The last breath of a dying god cursed this land, or so the old hunters claim. The soil never softened again. Ash, nor snow, falls when the wind howls long enough.
I didn't believe any of it until I stepped into the ruins of St. Elarion's Cathedral.
The moon hung low and bloated above the broken steeple, pouring sickly light onto the hollow bones of the once holy place. Ivy clung like scars along the cracked facade. Gargoyles stared down, worn faceless by centuries of acid rain and shadow.
The wind pushed against my coat as I stood at the threshold, hand resting on the hilt of my runeblade, listening. The others waited behind me, tense and silent.
"You smell that?" I said without turning.
Isha inhaled beside me, her eyes narrowing. "Blood. Dry, but recent. And something else..."
"Decay," Dane muttered, flicking the safety off his rifle. "The kind that sticks to your teeth."
"Worse," I said. "It's old. It's been fed here, not spilt."
I stepped through the broken doors, my boots crunching on the shattered stained glass, each shard still stained with the forgotten saints and lost promises. The air was thick, humid and sweet, with the undertone of rust and rot. It clung to the skin like a fever.
Inside, the cathedral was a graveyard of memory. Pews upturned, rotting. Candles half melted into the stone. The altar stood cracked and empty, its gold stolen or devoured. But the shadows... the shadows moved.
Not just tricks of light.
Watching.
I could feel it behind the ribs. That old hunter's instinct. That primal tightening of the lungs before something reaches for your throat.
"This place was sealed," I said aloud, though mostly to myself. "The Inquisition marked it off after the Fall. Said no one made it out alive. No bodies to bury. Just... silence."
"They left something behind," Isha said quietly. She held out her charm chain, each silver token trembling. "They weren't wrong to."
We pressed forward in a tight triangle formation. I led, blade ready. Isha flanked left, her fingers dancing over glyphs etched in her vambrace. Dane took the right, the butt of his rifle tight against his shoulder, eyes scanning the rafters.
Each step deeper into the cathedral peeled something from me. Not flesh. Not blood. Memory. Like the place knew what I carried and fed on it.
I saw their faces again, old teammates. Lost lovers. My brother. The eyes of every vampire I ever killed, open and accusing.
Guilt never sleeps long.
We reached the rear of the nave, where the altar had once stood. There, half sunken in rubble and bone dust, we found it: a spiral staircase cut into the stone, old and blackened with soot. A descent carved not by architects, but by something that wanted to go down and never return.
"Light ends here," I said. "From here on, we go blind."
"Again?" Dane grumbled but clicked off his lamp anyway. "I hate this part."
Isha didn't complain. Her fingers traced the silver charms at her throat, whispering a prayer in the old tongue, words meant to shield us from the darkness that listens. I didn't understand all she said, but the weight behind it pressed heavily on the air.
The stairs groaned under our weight. Each step downward echoed like a drumbeat of a war long buried. Cold rose from below like breath from a sleeping beast.
It was the kind of silence that made your ears ring. The kind that chewed at your thoughts.
It made me sweat.
Somewhere deep below, I felt the pressure of eyes again. Not one set. Dozens. Hundreds. Watching from the dark behind stone and time.
We reached the catacombs, where the air turned viscous and wrong. Rows of burial alcoves lined the walls, the stone coffins cracked and stained. Bones peeked out from shattered lids. Some still had rings on their fingers. Some had claws.
We moved quietly. Respectfully. Or maybe fearfully. Even Dane didn't crack wise now.
"You know," Dane muttered, voice low, "there's a story I heard back when I was a kid. About a vampire, they called the Blood Veil. Said she could see into your soul before she tore it out. Few hunters ever come back from crossing her."
I glanced at him. "You think that's who's waiting down there?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe just a ghost. Either way, it's bad news."
Our conversation was cut short, a door at the end of the hall. Iron bound, engraved with sigils that glowed faintly red in the dark, waited for us. It pulsed, like a heartbeat.
"That's no tomb seal," Isha breathed. "That's a binding mark. Old blood-magic. Pre-Inquisition."
"What's it keeping in?" Dane asked.
No one answered. Because we already knew.
It was keeping a monster within.
But someone had already opened it.
The door hung slightly ajar.
I reached for the rune blade on my back, sliding it free. The blade hummed in my hand, its edge trembling with the nearness of something monstrous.
"Isha," I whispered. "Ready your circle. Dane, watch our six."
They both nodded, getting into formation without a second thought.
I pushed the door open.
