyes blurring from the smoke but then I asked “Who the hell are you?” my voice was soft and strained.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he studied me like I was an old rare book he’d long awaited. “Niklaus.” he said finally. “Though I’m sure you’ve heard whispers. People tend to speak of me when they’re trying not to die.”

I tried to rise but he didn’t let me.

“I’ve watched you, Alicena.” he said. “Since the moment your delicate heels returned to Paris. You thought it coincidence? That your bloodline screamed and spilled here of all places?”

My body stilled and he leaned in, his voice menacing. “I 𝑜𝑟𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 this stage. Every scream. Every death. Every drop of blood was a line in your symphony. I wanted to see how long it would take you to break.”

It felt as though the world had gone still. As if the fire devouring the walls around us had bowed its head to listen to his confession too. Of course it was him…the reason I had found someone tied to my blood. That woman hadn’t wandered to me by accident, she had been placed.

I see it now. Every brushstroke soaked in agony, every sketch tainted in red, it wasn’t fate I was painting. I was tethered to a performance, my spine the stage and my soul the string.

It was all him but I won’t be anyone’s puppet and he should know that.

“You’re insane…and that should offend you coming from me.” I said.

He tilted his head, eyes glinting. “Perhaps. But even madness recognizes magnificence.”

I laughed, breath catching on the smoke. “Magnificence?” I repeated. “Please… you don’t want to save me. You just want something to play with.”

His smile was even more wicked. “No.” he said, stepping closer, shadows dancing against his cheekbones. “I don’t want to save you. I want to see what the world looks like when it finally bows at your feet.”

Before I could spit another retort, he moved quicker than my eyes could catch. One arm around my waist, the other braced through the air and suddenly we were shattering through the stained-glass window like a cathedral bleeding light.

We hit the alley hard, stone and bone meeting in the echo of collapsing flame.

𝐍𝐢𝐤𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐬 𝐌𝐢𝐤𝐚𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐨𝐧.

A myth made flesh. The monster whispered about in ancient corridors… had saved 𝑚𝑒.

The disbelief crawled up my throat like a second heartbeat. It didn’t make sense. I was supposed to be ashes by now. Why was he here? Why save 𝑚𝑒?

He stood just beyond reach, backlit by the inferno I had birthed, his silhouette holy in its ruin…and still, he looked at me like I was the only thing that had ever mattered. Like I was the very blaze he’d walked into, not the one he’d pulled from it.

I stared at him. My pulse screamed. My skin trembled. Part of me wanted to flee and part of me wanted to fall.

“You shouldn’t have come.” I said, words coming out cracked like even they didn’t believe themselves.

He stepped closer with a maddening ease. The kind only a man like him could have, the kind that says he’s never once been denied. His eyes, two polished weapons, dragged over me like a slow execution. Not a word passed his lips but I felt the tension coil. He looked at me as though I were a work of art carved solely for his undoing.

He grabbed me before I could oblige, his mouth crushed against mine and it wasn’t affection…it was annihilation. His kiss burned like the studio I had set ablaze. He kissed me like he was entitled to it. Like he’d earned it in blood. I kissed him back like I wanted to ruin him.

𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡? To be cradled in hands that ruin, kissed by lips that taste of endings. To be worshiped in agony and held so tightly you fracture but never allowed to slip away.

Love like this does not save you. . .

it devours.

The night had settled around me like a shroud, my home bathed in candlelight and it was quiet as I liked it. I cradled a glass of crimson wine, savoring the stillness, letting it wash over me like a lullaby but suddenly there’s a flicker. A shadow moved in the periphery of my vision. My grip faltered. The crystal glass slipped from my fingers, shattering against the floor.

Blonde hair.

For the briefest of moments, terror seized me in a way I scarcely recognized but then the figure stepped forward revealing familiar features.

Alessa.

She tilted her head, amusement flickering in her eyes as she took in the sight of me visibly shaken. “That’s new.” she murmured.

I quickly masked it, composing myself with a sharp exhale. “Stalking me everywhere I go? I’d hate to have to vervain you, starve you and then bury you alive so you can spend the night clawing yourself free.”

Alessa didn’t flinch at the threat. Instead, she moved with vampiric speed, kneeling before me to sweep up the broken shards before pouring me a fresh glass as if nothing had happened. She held it out.

“I’m worried about you.” she said. “You’re usually sharper. I’ve never been able to sneak up on you as much as I have in the last two days.” I shrugged, dismissing it with a wave of my hand. “Tired is all.”

