The mansion was a carcass now — all charred bones and broken memories, barely clinging to existence against the blackened sky.
Noah staggered through the wreckage, dragging Elias' limp body across the blood-slick floor, his hands shaking, his heart hammering in his chest like a prisoner begging for mercy.
"Hold on, Elias. Please," Noah whispered, voice thick with terror and something more dangerous hope.
But Elias was slipping. His breaths were ragged, shallow, his once-pale skin now a terrifying shade of ash. The silver blade still pierced through his ribs, the poison seeping into every vein.
They had nowhere else to run.
Nowhere else but down.
To the underworld of vampires — the guttered veins of the city where ancient monsters whispered deals older than kingdoms.
Where debts were paid in blood and betrayal.
And Noah was ready to sell his soul.
For Elias, he'd sell everything.
They stumbled through narrow alleys cloaked in the smell of iron and rot.
Noah's vision blurred, his limbs screamed, but he didn't stop. He couldn't. Not when every heartbeat Elias took sounded fainter than the last.
Finally, deep beneath the city's crumbling catacombs, they found it.
The Sanctuary.
A hidden place where vampires came to heal... or to die.
It wasn't a grand temple or a shimmering palace. It was a pit, a cracked ruin of forgotten bones, where blood pooled like sacred oil and the walls seemed to hum with ancient sorrow.
A cloaked figure approached.
A healer.
"You bring death here," she hissed, her eyes like broken stars.
"He needs you," Noah said, his voice steely despite the tears burning behind his eyes. "Help him."
The healer paused, peering into Noah's soul as if weighing his worth against the cost.
Then, with a reluctant nod, she led them into the depths.
While the healer tended to Elias — murmuring in a dead language, working with hands slick with blood and magic — Noah wandered through the broken archives of the Sanctuary.
And that's when he found it.
A crumbling tapestry, woven with threads of shadow and gold.
It depicted a boy — a boy whose blood was a weapon and a curse. A boy destined to end the war between the vampire clans.
But at a terrible price:
He would lose himself.
Lose his soul.
Lose everyone he loved.
He would become the monster they all feared.
The boy's face...
It was him.
It was Noah
When he returned to Elias' side, the healer was gone, leaving only the faint scent of dying roses.
Elias stirred weakly, his hand brushing Noah's.
"You found it, didn't you?" Elias rasped, his voice like the last breath of a dying star.
Noah nodded.
Terror and resolve warring in his chest.
"I'm the key," Noah whispered.
"And the lock," Elias said with a bitter, broken smile.
Before Noah could respond, the Sanctuary's doors exploded inward.
The rival vampires poured in like a flood of shadows, their eyes gleaming with hunger and rage.
At their front the ex-lover.
His smile was a dagger against Noah's heart.
"You thought you could hide, little prince?" the ex sneered.
"You thought you could escape your blood?"
The battle was chaos.
Elias, still too weak to fight, struggled to stay upright.
Noah — sweet, broken Noah — picked up the nearest weapon he could find.
A silver dagger, too heavy, too cold in his trembling hand.
He fought.
God, he fought.
For Elias.
For himself.
For the tiny sliver of a future he still dared to hope for.
Fangs tore into his shoulder.
Claws raked down his back.
He screamed in fury and pain and something inside him snapped.
The power unfurled from deep inside his chest, a roaring inferno of rage and bloodlust.
Noah moved faster than he thought possible.
He drove the silver dagger into the first vampire's heart, watching the creature shriek and turn to ash.
Another came at him — and he tore the beast's throat out with his bare hands, feeling the blood spray warm against his face.
There was no thought.
No hesitation.
Only need.
By the time it was over, the floor was slick with bodies.
The Sanctuary walls wept blood.
And Noah stood at the center of the carnage, his chest heaving, his hands dripping red.
His reflection shimmered in a cracked mirror across the room.
His eyes were glowing.
Bright, furious red.
Elias pulled himself toward him, agony etched into every line of his beautiful face.
He stared at Noah — at what he had become — and his heart cracked open.
"I warned you," Elias whispered, voice hoarse, broken.
"I warned you what loving me would do."
Noah's hands trembled. His lips parted to deny it, to promise he could control it, that he could still be good.
But he couldn't.
He wasn't human anymore.
He wasn't even a vampire.
He was something else.
Something older.
Something worse.
And there was no going back.
Noah collapsed to his knees beside Elias, pulling him close, feeling the tremor in Elias' battered body, feeling the truth settle like ash in his bones.
"I would do it again," Noah whispered fiercely.
"I would damn myself a thousand times for you."
Behind them, deep in the shadows, a figure stirred.
Not a rival vampire.
Not an enemy.
Someone worse.
A figure from the oldest stories.
The architect of the prophecy itself.
"Beautiful," the figure purred.
"So beautiful to watch you fall."
Noah lifted his head, his blood-red eyes narrowing.
And for the first time,
he didn't feel afraid.
He felt ready.