Chapter 3

Long ago, when the Sanguine name still held power, a girl was born beneath a blood moon.

They said she cried without sound, her eyes already crimson at birth.

They said she carried an ancient gift, something that hadn't stirred in centuries.

They said she would change everything.

But prophecy was not protection. The child was hidden. Her name was buried. Her mother fled, cloaking their bloodline in silence.

That child was Tatiana.

And the gift?

It waited.

Now, after two decades of sleep, it had awakened.

⸻

Tatiana didn't sleep that night.

She sat on the floor of her small cottage, knees pulled to her chest, staring at the ancient book as if it might whisper answers if she waited long enough.

Her fingertips were stained from hours of tracing the sigil burned into the leather cover—two intertwined roses, one blooming, the other withered, wrapped in a serpent. She didn't need anyone to tell her what it meant.

It was her family's crest.

Her real one.

The world she'd believed in—the mortal one of market stalls, oil lamps, village superstitions, and quiet loneliness—was a dream slipping through her fingers.

Now she was left with this: blood that wasn't hers, a name that carried weight, and a vampire with silver-threaded eyes who spoke in riddles and debts.

Luscius Vesper.

His name tasted wrong in her mouth. Like betrayal and warning twisted together.

Yet she hadn't feared him.

Not in the clearing. Not even when he'd emerged from shadow like a walking death sentence.

I owe your mother a debt, he'd said.

But what kind of debt could a man like that owe?

Her fingers clenched tighter around the book.

Her mother—Ceryse Sanguine—had died when Tatiana was six. Or so she'd been told. She'd barely remembered her face, just a voice like wind through the reeds, a lullaby hummed in an old language, and a scent of wild roses.

Now those fragments returned in a rush.

The lullaby. The hush in her mother's voice when she warned Tatiana not to draw attention. The way she'd pressed a small, carved rose pendant into her palm before vanishing into the rain one night and never returning.

Stay hidden, my love, she had said. They fear what sleeps inside you.

Tatiana rose to her feet slowly.

She crossed the room and opened a hidden drawer beneath the floorboards. She hadn't touched the pendant in years.

Now she held it again.

The carved rose glinted dully in the candlelight. Its petals were sharp, the thorns detailed. At the base, a barely visible engraving:

Crimson endures.

Her fingers trembled.

Everything in her wanted to scream, to run, to undo the last two days and return to her ignorant, human life. But something deeper—older—pulled at her bones.

Rise, it whispered.

Outside, the forest shifted.

Tatiana looked toward the window.

She was no longer prey. No longer hidden.

And if Luscius was right, more were coming.

She needed to learn what she was.

Now.

⸻

In a fortress high above the Veilwood, Luscius stood before a dark mirror.

Not a reflection—but a vision.

Smoke curled across the glass, forming her face.

Tatiana.

Untrained. Unawakened. And yet... powerful.

"Troubled, my son?" Lord Theron Vesper stepped into the chamber without a sound.

Luscius didn't turn.

"She's not what I expected."

"She is exactly what she was born to be," Theron said coldly. "A threat."

Luscius's jaw tightened.

"She doesn't know what she is."

"She will," Theron replied. "And when she does, she'll either come to us... or be destroyed."

"She won't come," Luscius said softly.

"Then destroy her."

Silence stretched long between them.

Then, Luscius said, "She bears her mother's eyes."

Theron's voice grew sharp. "You grow sentimental."

"No," Luscius said, his gaze never leaving the mirror. "I grow cautious. We've underestimated bloodlines before."

"This is no longer about blood," Theron snapped. "It's about obedience. If you won't deliver her to the Council, then someone else will."

Luscius turned now, slowly.

And his voice was colder than ice.

"No one else touches her."

⸻

Tatiana stood barefoot at the edge of the forest, the morning fog clinging to her skin like memory.

The rose pendant hung around her neck now, cool against her chest. She'd braided her dark hair back tightly, hands stained from crushing wolfsbane and herbs into the pouch she now tied to her belt.

She didn't know why—but it felt right.

Natural.

Instinctual.

As if some part of her remembered this, even if her mind didn't.

The book was tucked under her arm, bound with a strip of torn linen. It had shifted since the night before, the pages reshuffling on their own, bleeding fresh script where once there was none.

It was guiding her.

The symbols scrawled across the open page pointed to the western edge of the Veilwood, near a grove the village children were warned never to enter.

Tatiana hadn't believed the stories before.

Now, she wondered how many were true.

The deeper she moved into the trees, the more the silence changed. The birdsong faded. The air grew colder, stiller. It wasn't dead—just watching.

And then she found it.

A circle of blackened stones, covered in ivy, half-sunken into the ground. At the center, a tree older than time leaned outward like a guardian—its bark twisted, its roots curled like claws over a sunken door.

The air buzzed with old magic.

Tatiana's blood pulsed.

She knelt and placed the book on the tree's roots. At once, the sigil on the cover flared red.

A pulse shot through the ground. The pendant at her throat seared hot.

And the door in the earth creaked open.

A staircase spiraled down into darkness.

Tatiana didn't hesitate.

She descended.

⸻

The air in the underground vault was dry, ancient, and heavy with dust. Her footsteps echoed against carved stone, lined with murals and forgotten history. Torch sconces lit themselves as she passed, casting flickering golden light over figures with crimson eyes and sigils of roses, thorns, and blood.

This wasn't just a hiding place.

It was a tomb.

A memory.

And a vault of legacy.

At the bottom, a stone basin stood surrounded by four archways—each marked with different symbols: fire, shadow, blood, and mind.