She didn’t buy it, settling onto the couch across from me. “Mother… what happened when you went to see Avriel?”

The name struck like a dagger to the ribs. A chill crawled up my spine, my mind dragged mercilessly back to the moment that had broken me all over again.

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑦. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒．

I had known deep in my bones that something was wrong before I even stepped inside. The abandoned house loomed in the night, its silhouette jagged and skeletal, a thing long forgotten by time. The air was thick with dust and heavy with the scent of decay. For centuries, I had mourned Avriel’s absence, convinced that the vacancy in my soul meant his death. . . but Sabine had given me this address and she would’ve never sent me on a wild chase.

I hesitated at the threshold, my fingers ghosting over the doorframe, dread curling around me like a noose. I stepped forward.

“Avriel…” My voice was barely above a whisper. A creak. The sound came from deeper inside. I followed it, my breath shallow and then I saw him.

Avriel sat slouched in an old chair, his body still as stone. His clothing was worn, tattered by time and neglect but he wasn’t pale. There was life in him but it was… wrong. He looked withered and stripped of something essential.

For a moment, emotion stole my breath.

It had been lifetimes since I had last seen him… since I had felt the presence of my brother.

“Oh, my god! Avriel!”

I stepped forward and I reached for him, arms wrapping around him, embracing him as if he might vanish but he did not move. Did not even breathe.

“Avriel?” I pulled back, my hands lightly gripping his shoulders, my heart twisting at his silence. “It’s me… Alicena.”

Finally, he moved. His head lifted, eyes locking onto mine and in his gaze, I found nothing.

Then his grip shot out, fingers closing around my throat.

“Am I to leap for joy?” His voice was wrapped in ice. His hold tightened, cutting off my breath. “Are you here to find some weakness?”

Before I could answer or even process the shift, he hurled me across the room. I crashed against the floor, the impact rattling through my bones, the air torn from my lungs.

Avriel rose, looming over me like an omen, like a shadow resurrected. His next words dripped with disdain.

“Are you hoping to find some thread of love for you in my soul, 𝑠𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟?”

I scrambled to my knees, staring up at him in disbelief. This was not the brother I had known. The brother who had once shielded me from our parents cruelty. The brother who had promised to always protect me.

My voice breaks. “Avriel… I’ve spent hundreds of years in agony. Unnecessary agony mourning your death and you’ve been alive all this time!”

Silence. Then without warning his foot came down on my ribs, a sickening crack splintering the air.

Pain lanced through me but worse than that was the sheer brutality of it. The way he looked at me with such apathy. The way it mirrored…

𝑀𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟. 𝐹𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟.

A choked breath left my lips then another kick, another crack.

“Avriel…why?” I needed to understand 𝑊ℎ𝑦 my brother was doing this. 𝑊ℎ𝑦 had a bond once so pure twisted into something so violent? Avriel was never like this before… so 𝑤ℎ𝑦 did he look at me with such disgust, as if I were a thing to be repelled, rather than the sister he loved?

I gasped shuddering, the room tilting around me. I tried to crawl away but Avriel’s hand fisted in my hair, yanking me back toward him.

“You mourned me?” he sneered. “Is that what you tell yourself? That you grieved? That you suffered?” His fingers curled around my wrist.

𝑆𝑛𝑎𝑝.

A blinding agony as my bone shattered in his grip. I screamed so loud it felt like a blade was dragging down my throat.

Avriel didn’t stop. One by one, he broke my fingers, watching as they healed only to snap them again. A cruel fascination gleamed in his hollow eyes, as if he were testing the limits of my endurance.

Then his hand moved lower. I barely had time to register what he was doing before his fingers plunged into my chest. A guttural choking gasp tore from my throat as he wrapped his hand around my heart.

My heartbeat is now slow…sluggish. He exhaled, almost as if in wonder. His grip tightened.

“𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡?”

He pulled, the muscle straining, agony so sharp it stole my breath. The edges of my vision blurred. I writhed beneath him, clawing weakly at his arms but he didn’t relent. He wanted to see if I would break. If I would beg.

Suddenly something shifted. His fingers trembled and he stilled. His cold, dead eyes flickered with something I couldn’t tell. His grip loosened and the moment it did, I choked in a ragged breath, the pain subsiding just enough for me to register what was happening.

A single bloodstained tear slid down his cheek. His gaze flickered as he yanked his hand away from my chest like it burned. He’s stumbling back.

“Leave.”

His voice was quieter now but no less cold.

I lay there, trembling, body battered but already healing. But my heart. . .

My heart would never heal from this.

