The common folk whispered it with a shiver, a cold draft that snaked beneath the doors of their taverns and chapels
a vampire's heart is a stone of pure ice.
They spoke of the major lineages
the Sanguine, the Nosferatu, the Dracul
and described organs calcified by eternity, incapable of anything warmer than malice.
But the royal line of the Carcalidum, rulers of the shadowed kingdom of Aetheria, had always been different.
In the grand, echoing Hall of Silent Judgment, King Theron Carcalidum stood before his Obsidian Throne.
He was motionless, a statue carved from midnight, his skin the shade of undisturbed snow, his hair a cascade of black silk.
To any lesser creature, he appeared the very definition of the vampire ideal utterly cold, supremely predatory.
His Chief Keeper, the wizened, nervous Varas, approached with silent, shuffling steps, clutching a delicate, ancient scroll.
"Your Majesty," Varas's voice was barely a rustle of dry leaves.
"The Eastern Pact delegation arrives at sundown.
The Stiltwort Witch has been sighted at the border—a daughter of the line, they say, and a powerful one."
King Theron's eyes, normally the color of polished bloodstone, narrowed fractionally. The name Stiltwort was an annoyance, a persistent, bright thread in the tapestry of his dark domain. But his focus remained, as always, internal.
He felt the familiar, constant thrum beneath his ribs.
It was not the slow, faint beat of the unliving, but a fierce, relentless roar.
All vampires have shed their mortal warmth, trading the fleeting pump of blood for cold, eternal power.
Yet, a hidden lineage of the Carcalidum Kings was blessed or cursed with an inner sun.
The secret was kept even from most of his own court.
It was the ancestral defense against the most potent magics, against the creeping psychic corruption that sought to dominate all great powers.
While lesser vampire hearts froze under dark influence, the heart of a Carcalidum King ignited.
The Obsidian Throne room was suffocatingly silent, the air heavy with the King's controlled power.
King Theron Carcalidum stood, the residual heat of his protected heart barely contained beneath his immaculate facade.
His Chief Keeper, Varas, had delivered the intelligence about the approaching delegation and, more importantly, the Stiltwort witch.
Theron dismissed the Eastern Pact delegation with a wave of his hand—mere political pawns.
His true focus was the name that haunted his royal sleep Stiltwort.
Twenty years ago, the grand conflict known as the Sundering had ended the reign of his parents.
The prevailing history, meticulously curated by his regents, pointed to a catastrophic magical destabilization.
The true history, the one carved into the deepest, coldest part of Theron's mind, spoke of betrayal.
He remembered a flash of sickly green light, the acrid smell of burning wards, and the screams of his mother, Queen Ilyana, as she tried to shield him.
The central figure of the enemy's attack, the one whose power had bypassed the Carcalidum's legendary defenses, was a Stiltwort.
A master of elemental binding and psychic disruption.
Theron had taken the throne an hour after the Sundering ended, a child crowned in ash and his parents' blood. He had also taken an oath, cold and brutal The Stiltwort lineage must be extinguished.
He collected information about the current witch, Andrea, was likely innocent of the crime itself, but to Theron, the name carried the genetic stain of the betrayal.
Innocence was irrelevant; Lineage was Destiny.
Andrea pulled a deep breath of the freezing air, her mage-sight instantly detecting the overwhelming, crushing darkness emanating from the capital.
But woven into that darkness was something unexpected, something she had never read about in any text concerning the undead royalty.
She detected heat.
A formidable, living, utterly controlled pocket of pure, spiritual fire at the heart of the kingdom.
"The King is not what they say, Whisper," she murmured, her green eyes wide with professional awe and personal dread.
"This is a King who holds a sun in his chest. And he hates us."
She knew she faced an unbreakable wall of vengeance and power.
Yet, Andrea had made her own oath
No more running.
The truth is the only magic that can burn hotter than a vampire king's hatred.
She took the first step onto the petrified ground, the witch and the vampire king, unaware that their family rivalry was about to ignite a new conflict far greater than either of them anticipated.