He stepped in closer to one of the soldiers, eyes squinting, hand hovering an inch above the armor. The etched runes along the plates shimmered faintly under the low, guttering glow. Old magic. The kind that didn't forget.
"These aren't just vampire thrall," he said, the words dragging out quiet like breath fogging glass. His gaze tracked the sigils, each one curling with a shape that spoke of war, of something more blood-bound than mortal soldiers. "They're kitted for battle. And leashed."
Up above, muffled by layers of stone and hush, came a voice. Calm, low, with a curl of something smug tucked at the edge.
"Gentlemen? You're up late."
Andromeda.
She wasn't surprised. Not questioning. She'd been listening for the moment their boots hit the stair.
The house hadn't invited them in. It had called them.
Below, stillness clamped back down. Heavy. Sacred, almost. The sleeping thralls gave off a breath rhythm not meant for the living, a slow, too-even pulse like tide against graveyard stone. Lamplight threw knives of reflection across metal and wall. The air carried the stink of old steel and something deeper—like prophecy gone moldy.
Caylen held the book tighter against his ribs. The cover groaned with age, leather stretched too far. He'd pulled it from Damascus' shelf like it had whispered to him. His father's poems bled across the pages in lines that hadn't faded. The scribbles in the margins weren't random. Someone had known the author. Someone had known him.
He couldn't look at it too long.
"They knew who we were," he muttered, voice caught somewhere between anger and ache. "They've been watching."
A footstep behind them cracked the air like brittle bone. One step. Then another.
Ezreal raised a hand, fingers splayed sharp. His whole frame had gone stiff, tight like pulled wire. His jaw worked, and his eyes cut toward the others.
Don't speak. Don't move.
Too late.
Heels, sharp and deliberate, rang out on the stone. Measured. Confident. She came down the stairs like something not made of flesh and blood but intention. Candlelight spilled behind her, outlining her in golds and silvers. Her robe clung like breath. Hair slicked like moonlight. And those eyes—too pale, too wide—pinned them like a dissected specimen.
"I was wondering how long it'd take you to stumble across the vault," she said. Almost indulgent. Like they'd fetched a bone she'd thrown. "Good job not waking them."
Caylen moved in front of Ezreal, hand instinctively reaching back, not for a blade but to push the others behind him.
"Who the hell are you?"
Dax stepped in behind him, already scowling. His flask dangled loose at his side. "This ain't a vineyard. It's a damn tomb with expensive branding."
Her lips curled. Just barely. Not kindness. Recognition.
"We never said we were vintners. You assumed. We tend legacy here. Preparation."
"Preparation for war?" Verek's voice came thin and wary, the kind of tone a blade makes before it hits the whetstone. The space around his hands shimmered faintly, like the air had begun to fracture.
"For survival," she said, no change in her tone. "You've seen what's out there. Sunlight's no longer a ward. Cities are coughing out silence. The Weeping Court is clawing upward. You think you're here by chance?"
The air dropped. The stones seemed to exhale.
Ezreal spoke, clipped and sure. "You summoned us."
She stepped onto the floor with the rest of them. Her shadow twisted behind her like smoke. "No. We received you. You were sent. Or pulled. But not summoned. That's not our magic."
Her eyes ran across each of them. Weighing. Sorting.
"Now that you've seen the truth beneath the floors..."
She snapped her fingers.
"Bound by old oaths and older blood," she said. "Each one of them earned names in war. Kingslayer. Scourge. Eater of blight. You think they're dead. They're not. They're patient."
The sconces above gave out with a sigh. Darkness curled in. The rune circle burned low, like a heartbeat straining in the dark.
Then the soldiers opened their eyes.
Not wide. Just a sliver. Colorless, unblinking. The look of things that didn't blink anymore. Of weapons remembering the weight of what they were meant to cut.
Dax stumbled a step back, eyes gone wide. His flask hit stone.
"I don't know what brand of ghost queen you are," he said, voice scraping. "But I'm not standing in your bone locker one more second."
"You misunderstand," she said, softer now, like she'd wrapped her voice in cloth. "You were never here to linger."
Her stare landed on Verek. Held.
"You were meant to decide."
The floor gave another tremble. The walls seemed to shift, lean closer.
Weapons on the racks began to hum. The axe sang low. A staff hissed like wind in a dead canyon. Armor clicked faintly, a whisper of things uncoiling.
Ezreal looked down.
"The runes," he said, too quiet.
They weren't seals anymore. They were... maps. Or doors. Old ones.
"It's inviting us."
Verek stepped forward, voice like steel unsheathed in a cold room. "What is this?"
Andromeda didn't blink. Her voice folded into something mournful.
"A gift. A chance. Take a weapon. The one that knows your name. Blood calls to blood. And Kings Port stirs with something we couldn't stop. You want to live through what's coming, you won't walk in with nothing."
Verek's breath caught sharp in his throat. His hands stayed still, but his whole body seemed braced, like fury lived just behind the skin.
"You asked for truth," she said, quieter now, like the words had dried up mid-flight. "Some truths come with claws."
She turned and walked. Up the stairs. No goodbye. No look back. Just one last echo, tossed like ash behind her.
"Rest if you're able. Tomorrow, you head for Kings Port."
Her footsteps faded.
They didn't speak.
Didn't move.
The air in the vault had cooled to bone-deep chill. Even the weapons seemed to watch.
Caylen finally sighed, tight and fake. "Well. That could've been worse."
Ezreal didn't even look at him. "It will be."
Behind them, the dead didn't blink. Still awake. Still waiting.
In the dining hall, morning stabbed in through colored glass. The table looked like a feast scene, but nobody had more than a few bites.
No one brought up the vault.
But it was there. Behind their teeth. Between the lines of every stare.
They packed in silence. The day had already turned gray by the time they stepped outside.
No one came to see them off.
No Damascus. No Andromeda. Just the cold, quiet eyes of two black-plumed ravens on the arch. They watched the group vanish under the trees.
The forest closed around them.
Wet moss muffled their steps. Trees bent slightly toward the path, limbs like old arms reaching. Roots shifted underfoot, and the earth felt... hungry.
Ezreal led. No trail, just that wayfinding twitch in his bones. His face didn't change.
Caylen trailed behind, poetry book jammed under his arm like a weight he couldn't shake.
They weren't travelers anymore.
They were going toward something. And that something had teeth.
By first light they found a hollow. Stone and tangled roots, hidden like a wound under the skin.
Verek sank to one knee. Whispered spells into the ground. Layers of wards. Camouflage of false shadow and forgetting.
Dax dropped by a mossy stump like a stone, weapon dragging in the dirt. Caylen curled near him, book to his chest, fingers clenched white around it.
Nobody spoke.
What words had weight enough now?
The sun moved. Thin and pale.
They rested.
But they did not sleep.
No birds called.
And far off, deeper in the woods, something else had started walking.