I am jolted back to the present as Alessa’s hands grip my shoulders shaking me. My breath is unsteady and it’s only then that I notice the warm streaks of blood staining my nightgown. I swallow the pain, forcing it down like poison.

𝑨𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒑𝒊𝒆𝒄𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒍𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒆𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒚 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒓𝒖𝒊𝒏.

The woman sprawled against my desk still breathes but barely. Her throat open, the wound weeping, her pulse faint beneath skin that cools by the second. I watch her for a moment, noting how life clings to her in stubborn defiance. 𝑃𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑐.

“Perhaps you’ll fight long enough to see the end result." I murmur with malice.

I dip my pencil into the wound, the blood seeping into the grain of the wood like ink. It stains the delicate edge and I press it to paper. The first line drags slow, as if the blood knows what it’s being used for. The design should come easily, 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 but tonight it fights me. The blood hesitates, the lines stutter and frustration gnaws beneath my skin like a caged animal.

And then suddenly it comes.

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑦

It creeps in like rot beneath floorboards, seeping through the cracks inevitable and unwelcome. The scent of old varnish. The sharp sting of splinters beneath my fingertips. The dresser, battered and bruised, just like me. I see the notches carved into the wood. Tally marks, crude and raw. One for every strike. One for every moment I was nothing but prey beneath my mother’s hand, beneath my father’s shadow. Each mark a monument to survival. Each one proof that I endured, even when I wanted to be dust.

𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑨𝒗𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒍…

Avriel would find me later. Always. Kneeling in the dark, his hands trembling as he pressed cold cloths to skin that bloomed with bruises. Whispering lies dressed as promises. That it wouldn’t always be this way. That one day, he’d take me away. 𝑆𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑒 like the good brother he was.

But lies are lies, even when they wear kindness like a mask.

The memory twists. Warps. The soft shadow of Avriel face sharpens, the darkness behind his eyes growing teeth.

𝑰 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒊𝒕!

I press harder, dragging the pencil across paper, tearing deep. The lines aren’t soft now. They’re jagged and brutal. They bite. I rip into the page as I ripped into flesh, carving my frustration, my rage, my confusion. The shade darkens, the image distorts but maybe it’s better this way. 𝑀𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑢 𝑔 𝑙 𝑦. 𝑀𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏 𝑙 𝑒 𝑒 𝑑.

Then suddenly the door creaks but I don’t turn.

“I tried to stop her.” comes Ms. Devereaux’s voice. She’s nothing but a shadow in the doorway. “I couldn’t—”

“No.” I say coldly, my eyes never leaving the page. “Your old, frail body couldn’t. She’d crush you.”

Silence and then footsteps. The scent comes first…her dark perfume.

𝐴𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎.

I feel her before I see her, a storm at my back. Her presence presses into me but I refuse to turn. Refuse to give her the power.

“So.” she says, her arms folded. “You run off to Paris, leaving me in England. Alone.” Her words hold a blade and she’s far from done. “I thought it was about a man. You falling in love with some pathetic filth and doing what you always do.”

I tilt my head, my lips curling humorless. “I’m ready for you to make your point.” She steps closer.

“I knew it wasn’t that when I arrived.” She pauses, her gaze never leaving mine. “I watched you. Bringing someone here every night. Using their blood for your designs. At first, I thought it was indulgence. Just you being… 𝑦𝑜𝑢. But then I saw it. How calculated it was.”

I still…realizing she’s gotten smarter.

“These people… they’re close to your bloodline, 𝑀𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟. The last of it. Why are you killing them?”

The word is a dagger but I don’t flinch. I keep drawing, the pencil scraping against paper like bone on bone. She waits. I let the silence stretch. 𝐻𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑡 𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑘𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑟.

“My discovery is as tedious as your concern.” I say finally, tone ice. “If I’d known you’d be this annoying, I would’ve buried you next to your real mother and rid myself of your existence long ago.”

It’s a strike meant to wound but Alessa only swallows. She doesn’t break. She never breaks. I taught her too well.

“That woman wasn’t my mother.” she says quietly. “But you are and I’m worried about you. Why do you do this, Alicena?”

The softness in her voice is a trap. I hear it. Feel it trying to draw me out but I don’t answer because I know what she really wants to ask.

𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑖𝑡．

“I know you know Avriel is alive.” Her voice cracks but she steels it. “What happened when you found him?”

The breath leaves me. Just a second. A betrayal I can’t conceal.

Avriel’s face. Not the brother I remember. Not the boy who pressed cloths to my bruises. His eyes were gold, burning, venomous. His face was sharper, all bone and hatred. He looked at me like I was the 𝑠𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠, the 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 that ruined him. Like I was the curse he could not escape.

