1. Oceans of Time
The tempestuous images floating like ash through her mind still stirred her soul, rhythmic as the swaying of the ship beneath her feet. She had lost her village to the flames; Mother Miranda had vanished along with the rest of the Lords, and her beloved Lady Dimitrescu was gone, leaving her void of purpose. She knew not where to go, guided only by a photograph of a relatively young man and a collection of handwritten letters tucked into a thick, red-bound compendium with a resilient spine. Beside her, the cargo of wine drenched the air with that familiar scent—a fragrance that made her feel, amidst her dreams, that she still belonged somewhere.
Requiring little food or water, she slept peacefully for most of the journey, waking only to sift through her memories: walking the elegant wooden hallways, glimpsing the hearth-fire in warm parlors, hearing the distant, playful laughter of Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela alongside the towering woman. Then she would weep inconsolably before falling back into rest. Finally, she reached the other side of the vast sea, treading lands she had only heard of. Feeling like an outsider to the world, she spoke several languages—knowledge devoured from the massive tomes in the old Castle Dimitrescu, places that now existed only in her solitary memory. She asked for directions, receiving inquisitive glares and ambiguous answers, following the trail of the “Sanguis Virginis” to a massive edifice, pristine and bright, which bore little resemblance to her homeland. She stood at that threshold with nothing but an uncanny appearance—skin barely tinted with warmth and hair as dark as the stain creeping across her blackened fingertips, which knocked upon the enormous doors without fear, seeking answers.
The Rhodes Hill complex rose like a pale monolith, an affront of modernity against the dark sky. When the main doors slid open, the dry clatter of tactical boots and the metallic snap of assault rifles greeted her. Six private security guards from Umbrella surrounded her in a perfect semi-circle, the red laser sights of their weapons dancing across her chest and pale face.
"Don't move! Identify yourself!" one of them barked, though his voice wavered upon noticing that the young woman didn't even blink at the muzzles of their guns. To the building’s thermal sensors, she was an anomaly: her body temperature was nearly non-existent, save for a unified, inhuman heat signature pulsing in her thorax.
"I seek... Oswell Spencer" she pronounced with an ancient cadence, ignoring the cold metal nearly grazing her skin.
To speak the Founder’s name in such a place was like invoking a ghost—a living memory standing before the master plan of the owner of the Rhodes Hill Critical Care Center. After a tense radio exchange, and with several sights still trained on the woman, the guards stepped aside, though they did not lower their weapons.
Only then did the echo of steady, rhythmic footsteps resonate through the marble lobby. A man over seven feet tall, with a burly frame, descended the stairs calmly. She looked at his heavy, chain-adorned boots and a trench coat that seemed crafted from heavy snakeskin. His face was partially obscured by a helmet with lenses whose purpose she could not fathom. Victor observed her in a dense silence, analyzing the strange coloration of her fingers, the texture of her skin, and, above all, the aura of absolute devotion she exhaled despite her funereal appearance. In his mind, the old stories Spencer used to whisper about a "mentor" in Eastern Europe began to click together like pieces of a logical puzzle.
"Lord Spencer has long been beyond the reach of this world," Victor said in a placid voice, soft yet laden with authority. "However, I am the heir to his ambitions and his legacy."
Gideon gave an almost imperceptible nod, and the guards finally retreated, lowering their weapons while remaining alert. He stepped toward her, invading her personal space. The scent she gave off was unmistakable. It wasn't just mold and damp earth; it was the metallic and floral aroma of a very particular wine that Victor had tasted on specific occasions—a vintage he kept in his private reserve, wondering if he would ever taste its like again now that the supply had been abruptly cut after the incidents in Romania.
"You look dismayed," he commented, narrowing his eyes behind the goggles that analyzed her every gesture. He began to circle her slowly, his steps echoing. "Tell me... what do you carry in that charming book you clutch so tightly?"
Victor extended a hand—not to touch her, but to graze the spine of the red book. He met a gap of distance she imposed with a gesture that, curiously, did not seem like fear, but a warning.
Despite the man’s blunt explanation that the one she sought was dead, the young woman did not retreat. She stood firm even against his disrespectful attempt to touch her heritage held within those pages. She looked at his face, though she never found his eyes, hidden behind those cold lenses that bred distrust.
