Days—or perhaps nights—passed in a blur. Time no longer obeyed her.
The sun was an enemy now, a distant god she dared not face. Jamie slept through daylight hours in abandoned places: under bridges, in empty buildings, once even in a forgotten church crypt whose stone saints stared down at her with hollow eyes.
Each awakening was the same. The hunger. The silence. The loneliness pressing like a weight against her ribs.
She learned the rhythms of the city by darkness—the hours when the markets closed, when the streets emptied, when the restless found comfort in dim-lit bars. She moved like smoke, watching, listening, hungering.
And one night, her wandering took her somewhere unexpected.
The old library stood at the edge of the university quarter, its windows tall and arched, its stone façade draped in ivy that had turned black in the moonlight. Something about it drew her—perhaps the quiet, or the memory of a world she'd lost.
Inside, dust hung in the air like sleeping ghosts. Shelves loomed like cathedrals of memory, their rows endless. She drifted between them, running a finger along the spines of forgotten books. The scent of old paper calmed her in a way nothing else had.
"You shouldn't be here," said a voice from the shadows.
Jamie froze.
It was smooth, deliberate—neither a threat nor a warning, but something in between. A figure stepped forward, his movements unhurried. The man was tall, his hair silver-white, his eyes the color of frozen seas. There was an old-world grace to him, the kind that belonged to another century.
"I didn't mean to trespass," she said quickly. Her voice sounded smaller than she intended.
"Few ever do," he replied, tilting his head as he studied her. "But trespassing is not your sin tonight, little one. You reek of new blood. Unsettled. Untamed."
Jamie's mouth went dry. "You're like me."
The faintest smile curved his lips. "Vampire," he said softly, as if testing the word. "Yes. Though I prefer survivor of time."
He approached, and though every instinct in her screamed to flee, Jamie found herself standing her ground. There was power in him—not the wild, hungry kind that had taken her in the alley, but something refined. Contained.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Viktor," he said, his gaze never wavering. "And yours?"
"Jamie."
He nodded, as if committing it to memory. "Jamie. You've done well to survive this long without guidance. The hunger should've driven you mad by now."
"It almost did," she admitted.
He circled her slowly, like a teacher inspecting a curious student. "You resisted feeding. That's rare for the newly turned. You fought instinct with will. That means you can be taught."
"Taught what?"
"How to live as what you are," Viktor said. "How to feed without killing. How to walk among mortals unseen. How to wield your strength rather than be consumed by it."
Jamie hesitated. "And if I say no?"
Viktor's eyes softened. "Then you will burn—either by hunger, or by sunlight. Every fledgling chooses one fate or the other."
The silence that followed felt heavy, sacred. Somewhere deep inside her, Jamie knew this was the crossroads—the place her old life ended for good.
Finally, she nodded. "Teach me."
Viktor smiled then, faint and almost human. "Good," he said. "The night is long, Jamie. But it is not without purpose."
He turned toward the library's tall windows. The moonlight caught his profile—elegant, ageless, touched with sorrow. "Come," he said. "There's a world beneath this city most humans will never see. It's time you met your kind."
Jamie followed him into the night.
For the first time since her rebirth, she wasn't afraid.