The torches died as if pinched out by an unseen hand.
Sound followed. The quiet in the Eidolon Archive thickened into something with teeth.
Balerion saw nothing, yet sensed everything more sharply. The world narrowed to the pulse in his chest—the fused core beating once, twice, steady—and to the cool pressure of Selene's grip on his arm.
"Don't move," she whispered.
The darkness listened.
From deeper within, the echoing heartbeat came again. Slow. Immense. It resonated through the stone, through the crystals, through their bones. The air tasted suddenly older, heavy with dust and the metallic tang of ancient sacrifices.
"Guardian," Selene breathed. "They left a warden on the erased records."
"Does it answer to your House?" Balerion asked.
"It answers to the decree that sealed this place." Her fingers tightened. "Which was not ours."
Another heartbeat. Closer.
Shapes began to form in the dark: faint veins of red, curving through nothing like rivers through void. They gathered ahead of them, weaving into the outline of a colossal figure without true edges—a silhouette of a man with too many wings and no face, built entirely from congealed bloodlight and shadow.
Balerion felt its gaze like a blade.
Selene took a breath. When she spoke, her voice carried the old cadence of ritual. "By blood of Valeria, I invoke right of remembrance. Stand down, Eidolon. We seek record, not rebellion."
The guardian's vast head tilted.
When it spoke, it was not in sound, but in a grinding pressure against their thoughts: REMEMBRANCE WAS FORFEIT. THE DRACONYRIC CONCEPT IS STRICKEN. ACCESS FORBIDDEN.
Balerion stepped forward before she could stop him.
"By blood of Drakmor," he said, "I invoke right of legacy. If the concept was struck from history, then history lied. I am living proof."
The bloodlight flared. The guardian's shape wavered, as if glitching around him.
ANOMALY, it said. YOU CARRY THE ERASED DESIGNATION. YOU MUST NOT BE.
"Unfortunately," Balerion said, "I am."
Pressure crashed down on him, a tidal wave of will. His knees buckled; his teeth rang. The fused core in his chest snarled awake, dragonfire and blood-hunger coiling as one.
In its voiceless speech, the Eidolon pushed: YIELD AND BE UNMADE. RESTORE BALANCE.
A month ago, a week ago, yesterday—those words would have shattered him.
Now they made him angry.
I'm done kneeling.
He straightened against the crushing weight. Obsidian scales ghosted across his skin—not fully formed, but implied, like the world was remembering old armor it had once seen and was trying to redraw it.
"No," he said.
The denial felt simple. Clean.
It hit the Eidolon like a hammer.
The guardian's outline flickered. Cracks of pure black lanced through its bloodlight form. The Archive shuddered; crystals chimed as if struck.
Selene stared. She could feel the pressure too, like a command pushing at her knees to bow—then breaking around him, diverted, devoured.
YOUR EXISTENCE DEFIES RULING. The voice frayed at the edges—less decree, more confusion. YOU ARE NOT IN THE SCRIPT.
"Then update it," Balerion said quietly. "Or get out of my way."
Silence.
Then the impossible: the Eidolon laughed.
Not kindly. Not human. But something in its warping resonance held a note of recognition, the way an old sword might recognize a new wielder's grip.
IF YOU WISH TO WALK THIS ERASED PATH, KNOW ITS END IS DEVOURING—OF OTHERS, OR OF SELF.
"That's my choice," Balerion replied.
The guardian slowly unraveled. Its wings spread and dissolved into strands of red light that flowed past them, deeper into the archive.
ENTER, it said. AND SEE WHY THEY FEAR YOU.
The torches flickered back to life—dim, guttering, but enough.
Selene let out a breath she didn't remember holding. "You just told a sealed divine construct to update reality."
"I'm very polite about it," he said.
"That's what you call that?" Her eyes shone, half horror, half fierce amusement. "You are going to get us both killed."
"Then you shouldn't have stepped into my circle on the road," he said. "Yet here you are."
She went a little still at that, the truth landing between them like a drawn line they'd both already crossed.
"…Here I am," she agreed.
They moved on.
Deeper in, the crystals changed.
These weren't floating personal echoes. These were slabs, doors, chained and bound with runes that glared when Balerion drew near. The sigils were not only Valeria's; they bore marks of Balance, War, Crimson Mother, even a symbol he instinctively knew belonged to the Architect.
"Joint seal," Selene murmured. "Not just my House colluding. The gods themselves erased this."
"Then they missed a piece," Balerion said. "The name the Eidolon used—Draconyric. It wasn't new in my mouth."
She nodded slowly. "Let's see what survived their arrogance."
A central monolith pulsed faintly when his hand approached. It bore no script, only a jagged gouge as if someone had tried to carve out whatever had once been written.
When his fingers brushed the scar, a surge of images slammed into him.
Not like the earlier shard—a flood.
A colossal dragon, black as starless night, with veins of red light tracing its scales, wings spread across a sky full of broken gods. A figure at its heart, neither beast nor man nor vampire nor dragon but something more, crowned in shadow-fire.
A voice like a world cracking: I devour only what would devour us.
Then betrayal. A circle of gods, a net of law and unmaking. The Draconyric sealed, then shattered, its records scrubbed from every book, every memory.
In the void where its name had been, a single decree burned:
NEVER AGAIN.
Balerion jerked back, gasping.
Selene's hands caught his shoulders. "Balerion—"
"I'm fine," he lied. Blood trickled from his nose.
She wiped it away with her thumb before it could fall. "Try that again and I'll hit you before the gods do."
He huffed a weak laugh.
"What did you see?" she pressed.