Inside was a chamber drowned in darkness. The walls were pulsing wet, alive, like flesh stretched over stone. A circular pit lay at the centre, ringed by broken pillars and shattered chains.
And above the pit… she hovered.
The vampire.
Her skin was pale, like bleached bone. Her eyes burned gold through the dark, and her hair hung like a veil of night. Chains still clung to her wrists, broken. Her feet never touched the floor.
She did not move.
She did not need to.
She knew we were there.
"Silas Grey," she whispered, voice like wine spilt across velvet. "You've come at last."
I froze. She should not know my name.
Isha's hands lit with arcane fire. Dane raised his rifle. But I raised my hand.
"No," I said. "She's not attacking. Not yet."
Isha glanced at me like I'd just sprouted fangs. "Silas, what are you doing?" Her hands pulsed with firelight. "That thing shouldn't be speaking, let al-"
"She knows my name," I whispered, more to myself than to her.
The vampire looked straight at me. And smiled.
"Silas," Dane snapped, rifle raised. "This feels like diplomacy to you? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like bait."
"Why?" I asked, my voice quieter now, chest tightening. "Why do you know my name?"
She didn't move. Didn't blink. Just staring with those gold burning eyes, it was unnerving, I could tell both Isha and Dane were getting agitated, but before I could reassure them.
She moved.
I didn't even see it, just the rush of black silk and the whisper of wind as something impossible crossed the space between us. In the span of a blink, she was there, her lips at my throat.
Pain.
Not sharp. Not clean.
It was slow at first, like needles threading into my neck, then ripping open, veins flaring like snapped harp strings. I gasped, but the scream caught in my throat as something surged through me.
My blood didn't pour out.
It boiled backwards.
A surge of heat crawled up my spine and behind my eyes, like fire laced with ice. My lungs seized. I tried to breathe and choked on the air; it tasted wrong, metallic and thick, like breathing syrup laced with iron filings.
Visions.
Not dreams. Not memories. Intrusions.
Flashes of a throne made from vertebrae. Oceans of bone. Cities burning with blood that fell like rain. Creatures without faces, kneeling to a shadow.
At the centre of it all.
Me.
Not as I was.
Something taller, darker. Crowned in flame, eyes glowing gold like hers, my blade dripping with ash. People screamed, not in terror, but in worship.
I tore myself away, or maybe I was flung. I couldn't tell. My knees hit the stone floor with a sound like a snapped promise. My pulse screamed in my ears, and for a moment, I forgot my name.
The vampire leaned close, whispering something against my blood-slicked skin.
White hot pain exploded through me. It was not a bite. It was an invasion. A rewriting. Blood poured from the wound, and with it, something ancient crawled inside me.
Her voice was inside my head, too close, too intimate.
"You have seven nights, Silas. To become what you were born to be or die with the rest of them."
She was gone. No flash. No smoke. She was simply gone, as though the room had exhaled and erased her.
I curled to the side, gasping, one hand at my throat, the other clawing at the floor for grounding, for truth. My veins still burned, like they were being rewritten. I wanted to vomit, to scream, to tear off my skin just to get her out of me.
But the worst part wasn't the pain.
It was the feeling that something inside me had opened its eyes… and smiled.
I collapsed, knees slamming against the cold stone, my body folding in on itself like a broken hinge. My coat was soaked through with blood, too much of it mine. It clung to my skin, hot and wet, seeping into the seams of my gloves. The taste of iron coated my tongue, thick and metallic, like I'd been chewing on nails.
Isha was beside me in a breath, hands glowing with faint green light, trembling. "Silas, Silas, stay with me. You're losing too mu-"
I shoved her away with more force than I meant. "I'm fine," I said, my voice hoarse and hollow.
But I wasn't.
My limbs shook with something that wasn't exhaustion. My heartbeat didn't steady, it staggered, like it was relearning its rhythm. Every nerve in my body felt rewired, raw, as if my skin no longer fit quite right. The air smelled sharper.
My hearing caught the scratch of settling stone, the distant heartbeat of the earth above. My vision swam at the edges.
I was scared. For the first time in a long time, I was truly scared. I knew what had happened; I had been bitten. Changed. Not turned... not fully. Not yet, at least, but soon.
Searching for reassurance, I met Dane's rifle and a quiet "Sorry," mouthed without sound, just his lips moving. No tremble. No hesitation. Isha had closed her eyes and begged him not to do it, but I knew that this was protocol, that it must be done.
If they were in my shoes, I would've done it without a second thought. Yet why did I yearn to live?