"I seek Oswell Spencer. If he is dead, it is of no use."
She did not move. Although the terrible impression of this man immediately blurred any interest in knowing him, everything else whispered insidiously for her to yield her pride for a greater good. Observing his nature—so alien to the human, yet something she could recognize despite their different origins—her greatest desire was to know why this man exuded the scent that stirred her deepest memories. It brought back the warm sensation of home, where enormous, gentle feminine hands would stroke her face after a tantrum from the young Dimitrescu daughters; she felt comforted and appeased in a way she missed with her entire being. Victor noticed her jaw tighten—a spark of ancient pride flickering behind her desolate gaze. Despite her words, she did not leave.
The air between them grew thick, charged with an invisible frequency. Driven by a predatory curiosity, he reached out his gloved fingers toward her cheek, seeking to confirm with touch what his data-goggles only gave him in figures: a cellular composition that defied Umbrella's logic—one he had struggled so hard to study and replicate.
Before his fingers made contact, she stepped back—a fluid, mechanical movement, almost like a rehearsed dance. The rejection was silent but absolute.
Victor stopped his hand in mid-air, facing her once more, clutching the void for a second before closing his fist tightly, hiding the impatience this biological enigma provoked in him.
"If you seek answers regarding the legacy that brought you here, speak," Victor said, lowering his arm and clasping his hands behind his back, reclaiming his posture of frozen dominance.
She did not know how to navigate this conversation, seeking answers this man might possess, yet held back by a pride that, despite her status as a servant, maintained her stoic posture. It was not in her nature to debase herself, least of all before a man like him, but her loyalty was stronger.
"Please... I need your help."
She offered no specific information, nor her intentions, nor how she had arrived. But to Gideon, she did not seem like a threat; driven by the urge to confirm if his suspicions about her origin were correct, he granted her a leap of faith. He turned around, gesturing for her to follow him into the depths of the complex, letting doubt act as the only thread keeping her tied to this hostile present.
Every heavy, torturous step that echoed on the clean floor was uncomfortable. She had felt the man’s petulance from his very first word, but with no other choice, she yielded for the sake of something greater: answers. She walked a meter behind him, watching his hands clasped behind his back, the fingertips darkened. She looked at her own hands—similar, yet she felt no connection to the fungal root as she had with her old mistress, the other Lords, or Mother Miranda. They were so different; that was all she understood.
When the massive man opened the door, gesturing for her to enter first, it allowed her to see the room in detail. She felt a strange sense of understanding the place. Curiously, she looked at the books behind the heavy desk, taking a seat on a light gray three-piece sofa that contrasted with her dark dress of time-stalled elegance. Victor sat in the main chair, observing her without removing his data-goggles.
"The scent," she began, the primary seed of her curiosity. She had arrived on this continent in a shipment of wine; she hadn't known a bottle would be there in this stranger's private bar, much less the full extent of the connection. She knew Oswell Spencer had known Mother Miranda, having been inspired by her. Seeing the company logo, she guessed he had taken more than just ideas and knowledge. The woman had been her Creator, and now she was dead. In her mind, in a strange way, she had come to feel this man was like a father; knowing him dead was a disappointment in understanding why she was still here while everyone else was gone. She looked at him, seeking answers about the wine, though she wanted to ask about everything weighing on her weary mind.
The silence in the office was absolute, broken only by the soft hum of servers and the hiss of the ventilation system. Victor reclined in his leather chair, interlacing his long fingers over the desk. From his perspective, she looked like an apparition plucked from an oil painting—a familiar one that his mentor used to hang in a room, depicting a woman in very similar clothing.
"The scent," he repeated, savoring the words with strategic slowness. "You refer to the Sanguis Virginis, do you not?"
Victor rose without haste and walked to the bar. With a precise movement, he picked up the dark glass bottle whose label, though worn, bore the Dimitrescu crest hidden behind other spirits. He poured the thick, crimson liquid into a fine crystal glass, letting the trace of the fungal root, though processed, permeate the office air.