I can still feel the weight of his gaze on me, like it’s carved into my skin…but there’s something 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒, something more twisted…something he did to me that night. Something I refuse to remember but it’s there clawing at the edges of my mind.

What happened between us… 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒.

I can’t bring myself to think about it. I thought seeing him again would mend something in me. Instead it ripped me apart.

I force the memory down. Burying it deep.

When I lift my gaze, it’s cold enough to kill.

“Don’t!” I snapped at her “Don’t ever say his name again!”

She freezes but I see the tremor beneath her skin. She’s brave but not brave enough.

“Either make yourself useful!” I whisper “or leave! But if you stay, know that I will not be questioned!”

Alessa storms away, her defiance burning through the air or perhaps it’s just her wounded pride but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I glance over at the woman slumped against the desk, her faint heartbeat still a soft rhythm in the air, like a cruel reminder of her fragility. Her blood stains the floor, pooling beneath her in a delicate pattern, almost too 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡.

I bite into my wrist, feeling the sting as my fangs tear through my skin. The blood that pours from the wound is cold. I press my wrist to her lips, compelling her to drink. The pulse of her life shifts with each breath she takes, the color returning to her cheeks.

“You will forget this.” I murmur, my voice laced with power. “Forget everything. The blood. The pain. The fear. Forget this night entirely.”

Her glazed eyes flicker for a moment, confusion clouding her features before I let her go. She stumbles away, her mind wiped clean. A perfect victim, one I’ll come to again. A source of my 𝑎𝑟𝑡…my 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒, my 𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒. Vicious or not.

Alessa was wrong about one thing. She thought I was killing them off, one by one, erasing the last of my bloodline. But the truth? It’s all the same woman.

This blonde. She looks like me. She reminds me of myself…how I once was, fragile and lost, searching for something to hold on to. Maybe that’s why I chose her, why she’s the one I take again and again. A reflection of my own sickness. A tool for my cruel, endless art.

I turn back to my sketch, the image before me still unclear. The lines are sharp, jagged, and frantic...but as I drag the pencil across the paper, I can’t decide.

Am I drawing 𝒉𝒊𝒔 face? Or is it 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒆?

The blood beneath my fingertips feels colder now, heavier…and still, I can’t shake the question.

𝐴𝑟𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑣𝑎𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑢𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔，𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑘𝑒 𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑠 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑡ℎ． ． ．𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒， 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛．

The dim light of the studio casted long skeletal shadows across the room as I sat hunched over the aged wooden desk. My pale fingers moved with practiced precision, guiding the pencil though irritation flickered in my cold blue eyes.

The design was off. The lines, once flowing like poetry, now stuttered and tangled beneath my touch. I released a frustrated sigh and without breaking my rhythm, dipped the pencil into the jagged gash of the corpse sprawled beside me. The blood bled into the graphite, deepening the shade to something more… visceral. Perfect.

But perfection still eluded me.

My focus was shattered by the creak of the front door. My grip tightened on the pencil as I glanced up, eyes narrowing. I hear footsteps and then theres a voice brittle with age but unmistakable.

“Al… Alicena?”

Ms. Devereaux.

She stood frozen in the doorway, the years etched into her face. Her once dark hair had surrendered to silver but the fear in her eyes was timeless. I could almost taste it still.

“Either my old mind is playing tricks on me or it’s really you.”

I met her gaze with cold detachment, already turning my attention back to the sketch as if the reunion were nothing more than an inconvenience.

“No, it’s me. Flesh and bone.” I paused, lips curling into half a smile. “Don’t step around the desk. If I recall, blood always made you squeamish.”

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed nervously, eyes flickering toward the lifeless body slumped in the corner like discarded art.

“I… I’ve kept the place up for you.” she stammered.

I let my gaze drift around the room…noticing the absence of dust, the fresh candles burning low, the faint scent of lavender masking the scent of blood.

“I noticed someone had been here.” My eyes shifted back to her and I’m curious now. “Why would you do that? You were always so… afraid of me.”

She shifted, wringing her weathered hands together.

“Because I always had a feeling you were different and I liked what you were doing here. It felt…” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “Important. Like it mattered.”

Silence hung between us. For a moment, I considered the weight of her words, the absurdity of loyalty born from fear and fascination.

Finally, she spoke again but quieter this time.

“So… are you staying or passing through again?”

I leaned back in my chair, the pencil rolling between my fingers, eyes drifting to the half finished sketch smeared with drying blood. The question lingered, not just in the air but in my mind.

