🎵 "The Sound of Pulling Heaven Down" – Blue October
🎵 "Wicked Game" (cover) – Ursine Vulpine & Annaca
🎵 "Nara" – E.S. Posthumus (for political and haunting undertones)
---
The moon had risen like a wound in the sky by the time Lucian left the gates.
He rode alone, cloaked in shadow and silence, down the jagged mountain pass that twisted away from his stronghold like the spine of a sleeping serpent. No guard flanked him. No banners waved. He preferred it that way.
The further south he rode, the louder his mind became.
Not since the fall of the old war had he crossed these lands. The air was denser here, soaked in memories that refused to rot. He could smell the blood in the soil, taste the ash in every gust of wind. Somewhere beneath his ribs, an ache stirred that hadn't stirred in centuries.
He knew what called him forward.
He just didn't know why it still mattered.
---
Meanwhile...
In the ruins of Avencrest, the southern remnants of a once-proud vampire city lay broken and moss-covered, bones turned to relics, stories turned to dust. And within one forgotten chamber, Kyrell stood alone—bare-chested, breath steaming in the chill as he stared at the carvings on the wall.
Vampire script. Ancient.
He could read only fragments.
He dragged his fingers over the text, speaking aloud what he could decipher:
"Blood answers to blood..."
"The bond cannot be severed..."
"One drinks... the other remembers."
His hand clenched.
He remembered nothing. Or—no, not nothing. He remembered too much. He remembered heat. Lips against his throat. A soft, cruel voice asking if he was afraid.
And then silence.
Lucian had done something to him. Changed something inside him that refused to stay buried.
Damien's voice echoed behind him.
"You're stalling."
"I'm decoding," Kyrell replied, not turning.
"You're unraveling."
Kyrell turned then, slow, the shadows catching along his jaw.
"Lucian isn't just some royal," he said. "He's the key to all of this. To what I was. What I'm becoming."
Damien stepped closer, eyes narrowing. "You're not meant to feel anything. You were trained to kill his kind, not question your place beside them."
Kyrell's gaze was unreadable.
"Then maybe what I was trained to be was a lie."
Damien snarled softly and grabbed Kyrell's jaw, forcing their faces inches apart. The tension between them was not just fury—it was longing warped into violence.
"I watched you fall under his spell," Damien hissed. "I watched you let him touch you. You let him inside. What do you think he'll do when you show your face again?"
Kyrell yanked away. "Maybe I want to find out."
---
Back on the road...
Lucian arrived in the Southern Watch under the cover of nightfall.
He didn't wait for formalities. He went straight to the outpost's inner keep, where a captain awaited him with dark rings under his eyes and a blade still wet with blood.
"They came through the forest two nights ago," the captain said. "Not your kind. Human. But not like us either. Fast. Precise."
"Hunters," Lucian said, barely breathing the word.
"They didn't touch our men. Just… passed through. Like they were following something."
Lucian's pulse thudded dully.
"They're looking for me," he said. "Or something bound to me."
---
That night...
Lucian slept for the first time in days—and instantly regretted it.
The dream came like a tide.
Kyrell stood over him, blood smeared across his neck, eyes glowing with something ancient and wild. Lucian's hands reached for him, but couldn't touch.
"You knew what I was," Kyrell whispered.
"I still don't," Lucian replied, trembling.
Kyrell leaned in, breath hot against his lips.
"You made me like this. Now I want to remember what you tasted like."
Lucian woke in a cold sweat, his hands gripping the edge of the stone bed. His throat ached. His chest burned.
This wasn't lust. It was something more. A hunger deeper than the body.
And it was growing on both ends of the bond.
---
Far from both men...
Renak stood on a balcony high in the northern spire, watching a courier bird vanish into the sky.
A scroll had just been sent—to a place beyond the borders of the known territories.
To a man named Silas.
A man who hated Lucian more than anyone alive.
"Let the storm find him," Renak murmured. "Let desire eat him alive."
---
To Be Continued…