Lumi knelt on one knee at the ruin's edge, her leg sinking into cold ash. Before her lay a shattered oak door, ripped apart by an unseen force like ragged canvas, wedged crookedly into the rubble. Her fingertips hovered above the splintered wood. Alongside the brutal tears, unnervingly precise grooves snaked across the surface.
Wolf claws left only frenzied destruction. This felt colder. Intentional. Like a surgeon's blade.
And the smell? Dust and char hung heavy, laced with a faint, cloying sweetness that turned the stomach. It reeked like a tomb pried open after centuries—stale decay mixed with dried blood.
Lumi rose slowly, tension coiling through her like a drawn bowstring. Her sharp gaze swept the silent wreckage. No insects buzzed, no birds called. Only the wind moaned through broken beams, a hollow lament for this graveyard.
"Not the furry brutes," she stated, voice low and certain as bedrock. "Vampires. The plague in velvet. They swept through here like a foul wind, scoured it clean."
Ellis's stare fixed on the strange markings beneath the ash. The fire of vengeance flared in her chest, only to freeze solid against the charred reality before her. The shadow within her coiled, not with bloodlust, but a deep, bone-cold revulsion.
"Vampires?" The word scraped out, unfamiliar and heavy. She snapped her head towards Lumi, confusion edging her voice. "But… why? They stalk like shadows, taking loners. This… slaughtering a whole settlement? Burning it to nothing?" The sheer brutality shattered her understanding of the cold predators.
Lumi didn't look up. Her fingers sifted carefully through ash and scorched herb remains.
"Eyes open, Pup." She plucked a charred wood fragment, rubbing the soot away with her thumb. A blurred but stark symbol emerged—an open eye within a crescent moon. Unmistakably, a witch's protective charm.
"This wasn't just a village," she stated cleanly. "Witches brewed here. Rangers traded secrets. Hunters honed silver points. Fools thinking they'd found shelter." She crushed the ash between her fingers.
"The long-nailed gentry came for more than blood. They sought something… This method, this brazen erasure… it mirrors Milltown." She paused, a flicker of confusion in her eyes. "But why? Why would vampires do this?"
Milltown. The name burned like a brand into Ellis's mind. Instantly, the scorched square warped, merging with the dead, charred earth of her deepest memory—toppled homes, choking ash! Fragments of horror surged back, rising from this new ruin to choke her. Another square. Another crushed hope. Why always the squares? Why only ash and silence left?
White-hot rage exploded behind her eyes. Ellis lashed out, kicking a half-fallen beam. "Vampires too? And the high-and-mighty Guild? They shout about protecting humanity while lining their pockets! Where are they? Drunk in some soft bed?" Fury rasped in her throat.
"The Guild?" Lumi's scoff was ice. "Humans excel at playing blind. They protect their own walls and coin purses." She spat, contempt clear. "Self-preservation? It's in their bones. Strangers dying in the mountains? As long as their gates hold and gold clinks, who sheds a tear?" She scanned the desolation, her expression sharp. "Enough. This place chills living blood. We camp here tonight. Move at dawn."
"Camp? Here?" Ellis stared at the jagged ruins. Finding shelter seemed impossible; it felt like the mouth of hell itself. "And tomorrow? The Cross-Scarred One's trail… it ends here!" The thought that her blood enemy might have been erased by something older, more terrifying, sent a spike of icy panic through her heart. The shadow beneath her skin thrashed, desperate to break free.
Lumi raised a hand. Her fingertips brushed the small silver stud in her right earlobe. The air shimmered faintly blue, a brief, intricate pentacle ghosting into view.
She reached into the shimmer, pulling out a tightly wrapped oilskin bundle. With swift, practiced motions, she undid the bindings, shook it out, and pulled. The bundle expanded, snapping taut into a sturdy grey canvas tent. She drew her hunting knife, reversed it, and with solid thuds, drove thick wooden stakes deep into the frozen, ash-covered earth.