Was I staying? or was I simply circling back like a restless ghost tethered to nothing and no one?

My lips parted, the answer slipping out before I could second guess it.

“I have yet to decide. But for now… I’m staying.”

The room was silence after my words, then I moved…a blur of pale skin and golden hair, like moonlight cutting through the dark. In the span of a breath, I stood before Ms. Devereaux, close enough for her to stumble back, hand flying to her chest as she clutched the pearls draped around her fragile neck.

“If your heart beats any faster, it might explode.” I mused cold and unbothered. “You’re too old for that now.” She swallowed hard, the thrum of her pulse like a drumbeat in my ears, though I paid it no mind. Instead, I turned back toward the desk, brushing my fingers along the edge of my sketch.

“Order new fabrics and machines.” I commanded. “I need them as soon as possible. The ones we have now tear too easily for my liking.”

She nodded quickly, like I’d given her something to calm her nerves. “Right on it and… oh, uh…” she’s hesitant again. “There’s one thing I need to ask of you.”

I flicked my gaze up, eyes narrowing.

“My granddaughter helps me out here. She visits often and I’d appreciate it if you could… keep the vampire stuff at bay when she’s around. I want to keep her innocent.”

Silence.

The audacity made my lips curl into a predatory smile. How amusing, that this woman who once trembled at the mere thought of me now stood here making requests.

“Hmm…” I drawled, tapping the bloodied pencil against my chin, eyes glinting with mischief. “I wonder if she’d be the shade of red I’m missing on my sketch.”

The words hung in the air , curling between us thick with implication but this time, Ms. Devereaux didn’t flinch. She stood straighter, chin lifting with a defiance I almost admired.

“As much of a ruthless bitch as you were before.”

A beat of silence. Then I chuckled more indulgent than offended.

“Age really has made you bold, hasn’t it?” I murmured, stepping past her, golden hair trailing like silk in my wake. “Fine. Keep the girl out of my way and I’ll pretend innocence is still worth preserving.”

I paused at the threshold, gaze sweeping the room one last time before disappearing into the shadows beyond.

“But don’t mistake my patience for mercy, Devereaux. I’m staying…for now. That doesn’t mean I’ve changed.”

“𝘛𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘰𝘧𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵, 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘱 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬”

I stood at the threshold of the studio, feeling the weight of Paris pressing against my skin, the city I had once called home now distant in its familiarity. The scent of fabric, ink…so much more pungent than I remembered. The studio felt suffocating in its stillness, like it had been holding its breath waiting for me to return.

It had been years since I’d stepped inside. Years since I abandoned my sanctuary. At some point, I thought I could outrun it, that I could forget this space of creation and beauty. I thought I needed the chaos, the blood and the thrill of the hunt…but now, standing in the doorway, I realized how deeply I had missed this. Missed the softness that came with a brush, the weight of pencil on paper, the hum of a quiet space where nothing but color and form mattered.

This room used to be my escape. It had been my happiness. I was alive in a way I didn’t feel anymore. I had chased a darker path, convinced I needed the disorder and madness of it all but in the end, it was a lie. None of that madness was truly 𝑚𝑒 beneath the core.

I crossed the floor to my desk, fingertips grazing the worn leather of my sketchbook...so neglected. I opened it slowly and there they were. The remnants of my soul, inked in lines and shapes, half-finished and broken. My pulse quickened. 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒? I was a different woman then, one who believed in creation, in beauty and art. A woman who thought she could escape the darkness. 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒?

I picked up my pencil. It felt familiar but different. My hand trembled as I held it from the sudden weight of 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 had been lost. The urge to create surged through me overwhelmingly.

Just as I was about to give in. . . Then came the quiet shadow, slipping through the room. He was there before I even realized, standing in the doorway like some dark apparition. Tall. Unnatural. A vampire, no doubt but not one I knew.

He stood with a smile that sent a ripple of unease through my veins. His eyes reddish-brown staring through me with a knowing that stripped away every mask I wore.

“I don’t appreciate uninvited company.” I said. He chuckled. The sound of it crawled under my skin, making my pulse skip. He stepped into the light, his dark hair flowing like ink, moving with an unnerving grace. . . but it wasn’t his handsomeness that held me, it was the weight of his gaze that felt dangerous.

“Your thoughts are loud, Alicena.” he purred. “Quite fascinating, actually.”

I narrowed my eyes, irritation licking at my nerves. “I don’t like people prying into my mind..if that was possible anyway.” I said trying to keep my calm but I felt my pulse quicken. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really here for, while I still have enough patience left not to spill your blood across the floor?”

