Twenty years after Adrian's death, Kieran finally left the sanctuary.
Not because he'd healed. Not because he'd found peace. But because staying in that place, surrounded by memories, was driving him to true madness.
He traveled. Moved from city to city, never staying long, always searching for something he couldn't name.
Sometimes he'd see a young man with Adrian's smile, or hear a laugh that sounded like his, and the pain would stagger him. False hopes, cruel tricks of memory and longing.
He aged in ways vampires shouldn't age—not physically, but in his eyes. They grew colder, darker, more distant. The warmth that Adrian had brought to them, even as a vampire himself, was gone.
Other vampires avoided him. He'd become something frightening—a ancient vampire consumed by grief, hollowed out by loss, dangerous in his emptiness.
He stopped hunting the supernatural threats that arose. Stopped protecting human populations from rogue vampires. Stopped caring about the delicate balance of the hidden world.
Let it all burn, he thought. What did it matter? Adrian was dead. Nothing else mattered.
Thirty years. Forty.
Marcus contacted him periodically, checking in, making sure he was still... existing.
"Any signs?" Kieran would ask each time.
"No," Marcus would reply. "Not yet. But the reincarnation cycle isn't precise. It could be next year. Could be fifty years from now."
Fifty years. The thought made Kieran want to laugh. Or scream. Or both.
He'd already waited a thousand years across Adrian's many lifetimes. What was another fifty? Another hundred?
Everything. Nothing. An eternity of suffering with no guarantee of relief.