He met her eyes. "A prototype," he said. "Someone like me. Or what I could become. They tried to devour divine tyranny itself. The gods won. Then they erased all trace so no one could follow."
"And now," Selene murmured, "you exist."
"Now," Balerion said slowly, "I exist with their mistake built into my veins."
The Archive's air vibrated, like the mountain itself was listening.
He lowered his voice. "This wasn't an accident. Dragon and vampire, my parents… I think someone nudged the pattern. Or something older in the blood remembered."
"That's a lot of implication from one vision," she said, but not dismissively.
"You asked me to tell the truth," he said. "There it is."
Selene glanced at the sealed slabs, the gouged decree, the drifting residue of divine signatures. "If the Zenith finds out this survived, they'll send more than one pretty inquisitor."
"They already know more than they admit," Balerion said. "But they don't know this: the last Draconyric tried to devour for the world. I don't intend to repeat anyone's path."
"What do you intend?" she asked.
He looked down at his hand, flexing it, feeling the muted thrum of that fused core.
"For now? To choose. Every time. Not to let flame or hunger or gods decide for me."
Selene studied him for a long, quiet moment.
In the half-light, with old blood magic humming around them and the weight of erased history on their shoulders, some threshold passed—silent and absolute.
"I'll stand with that," she said.
He blinked. "You're certain?"
"No," she said. "But certainty is for cowards and gods. I'm making a choice."
Her hand slipped fully into his, cold and steady.
Bloodlines whispered.
For a heartbeat, he felt her essence: sharp, disciplined, shadow-kissed, proud. She felt his: tumultuous, molten, threaded with that third, defiant presence that had stared down a divine construct and refused to disappear.
The contact sparked something. Not a binding like a traditional vampire pact—no chains, no compulsion. Just resonance.
She raised a brow. "Did we just—"
"Almost," he said. "A bond formed. Not complete."
"Good," Selene said. "I don't sign immortal contracts without reading them."
A faint smile tugged at his lips. "We'll draft it together."
"Presumptuous," she murmured, but she didn't let go.
The Archive responded.
A soft chime rippled through the crystals, like approval—or warning. High above, in the Hall of Glass, Marcellus flinched as a line of old script, long dead, flickered back to life along one column.
In the Astral Zenith, the Seer of Threads stumbled as a thread she had not spun wove itself between two points: Balerion and Selene.
"What is this?" she hissed.
"A choice," the Balance Goddess said quietly. "The Architect permits it."
The War Father bared his teeth. "If they climb together, they may grasp higher than alone."
"And fall harder," the Crimson Mother said, eyes bright.
"Either way," came the distant, cold not-voice of the Architect, "the pattern moves."
Back in the depths, the torches steadied.
Selene reluctantly let his hand go to adjust the clasp at her cloak, though their shoulders still brushed.
"We have enough to know it wasn't random," she said. "But not enough to map what you'll become."
"That's volume two's problem," Balerion said dryly.
She blinked. "What?"
"Nothing. Just… thinking ahead."
She shook her head. "My prince, if you start narrating your own saga, I will reconsider this alliance."
"Balerion," he corrected. "If you're walking into erased history with me, use my name."
She hesitated, then: "Balerion."
It settled between them with a weight that felt right.
From deeper in the Archive, the slow heartbeat sounded one last time, as if acknowledging their trespass. Then it faded into the stone.
"Time to leave," Selene said. "Before my elders realize the seals twitched and pretend they didn't help sign this mess."
They retraced their steps, up through layers of glyph-lit stone. As they emerged from the Eidolon Archive and the final gate sealed behind them, Selene cast one look back.
"The gods may erase words," she said, almost to herself. "But they can't erase what's already breathing."
"No," Balerion said. "But they can still try to kill it."
"And we can try not to let them," she replied.
When they reached the Hall of Glass again, the elders watched with guarded eyes. No one asked what they had seen. No one mentioned the faint, new cracks in one of the supporting pillars where invisible strain had transferred into matter.
Marcellus only said, "You have your answers?"
"For now," Selene said.
Balerion added, "Enough to know that what you helped seal once is walking in your halls again."
A flicker of fear—and reluctant fascination—crossed the old vampire's face.
"Then may the night favor us all," he murmured.
Later, in the guest chambers overlooking Nocturnis Vale's twilight sprawl, Balerion stood alone at the balcony.
The city glowed with muted red lanterns and silver sigils. Above, the sky was clear, the twin moons veiled thinly here, as if even their light showed deference to the Vale.
The thrumming in his core had settled to a low, constant presence—no longer tearing, no longer screaming. Listening. Waiting.
He felt the gods watching more keenly now, their attention pricked.
Behind him, the door creaked.
Selene stepped out, wrapped in a dark cloak, hair loose. "Can't sleep?"
"Not efficiently," he said. "You?"
"My House is sitting on a divine crime scene and trying very hard to pretend they aren't complicit. It's…loud."
They stood shoulder to shoulder, staring out at the endless dusk.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"Now I keep growing," Balerion said. "On my terms. With your help, if you're still willing."
"And if the Zenith sends more than a witness next time?"
He looked up at the sky where only he could see the faint suggestion of that third, impossible light.
"Then," he said quietly, "we make them regret erasing the first Draconyric instead of learning from them."
Selene huffed. "A modest goal."
"We have time," he said.
In the Astral Zenith, time shivered.
In Nocturnis Vale, two young monsters-in-the-making watched the night and refused to bow—each knowing, without saying it, that some invisible line had been crossed in that Archive below.
Alone, he was an anomaly. With her, he was becoming an axis. The world would turn on that sooner than anyone above or below wanted to admit.