His lips quirked in amusement, tilting his head. “I’m here for you. To put a face to those thoughts that cling so beautifully in the air…and I must say, I’m not disappointed.” His voice held a possessiveness that’s unmistakable. It stirred something dark within me, a hunger I had long tried to bury but I wasn’t here in Paris for this. Not for the same old destructive pattern I had fought so long to escape. This time I am focusing on myself 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠.

“Well, now that you’ve put a face to it.” I said cold as a winter wind. I’m not in the mood for another man entering my life with empty promises. “You can leave. I have no interest in whatever game you think you’re playing.” I dismissed him, eager to make him feel small for his audacity but he didn’t flinch. Instead, his smile deepened like resistance amuses him. “I didn’t expect this to be easy.” he murmured and slowly he took a step closer to me. My breath hitched, caught in the wake of his presence, suffocating in the intensity of his gaze. “I’m here for you.” he repeated, his voice had softened. “And I will wait.”

The room felt smaller, the shadows deeper as if the walls themselves were closing in on me. His words slipped inside me, curling around my insides like smoke and making my heart race. I felt him there all around me, in the space between my thoughts. He wasn’t just in the room. He was in me, beneath my skin.

“I will wait.” he whispered again, his almost seductive. “And when you are ready, when you 𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑠𝑒, you 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 fall in love with me but it will be on your terms.”

I blinked, my pulse quickening. What the hell was he thinking? To storm in here uninvited and make such a bold claim. I thought I knew madness but this was something far different.

“And if I don’t want you? Then what?” I let the words drip with a bite, making sure my tone carried every ounce of defiance.

The corner of his lips quirked. “It almost sounds like you’re waiting for a threat to follow your question…I know that’s what you’re used to.” his words hit me like a wave, sudden and violent. I stood slowly, as if some primal instinct had taken over. I wasn’t sure if I was walking toward him to confront him or to kill him for still being here after I told him to leave. He wasn’t hearing me loud enough. 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠！

I was standing before him now, shoving him furiously. “Stop talking like you know me and get out!” I braced for him to defend himself and attack but instead he gently took my hands, his grip calm and his gaze holding no ounce of anger.

“𝐈'𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮, 𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐋𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝐈𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐲.”

Armands voice is gentler. He spoke my name like a secret between us, as if we were long-lost intimates…like he had every right to name me in full, something no one knew or dared before. The way it rolled off his tongue made it feel almost inevitable. Perhaps he said it to silence me, freezing me in that moment. To make me wonder how he knew my name. . . or to make me fear what else he might know.

“I won’t touch you unless you ask.” he continued, his eyes never leaving mine. “I know the pain you’ve known…the ones before me who twisted your will and made you crave their darkness. . . but let me show you something else. Immortality doesn’t have to be a weapon. It doesn’t have to bleed. As I said, you 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 fall for me and when you do, it will be on your terms.”

I stepped back, my eyes narrowing. “You think I’ll want you? I don’t want to be wanted or seen by you.” My words were bitter on my tongue but he didn’t flinch. His smile just grew. “I don’t think you will. Not now, at least…but you will, Alicena.”

The silence between us was suffocating, yet the air crackled with something dark and primal. Then he turned away, dissolving into the shadows like a ghost but his voice lingered like an unsettling whisper that curled through the room like smoke.

𝐼 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑎𝑖𝑡. 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑.

His words were a chain, a cold whisper that coiled around my chest, tightening with each breath until I couldn’t inhale. Why was it, every time I sought peace, chaos clawed its way back into my life? Why did someone always appear, as if they had some twisted right to claim me, to make me theirs?

𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐜. 𝐀 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐠𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐬𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫.

Whenever darkness called, I answered. Leaving a trail of blood in my wake whenever I wanted was a forbidden thrill…until one moment shattered everything, forcing me to face the weight of my atrocities. It happened as I was leaving the train station, fresh from reliving my darkest memories. I could have let my anger swallow me, could have unleashed it on the woman who stood before me. Instead, I chose mercy. Erasing our encounter from her mind but now, as I walk away, her voice cuts through the air.

“Is that it? Just gonna walk away?!”

It caught me off guard. I had compelled her to forget everything, yet here she was, confronting me as if her memories were untouched. The weight of my past presses down on me, stronger than my will to change. Mercy is a rare gift, one few deserve but I gave it to her. Now, she questions its worth. I regret not tearing her apart when I had the chance.

“You seem disappointed. Would you rather I hadn’t shown you mercy?”

