Moscow that morning looked like a blank page sprinkled with ashes of snow…
The sky was gray, as if yawning after a long dream, and the city whispered with its cold voice through glass and iron windows.
The National University clock struck, and students flowed like a current of weary souls, carrying their notebooks as a traveler in a storm carries a small lamp, afraid it might go out.
In the grand hall, a man stood before the blackboard.
Broad-shouldered, with sharp features, wearing a gray coat longer than necessary.
They called him Professor Nikrasov, Moscow's teaching prodigy, the man who turned mathematics into a philosophical sermon, and numbers into living beings with a pulse.
He raised the chalk, wrote a long equation on the board, and said in a deep calm voice:
"Laws are not written with letters; they are written with insight.
What the mind cannot understand, the eyes that have seen the world before it was created can."
The students were silent. No one understood the meaning, yet they felt something like a shiver…
That kind of words the mind cannot grasp but the heart can touch.
When the lesson ended, Nikrasov left the hall with a quietness like a wave withdrawing from the shore.
Snow was falling, old cars exhaled sounds like breaths in the cold, and at the university corner, a young man waited—no ordinary student.
This young man was Dmitri Logariev, dubbed by the media as the prodigy of the century—
the child born with mathematical eyes, able to see numbers in everything:
in the flicker of light, in people's breathing, in the movement of leaves.
Nikrasov approached him, smiled faintly, and said:
"I knew you would come today. I saw the formula intersect at midnight."
Dmitri replied in a cold voice, as if coming from a machine:
"The formula does not lie. Every equation leads to a reaction… but I am searching for the result."
The professor lit a cigarette and said:
"The result? Or the beginning? Because, Dmitri, you are just a rewrite of an old equation…
blood, mind, and prophecy—all converging again in the Logariev family."
The air froze between them for a moment.
The wind through the streets sounded like the groan of ancient glass.
At that moment, a faint red gleam shone in Dmitri's eyes, a glow visible only in the dark.
He said quietly:
"Do you believe in fate, professor?"
Nikrasov answered:
"I believe we are all symbols in an equation written by someone who forgot to close the final bracket."
A long silence followed before Dmitri whispered:
"The final bracket… will close soon."
The professor smiled, brushed the ash from his cigarette, and walked away into the fog.
He felt this meeting was no coincidence.
Two thousand years ago, when the war between humans and vampires ignited, it was said that the heir of the Savior would be born in the house of Logariev,
carrying in his eyes the golden ratio that governs the universe.
Dmitri did not yet realize that his next equation would not be solved with paper and symbols, but with blood.
---
Miami — The Other Side of the World
The sun there was not lazy like Moscow's.
It blazed over the crowded streets, pouring heat onto the sidewalks.
In a poor neighborhood, a young man walked slowly, carrying an old school bag,
dragging his shadow as one drags a memory one does not wish to recall.
His name was Johnny.
An ordinary boy… or so he thought.
He had just been expelled from school after an argument with the teacher, who had always called him a failure.
The teacher's words still rang in his ears like a broken bell:
"You will remain a failure all your life, just like your father!"
Johnny laughed bitterly, talking to himself:
"Maybe he's right… maybe I really am a failure. It's not my fault I was born this way."
He dropped the bag onto the street, not even glancing at it.
The wind blew from the west, carrying dust and the scent of the sea.
Memories swirled in his mind—
his mother's face smiling, her golden hair gleaming in the kitchen light,
her voice telling him:
"You will be a hero, Johnny. One day the world will need you."
Then the scene abruptly shifted to fire…
The fire that consumed the house, the screams, the smoke, the child calling for his parents and hearing nothing but the roar of flames.
He snapped back to reality in front of his house.
An old one-story home overlooking a narrow street.
His grandmother sat in the rocking chair, watching the evening with half-closed eyes.
He raised his hand tiredly:
"I'm back, Grandma."
She nodded without a word; she knew he had lost something today.
He entered his room, threw the bag aside, and sat by the window.
The curtains moved slowly with the sea breeze,
and the sunset bathed the room in a pale orange light, like diluted blood.
He stared into the void, thinking of nothing in particular.
Then, amidst the silence, a voice came.
It was neither loud nor strange, yet it did not belong to this world.
"I will make you what you always wished to be, Johnny."
He froze.
Looked around.
No one was there.
Only the curtains moved gently, as if breathing.
He laughed nervously:
"Am I going crazy?… The voice is in my head…"
But the voice returned, clearer now, speaking to the depths of his mind:
"You heard me, and that is enough. Do not look for me; I have been within you for a long time."
He rose and approached the mirror.
His face looked ordinary, his eyes empty as always.
Yet he felt something strange…
as if a third eye were awakening inside him, seeing what cannot be seen.
"I want to show you what it means to be a Savior, not a failure."
The voice spoke, then fell silent.
But the room had changed.
The air had grown heavy, and the shadow on the wall took the shape of wings stretching behind him.
Johnny did not move.
He was not afraid… rather, he felt a strange comfort, as if something had returned to its rightful place after a long absence.
Outside, the sun disappeared below the horizon,
and in Moscow, at the same moment, Dmitri was writing a new equation in his notebook:
"If the Savior is born again, failure will be his first name, and light his end."
Night had fallen on both sides of the Earth.
And somewhere, between Moscow and Miami,
in a place unseen and uncharted,
something was awakening—
as if the Earth itself was preparing to write a new chapter of an ancient prophecy…
the Crimson Palace Prophecy.