Lucien came back to camp bloodied. Not broken—but close. They found him outside the southern ridge at dawn, barely conscious, clothes torn and burned from shadowflame. His return was a warning, not a victory. Alya didn’t wait for healers. She ran to him the second the horns sounded. He was on one knee, head bowed, leaning on the pommel of a blade he’d somehow reclaimed. His eyes lifted when she reached him—and her heart nearly cracked at the sight. But he smiled. “Miss me?” She slapped him. Then she pulled him into her arms. --- He slept for a full day and night, fevered and murmuring in tongues that hadn’t been spoken in centuries. Alya sat by his side the entire time, watching the lines of his face shift with every dream. When he finally stirred, the tent was silent. The camp outside hushed in the lull between dusk and full dark. Alya was seated beside the cot, fingers resting on the hilt of her blade, eyes half-closed in thought. Lucien turned toward her, his voice hoa
The message arrived by fire.A raven—its wings black as pitch, eyes burning red—burst into their campfire at dusk. It shrieked once, then dropped dead at Alya’s feet, its feathers curling into ash.Within the ashes: a sigil.A broken crown.Lucien’s face went pale.“That’s the mark of the Oathless.”Alya crouched, brushing soot from the sigil. “Who are they?”He hesitated. “They were once your queen’s guard. Before the Severing. Sworn to protect the bloodline… until the day they turned on it.”“Why?”“Because they followed her,” he said. “Your twin.”They moved quickly after that.Every step south was colder than it should’ve been. The forests grew quieter. The sky darker, even in daylight. Magic pulsed beneath the ground now—uneasy, disrupted.The twin was gathering power. And she wasn’t hiding anymore.They needed allies.And fast.Lucien suggested an old name: Eryth Hollow—a former stronghold buried in the cliffs beyond the Ebon Fields. A place once loyal to the throne.But when th
The silence after the storm felt unnatural.The kind of silence that listened back.Alya walked the perimeter of the ruins with the blade strapped to her back and a storm behind her ribs. Lucien trailed her at a respectful distance, no longer speaking unless spoken to. After everything—the memories, the betrayal, the confession—they were in a fragile balance. Bound by past lifetimes and choices no one should’ve had to make.But there was still trust.Or at least… the shape of it, trying to form again.That night, Alya couldn’t sleep. The sword hummed softly at her side, restless. So she wandered, deeper into the hollow earth, drawn by a feeling she couldn’t name.Lucien found her an hour later.“You’re not supposed to be this deep without me,” he said quietly, stepping beside her.“I couldn’t sleep.”“Nightmares?”“No,” she said. “A pull.”She stopped at a sealed doorway half-swallowed by collapsed stone. Runes shimmered faintly beneath the dust, different from the ones she’d seen bef
The shadows came fast—limbs that weren’t entirely solid, snarling mouths with too many teeth. Creatures not born of flesh, but of memory and curse. Guardians of the sword. Bound to destroy any who touched it… unless the heir proved herself worthy.Alya didn’t hesitate.The blade in her hand felt like fire and starlight, like vengeance wrapped in steel. As one of the beasts lunged, she pivoted on instinct, the sword arcing through the air with a scream of power. The thing shattered mid-leap—splintering into black smoke.Lucien had drawn his own blades, back pressed to hers.“This isn’t a test,” he growled, parrying another creature’s strike. “This is punishment.”“For what?” she shouted, slashing through another shadow that howled in a forgotten language.“For surviving,” he answered darkly.The chamber trembled around them. Runes on the walls flared, reacting to the blood now dripping from Lucien’s arm.The shadows weren’t retreating. They were circling.Alya felt the pull deep in her
The first body appeared two days after the Rite.A hunter from the village south of the ghostline—throat torn, eyes wide, skin branded with a rune Alya had only seen in her dreams.Three jagged lines. One horizontal slash.A mark of war.Lucien said nothing when she touched the body. He didn’t have to. His silence was tight, deliberate. Calculating.“This wasn’t the King,” Alya said quietly, rising to her feet. “This was something else.”Lucien nodded once. “It’s a calling card.”She narrowed her eyes. “You know who it belongs to.”He hesitated for half a breath.Then, “The Marked Ones.”She stiffened. “I thought they were extinct.”“They were,” he said. “Until you woke up.”---That night, the house felt colder. Not haunted—but watched.Lucien paced near the front windows, every movement taut. Alya sat at the kitchen table, fingers tracing the rune she’d seen scorched into flesh.“They’re bloodline assassins,” he explained finally. “Trained to kill heirs. Trained to kill you.”“Whose
Alya had started sleepwalking.Not every night.Just the ones where the moon hung too red and the ring on her finger burned too cold.She’d wake on the edge of the forest, barefoot and shivering, hands stained with dirt she didn’t remember touching. Once, Lucien found her standing by the well behind the house, murmuring words in a language neither of them recognized—until he did.It was Old Tongue. Royal vampire dialect.Dead for centuries.He never told her she was speaking it.Just wrapped a cloak around her shoulders and said, “Come back to me.”And she always did.---But it wasn’t just the sleepwalking.It was the way the memories crept in now, like ink bleeding through old parchment.Her grandmother’s death. The key. The mansion. The ring. The King.They had all been doorways, pieces of a puzzle she hadn't known she was solving.But now… now she remembered things she’d never lived.The scent of blood-soaked roses.The taste of iron wine from a silver cup.A name she had once ans