I turned to face her and the instant I did, pain exploded through my skull. It was no accident. She’s a witch. A sharp groan escaped me as the headache pierced like a siren, its wail ringing in my ears, sending me to my knees.

“You speak of mercy, 𝘆𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆!”

I stared at her in confusion. I had never seen this woman before, nor had the slightest idea what she was talking about. Her eyes narrowed, recognizing my confusion and that only seemed to fuel her fury.

“Do you even remember? All the blood you’ve shed, the lives you’ve ruined! Do they really mean nothing to you, Alicena?”

Her words struck like a whip. I knew answering would only fuel her rage, so I stayed silent. I tried to make sense of her…her face was unfamiliar but her fury… that was unmistakable. I let her words hang in the air, hoping that giving her space to vent might play to my advantage.

The headache she inflicted began to subside, offering me a fleeting chance to strike back but I should’ve known better. As soon as I lunged, she flicked her wrist again and this time the pain was far worse than before.

“I’ve watched you for years, spilling blood without consequence. Maybe it’s time you tasted what it’s like to 𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙠𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙞𝙩.”

Pain hit me like a tidal wave, forcing a scream from my throat but it grew muffled as my airway tightened. Something was constricting my throat. I leaned forward, blood spilling from my mouth.

“I was only nine! Should I remind you? My parents took you in during a storm, thinking they were helping you! And you killed them! 𝘾𝙤𝙡𝙙𝙮. I was hiding, but I saw everything… I heard everything.”

Her words cut through me, dredging up memories I had buried deep. They pulled me back to that night, years ago. A storm was raging and I was at its heart. That night had sparked something inside me. It was the night I learned my brother, Avery, was alive. I had always known, deep down, that he would return to me. But our reunion wasn’t what I had imagined. It was cold and brutal. The brother I had dreamed of was gone, replaced by a stranger whose cruelty shattered the sweet memories I had held on to. The person I had longed for was dead and I was left holding onto a ghost.

Pain, rage and humiliation burned inside me from how he had treated me, leading me to her parents doorstep. I told them my car had broken down, that I was stranded. The memory of why I ended up there comes rushing back. I had heard the shouting. My vampiric hearing guiding me there. The distant pleas from her mother, begging her husband to stop, echoed in my ears. My presence silenced their argument and in that silence, my act of desperation succeeded. The façade of helplessness fooled them and they invited me in…but it didn’t take long before their pretensions crumbled.

Being inside their home stirred something dark in me. Perhaps it was how they reminded me of my parents…how Avery’s life had been twisted by them and how he might have opened his heart to me if they hadn’t poisoned him against me. I made excuses for his cruelty but the truth remained buried. I couldn’t blame him. Instead, I blamed them. I made them pay for sins they hadn’t committed, for things they didn’t deserve. I told myself I was taking revenge on my parents but they were not my parents. They were her parents and I staged their deaths to look like a fire and in that twisted act, I thought I was somehow balancing the scales. It was only after the flames had consumed them that I noticed the little girl escaping.

“𝙉 𝙤 𝙚 𝙡 𝙡 𝙚 .”

The name slipped from my lips and in that instant, the agony she’d been inflicting on me vanished. It wasn’t that I had forgotten her…it was that I hadn’t recognized her until now. The feeling of guilt washing over me can’t be ignored.

“You know my name? So you remember what you’ve done!”

Her words were a jagged blade, demanding answers I knew I couldn’t give. Nothing I said would bring her peace now. She was too far gone. The only way to release her from this cycle of hate and pain was for me to die and be erased from the story I had ruined.

I could tell her everything. The truth of how, once I learned she existed, I made sure she was placed with a family who could love her the way she deserved. How I did what I could to atone, knowing it would never be enough to undo the trauma I had caused. But in her eyes, it would mean nothing.

Her gaze, raw with fury, burned into me. I realized then, with a gut-wrenching clarity, that my confession would only stoke the flames of her anger. It wouldn’t heal her wounds. It would only deepen them.

Noelle moved toward me, her gaze still burning with fury. I could feel the vibrations of her footsteps, each one stronger than the last, her heartbeat pounding in the silence. It was clear she wasn’t being cautious anymore. She had let her guard slip. In my feigned weakness, I had deceived her, made her believe her pain had broken me, that she had rendered me powerless. But I knew the truth.

She drew a blade from her jacket, its gleaming edge catching the light. I can’t tell it wasn’t just any knife, it was something far more dangerous. Whatever it was, I couldn’t let it touch me.