"Lord Spencer appreciated tradition," Victor said, returning to his seat but not drinking, simply watching how the light refracted through the wine as he placed the glass on the desk. Under her intrigued gaze, he seemed to know exactly what that liquid was. "He saw in that village something the rest of the world ignored: the origin of a vision. The emblem you see on every wall of this complex was Spencer’s tribute to the woman who inspired him. Mother Miranda."
At the mention of that name, Victor locked his attention on the young woman’s reactions. His data-goggles detected a micro-fluctuation in her pulse.
"She was the architect of a biological perfection that Umbrella spent years trying to replicate with chemicals and laboratories, often failing where she triumphed with... 'faith'." Gideon set the glass on the wood with a sharp thud. "If you seek Spencer because you believe he would give you a purpose after the fall of your home, you are too late. He died seeking the immortality you seem to possess without effort."
Victor leaned forward, invading the space over the desk, his shadow nearly eclipsing her under the intense, sterile light.
"You are the last fragment of a destroyed ecosystem. You have no Creator, and as you have noted, the man who copied her dreams has also departed," he whispered, and for the first time, there was a tinge of dark possessiveness in his tone. "I am not Spencer, but I can offer you a purpose beneficial to us both."
She could hear the subtle mechanical whirring of the helmet the man wore; it reminded her of a pocket watch’s tick, making her uneasy under his analysis. She had come for answers and found only desolation. Everything she knew was gone: her land, her Mother, and her Mistress. She missed the mischievous laughter of the triplets swarming through the manor’s elegant halls; she missed walking through the snow in the morning to gather supplies and the placid conversations with the Duke about literature. For the first time in her life, she felt lost—a lack of purpose as palpable as a hollow in her chest, right where her heart should be beating, where now only the last vestige of her identity remained: the Cadou.
"I did not come to offer myself as a servant," she snapped. But just as when she arrived at Rhodes Hill minutes ago, her refusal did not match her actions. She did not move, nor did she show any sign of wanting to leave—not because she wished to stay, but because, honestly, she didn't know what else to do with herself.
The room remained quiet for a considerable time, enough for Victor to begin losing patience, despite the value an alliance could hold. He was not a patient man when it came to dealing with people to extract information, even if he maintained an "amiable" facade. He tapped his fingers on the armrest, feeling the heavy rings he wore with pride.
"Verna." He did not explain the word, nor his intention beyond a dry, clipped baritone. She looked at him directly, feeling the clicking resonance behind her head like an insidious whisper, searching—without losing her sliver of ego—for an alternative.
The name fell into the silence of the office with the weight of their already uncomfortable conversation. "Verna." Victor processed the word, savoring it while his goggles registered her absolute lack of movement. The arrogance of her refusal—that "I did not come to offer myself as a servant"—contrasted deliciously with her stillness. Gideon was an expert at reading the anatomy of despair, and in Verna, he saw the most fascinating specimen: a creature designed for a purpose that no longer existed, a weapon without a hand to wield it, a servant without an altar.
"Verna..." he repeated, his voice dropping an octave, becoming a freezing caress. "A name that evokes spring and nature. A pity you bloomed in a garden of ashes."
Victor rose from his chair with predatory elegance. He ignored the hostility of her words and focused on the stillness of her body.
"You say you do not seek servitude, yet your feet do not move toward the exit," he said, turning his back to her as he searched through his enormous shelves of books—a display of power, indicating he did not consider her an immediate physical threat, but an intellectual puzzle. "You are experiencing something your biology shouldn't allow: obsolescence. You are the last of your kind."
He turned slowly, letting the red light of his goggles reflect in Verna’s eyes.
"That void you feel where the connection to the Black God should be... it isn't just loneliness. It is hunger." Victor walked back toward her, stopping just before invading her personal space again, but allowing the scent of the Sanguis Virginis from the glass to mingle with the air between them. "I can give you more than answers. I can give you a reason so that fragment of Cadou you protect so fiercely does not become a useless burden."
He pointed a jeweled finger at the red compendium she clutched.
"That book... and what you carry inside. Spencer wanted to be a god; I only want to be the architect of the inevitable. If you stay, you won't be a maid dusting furniture. You will be my direct connection to Miranda’s masterpiece."
Victor leaned in slightly, his face level with hers, close enough for her to hear the electric hum of his lenses.