Tatiana approached the basin.

The book opened in her hands, its pages fluttering to a new spell etched in red:

To claim your name, offer your truth.

She hesitated.

Then she removed the pendant and dropped it into the basin.

It glowed.

The air shifted.

And visions swarmed.

Flashes of her mother, cloaked in midnight robes, whispering to a circle of robed figures. A red-eyed child held close. The child crying. Blood on the walls. Screams. Fire.

Then—

A door.

A man in a silver-trimmed coat standing before it, arms crossed. His face half in shadow. His voice echoing:

I'll take her. She will forget. But she will live.

Tatiana gasped and stumbled back.

The vision vanished.

But the truth remained.

Luscius saved me.

Not recently. Not in the forest.

Before.

When she was a child.

She fell to her knees, breathing hard, head spinning.

And then a whisper came—not from the vision, not from memory.

But from something beneath the vault.

"You are the key. The lock. The blade. Rise, Crimson Daughter."

The ground pulsed. The archways began to tremble.

And the blood symbol on the stone flared bright.

Tatiana stood.

No longer just a girl.

Something had awakened.

And it would not sleep again.

⸻

Far above, in the tower fortress, Luscius stood motionless as the mirror blackened suddenly.

A flicker of red shot across it.

Then the scent of old blood filled the chamber.

His eyes narrowed.

"She found the vault," he murmured.

Theron Vesper stepped into view once more.

"You should have burned it centuries ago," the elder said.

Luscius didn't answer.

He was already walking toward the weapons chamber.

Whatever Tatiana had stirred—whatever she was becoming—would soon draw more than just his gaze.

And this time, the council would not wait for permission.

⸻

The vault doors sealed behind her as Tatiana climbed out into the twilight, her fingers still tingling from the pulse of raw power that had surged through her.

The pendant was gone—melted into the spell—but something new now shimmered beneath her skin.

Not magic.

Not exactly.

Blood memory.

It pulsed with every step she took. Her hearing sharpened. She could taste the wild wind, hear the whisper of a raven's wings a mile away.

She didn't know what she was becoming.

But she was no longer just a girl with questions.

She was a creature of legacy.

And someone wanted her dead.

She felt it first as a shift in the air—too subtle for a human to notice. But she wasn't human anymore.

A breath. A heartbeat. A blade being drawn.

Tatiana dove sideways just as something silver whistled through the air where her neck had been.

She landed in a crouch, eyes glowing faintly red.

A shadow stepped into the clearing.

He was dressed in Council black. His face covered. His scent—old blood, steel, and venom.

"Tatiana Sanguine," the assassin said coldly. "You are marked for erasure."

"You can try," she growled.

The assassin moved fast, but Tatiana moved faster.

He lunged.

She dodged, her instincts flaring alive as if someone else guided her limbs. She twisted, caught his wrist, and drove her knee into his side. Bone cracked.

He didn't scream.

Another blade flashed—this one poisoned.

She caught it mid-swing.

The metal burned her palm, but she didn't let go. She yanked him forward and slammed him into the blackened stone tree behind her.

The trunk groaned. Bark cracked.

Tatiana's eyes blazed now, crimson and fierce.

"Who sent you?" she hissed.

But he only smiled.

"You're already too late."

Before she could react, he bit down on something hidden in his mouth.

A vial shattered.

Smoke poured from his mouth and eyes, curling into the air like screaming mist.

He burned from the inside out—ashes falling to the moss like snow.

Tatiana stood still for a moment, chest rising and falling, her hand bleeding from the poisoned cut.

But her blood was already healing.

Her skin sealed over as she watched.

She shivered.

Then turned.

Luscius Vesper stepped from the trees, his coat stained from travel, silver threads catching the dying light.

She didn't flinch.

"You sent him?" she demanded.

"No."

"But you knew someone would."

He nodded once.

"The moment you opened the vault."

Tatiana swallowed, heart still racing.

"You said I had time."

"You did. But time is not a gift the Council gives freely."

She approached him, blood still wet on her fingertips.

"He called me a threat."

"You are."

"And what do you see me as?"

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he studied her—really studied her.

Then he said, "A storm no one is prepared to survive."

She met his gaze.

"I won't run."

"I didn't ask you to."

"Then why are you here?"

Luscius drew something from his coat. A thin silver ring engraved with a rose and crescent moon.

He held it out.

"Your mother gave this to me the day she disappeared," he said. "She said if the day ever came that her daughter awakened... I'd know what to do."

Tatiana didn't reach for it.

"You think a trinket will make me trust you?"

"No," he said quietly. "But I'm not asking for your trust."

She looked down at the ring.

Then slowly, she took it.

It was cold. And it fit her finger perfectly.

Luscius watched her for a long moment.

"More will come," he said. "Next time, they won't send one. They'll send ten. A hundred."

"Let them," she said.

A ghost of a smile touched his lips.

"There's something else you should know."

"What?"

"You weren't the only bloodline buried," he said. "There are others. Forgotten. Broken. Lost. And now that you've awakened... they'll feel it."

"What does that mean?"

"It means your rise might wake more than just memory."

He stepped back into the shadows.

But before disappearing fully, he said one final thing:

"When the time comes to choose between the Council and you... don't make me regret which side I take."

Then he vanished, like mist into night.

Tatiana stared after him, her blood humming with awakening.

And far away, in the heart of the vampire capital, a circle of elders lit the old fire and whispered her name like a curse.

Tatiana Sanguine.

The heir.

The key.

The storm.