“Do you have nothing to say for yourself? I should expect no less. You have already shown how pathetic you are.”

There’s venom in her words but they didn’t sting because it was nothing I hadn’t heard before. She now confronted me, wielding the blade and before she could strike, I was behind her within a blink of her eyes. My hand clasped her wrist as I swiftly plunged the blade through her chest and into her heart. Theres a gasp of agony that slipped through her lips. I can’t tell if its satisfying or if it was something else? A strange wave of shame, rising from the depths, for having done this to her in the first place. I had already taken so much from her.

“You call me the monster, maybe that’s true. But what does that make you? I know what you did to your new parents…how you disposed of them and covered it up with a fire. Sound familiar to you?”

She collapsed into my arms and I dragged the blade across her 𝙜𝙖𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩, a warning in case she thought resorting to more witch tricks was an option.

“They loved you.” I scoffed with my grip tightening on the blade “Gave you everything but they never understood what it meant to be a witch. So, they were disposable, weren’t they?”

I spun her around with a sharp twist, forcing her to face me. My hand, steady on the blade inside her chest, a cold reminder of the power that now lay between us. I leaned in, my voice cutting through the heavy silence.

“You spent every moment of your life hating me so much that 𝙮𝙤𝙪’𝙫𝙚 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙢𝙚.” I could feel the pulse of her heartbeat beneath my fingers. Her breath was shallow, the weight of my words sinking in like poison. “Tell me, Noelle, what did we learn?”

Her body tensed. A flicker of pain flashed across her eyes, the same pain I’d seen in the mirror countless times. Her tears began to fall. Silent rivers carving paths down her cheeks but there was no softness in them. Only the bitter taste of regret.

I saw it in her eyes. The realization, like a candle snuffed out in an instant. She had become the very thing she’d sworn to destroy. The blade trembled in my hand, not from fear but from the overwhelming truth that now hung between us.

“You’ve already lost.” I whispered, my pulse thundering in my ears. I’d already taken so much from her. How much more could I steal before there was 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 left?

Her breath hitched. “Alicena…” Her voice trembled, “You… you already made your point. I’m going to die.” Her words sliced through me as sharp as the blade I held. “The blade…” She coughed weakly, her eyes fluttering. “It’s infused with magic. Once it’s inside you, it… it kills you and your soul… it goes to a hell I created.”

I froze. My cold and hollow heart seemed to falter for a moment. The illusion of control had shattered.

I laid her back carefully, my hands trembling with a nervousness I hadn’t felt in centuries. Reaching for the blade, I tried to remove it to stop this from getting worse but her hand shot up, gripping mine with a force that belied her fading strength. “No.” she whispered. “It’s too late.”

I couldn’t let it end like this. 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙘𝙖𝙣’𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙮.

“Noelle, I can save you.” My voice cracked with panic. “One drop of my blood will fix this.” Her eyes filled with a sorrow I wasn’t prepared for, one I hadn’t seen in so long. “It won’t work.” she murmured, shaking her head. The weight of her finality crushed me but I was too stubborn to accept it.

𝙄 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙝𝙚𝙧! 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙮!

Frantic I bit into my wrist, watching the blood rise thick and dark. I moved to feed it to her but she spit it up like poison. She turned away, as if the very thought of accepting it would kill her more than the magic in the blade.

“Why isn’t it working?” I demanded, my panic was evident. “You have magic. Reverse it. You can fix this!” Her breathing was shallow now, each breath a dagger to my chest. “I’m too weak.” she whispered.

“No.” I shook my head, as though denying it could change anything. “No, you’re not.” Her laughter ripped through me. “You thought you could change but I just proved you wrong, Alicena.” She coughed again, her voice barely audible. “You can’t outrun your past. You… you’re the one who really lost.”

The last of her words hung in the air like smoke and with them, she slipped away. Her body went slack, her eyes losing their fight to stay open.

𝙎𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩. 𝙄 𝙝𝙖𝙙 𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙩. 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙚 𝙙𝙞𝙚𝙙 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙝𝙚𝙧.

The centuries of darkness that had shaped me felt nothing compared to this. I’d lived through torture, betrayals, loss and a thousand lifetimes of bloodshed. But none of it prepared me for the agony of this moment.

I yanked the blade from her chest, forcing my blood into her mouth again, desperate and pleading. Again and again, I fed her my blood, watching it pool in her mouth but her body remained cold, her pulse absent. I shook her desperately, my hands slick with blood. I had lived through so much. But this… this was one thing I couldn’t outrun. I destroyed her again.

I had always been the one to destroy everything in my path.