جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 160

Asaraiah KaineThey didn’t call it a ritual because it involved candles or chanting.They called it a ritual because once it started, there was no way to pretend it hadn’t changed you.Eryss chose the location herself. Not the mansion. Not anywhere tied to Malrik, the council, or my family. She took me to a private medical facility buried beneath an abandoned logistics hub outside the city—steel corridors, biometric locks, generators humming like a second heartbeat under the floor.Modern. Clean. No mysticism theatrics.“This isn’t about awakening,” she told me as we walked. “You’re already awake. This is about organization.”“Organization of what,” I asked. “The voices?”“The memories,” she corrected. “They’re stacking. If you don’t separate them, they’ll collapse into each other.”“And if they do?”She stopped walking. Looked at me carefully. “Then you won’t know where Zenaida ends and you begin. And Malrik will lose you either way.”That landed harder than any threat.Malrik wasn’t

Asaraiah KaineThe vault was older than the mansion.That was the first thing I noticed—not the cold, not the layered security, not even the way Malrik’s guards straightened like the room itself might judge them. The stone here breathed. It held time the way bone holds marrow.Malrik stopped at the final door and keyed in a code that wasn’t numbers. His thumb pressed to glass; his blood followed. The lock opened with a sound like a throat clearing.“You don’t have to do this now,” he said, not turning.“I do,” I replied. “Before it decides for me.”He stepped aside.The room beyond wasn’t large. No glittering piles of gold. No museum theatrics. Just a table of dark wood and three objects arranged with careful intent, like someone had chosen them knowing exactly who would stand here one day.I felt the pull immediately. Not hunger. Recognition.On the left lay a blade—slender, unadorned, its metal dark as wet night. No runes. No gems. When I moved closer, the air around it cooled, like

-Asaraiah Kaine-The summit was held in a place designed to make men feel small.Glass and steel rose over the river like a blade laid flat, the conference floor perched high enough that the city looked like a map someone else owned. Private elevators. Soundproofed walls. A view expensive enough to distract from the fact that every person inside the room could order a death with a text.I arrived with Malrik, not half a step behind him.Beside him.That distinction mattered.The doors slid open to reveal a long table of polished black stone, already occupied by men who’d built empires on extortion and inheritance. Old families. New money. A few who pretended to be legitimate and fooled no one.Conversation stalled when we entered.Not because of Malrik.Because of me.I felt it immediately—the subtle recalibration. Eyes lifting. Attention shifting. Calculations changing. This wasn’t the look men gave a decoration. It was the look they gave a variable they hadn’t planned for.“Lady Kai

ASARAIAH KAINEThe first thing Malrik did after the vow was lock the house down.Not quietly. Not subtly.The lights along the hallway shifted from warm white to a sterile blue, motion sensors clicking alive like insects waking under the walls. Somewhere beneath the floor, heavy steel slid into place with a sound too deep to be comforting.I felt it before I saw it.The mansion changed temperature—cooler, controlled, alert. The kind of atmosphere meant to keep something dangerous contained.I stopped walking.My phone vibrated once in my hand, then went dead. No signal. No data. Nothing.I turned slowly.“This,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “isn’t happening.”Malrik didn’t look back. He was already moving down the corridor, jacket discarded, sleeves rolled, posture tight with that familiar command he wore like armor.“It’s protocol,” he said.“It’s a cage.”“It’s protection.”I laughed under my breath, not because it was funny, but because it was predictable. “I didn’t bleed into

ASARAIAH KAINEBy dawn, the mansion smelled like smoke, antiseptic, and old blood.They had extinguished the fires, dragged out the bodies, sealed the breaches—but damage like this doesn’t disappear just because men with guns say it’s handled. It settles into walls. Into memory.I sat on the edge of the bed in the east wing, wrapped in one of Malrik’s shirts, hands resting loosely in my lap. My pulse had finally slowed, but my body still felt wrong—too warm, too aware, like it was listening to something beneath the surface of the world.Malrik stood near the window, shirtless, bruises blooming dark along his ribs and shoulder. He hadn’t slept. Neither had I.For a long time, we didn’t speak.“I’ve seen war before,” he said eventually. “Mafia wars. Vampire wars. This—” He exhaled. “This is something else.”“They weren’t here for territory,” I said. “They were here for me.”He turned, studying my face like he was trying to memorize it before it changed again. “They knew your name.”“The