"Tomorrow comes regardless, Pup," she said, pausing at the tent flap, her back to Ellis, voice carrying its usual briskness. "Worry steals sleep. No sleep, dull claws." Hunter's truth, plain and simple.
Lumi's voice softened, barely audible over the wind. "Sometimes stepping back lets you see the path clearer." Before Ellis could react, the tent flap snapped shut behind her. The words landed like a heavy stone in Ellis's chest.
Ellis stood alone as night thickened. The moon climbed higher, spilling cold, pale light. Trapped, desperate, she plunged deeper into the ruin's heart. Milltown's bloody memories, ignited by the mirrored devastation, burned through her nerves. She scrabbled through debris like one possessed, kicking aside splintered wood and broken tiles, risking a glance into every pitch-black cellar hole, straining her ears against the wind's moan for any sound, any trace out of place.
Nothing. Only the wind sighing low through the wreckage, a chorus of stifled grief. Frustration coiled like cold vines around her chest. Just as despairing chill threatened to swallow her—
A low, sickening tearing sound ripped through the wind's drone. Like ancient leather stretched beyond its limit. Immediately after, a distinct scrape, dry and deliberate, sounded directly behind her, mere steps away!
Every nerve snapped taut. Instinct took over. Her spine twisted like a coiled spring released. The silver knife at her waist leaped from its sheath. Cold steel flashed in the moonlight, humming as it sliced the air, its point aimed unerringly at the source.
The darkness itself seemed to thicken and take form. Meager moonlight sketched a towering, indistinct shape moving closer with impossible, soundless speed.
Wings. Vast, membranous wings, cut from the deepest night, folded with terrifying, lazy grace against the figure's back. Almost as the knife settled into guard, the shadow glided weightlessly onto the ashen ground just paces from Ellis.
Vampire.
Blood surged to her head, then froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She held her breath, knuckles white on the knife hilt, every muscle locked steel-tight, braced for the killing lunge.
The moonlight seemed guided by an unseen hand, flooding the small patch of scorched earth between them, fully illuminating the intruder.
He stood motionless beside a collapsed stone well, unnaturally tall and straight, bathed in the cold radiance. The sight held a heart-stopping, frozen elegance.
He was gauntly slender, clad in impeccably tailored dark clothing. The fabric drank the light like congealed midnight, its edges traced with near-invisible silver threads that caught the moon in fleeting glints. His neck, wrists, his arresting face—all possessed an inhuman pallor. Moonlight seemed to slide off that skin.
His features were near perfection. High cheekbones, a jawline cut sharp as flint. Lips the pale pink of faded roses pressed into an emotionless line. Yet beneath this perfection lay an absolute stillness. What stole the breath were his eyes.
They were like tarnished silver coins filmed with ancient frost, utterly devoid of warmth. They held only a deep, hollow cold and an ancient indifference that could freeze the soul. Not the glare of a beast, but the detachment of time itself witnessing life and death.
He didn't attack. He showed no sign he even registered Ellis's presence.
He simply stood, one pale, almost translucent hand lifting with millennia-old grace. Delicate fingers brushed back a stray lock of pale gold hair near his temple. Only then did his gaze lift. Those cold, lifeless silver eyes finally settled on Ellis.
No surprise. No hostility. No curiosity. Only pure, utter indifference, as if she were a pebble on the path. The aura emanating from him cut through the ruin's stench—the thick scent of aged red wine and roses, now overpoweringly clear, a heavy declaration of ancient power. The air itself seemed to congeal.
Ellis froze, pinned by an unseen glacial current.
The silver knife in her white-knuckled grip, once an extension of her vengeful will, felt suddenly flimsy. Its cold hilt offered no defense against the sheer, ancient, predatory chill radiating from the creature. The hunt she thought she was on had plunged, in a heartbeat, into an abyss far deeper and darker than she'd ever imagined.
She was a cub trespassing in the domain of something ancient and vast, barely daring to breathe. Only the silver blade held before her stood between her and that crushing, indifferent silence. Under the icy moon, blade tip and frozen elegance faced each other across a space thick with dread. The enemy before her was utterly beyond her reckoning.