Snow thinned as Selric left the high pass.Below, the land opened into a bowl of stone and wind. The clouds above hung so low they scraped the peaks, their underbellies bruised violet with the threat of another storm. In the middle distance, a structure rose from the mist—massive, angular, half-swallowed by ice.
He reined in the horse and stared.A fortress.Old, Older than the Kingdom of Nocturne itself. Its towers were hollow cones of obsidian and granite, their edges softened by centuries of weather. Wind poured through the gaps like breath through ribs, producing a constant, low moan.
The shard in his chest answered the sound with a faint vibration.
He descended toward it.
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The gates had collapsed long ago; he entered through a rent in the outer wall. Inside, the courtyard was filled with knee-deep snow. Statues lay toppled, their faces eroded to anonymity. He brushed the snow from one and saw the suggestion of fangs carved where a mouth should have been. Another statue nearby had the muzzle of a wolf.
A citadel of both.Vampire and Lupine, side by side.
He muttered, "The First Covenant wasn't a myth after all."
The air carried no smell of life—only cold, and something faintly metallic, as if the stones themselves remembered blood. He pushed deeper into the fortress, following corridors that curved downward. His torch sputtered in the drafts; ice glittered along the walls like veins of glass.
Everywhere he went, he saw symbols repeated: two crescents interlocked, one silver, one crimson. Between them, a single vertical line—the shape of a blade or a shard.
The line glowed faintly whenever his torchlight touched it.
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At the heart of the lower halls, he found a door unlike the others: bronze overlaid with sigils and sealed by rusted chains. He tested them with his gauntlet; they snapped easily, but when the door swung ope,n a current of warm air rolled out, carrying the scent of dust and old parchment.
The room beyond was circular, its walls lined with shelves. Books—hundreds, maybe thousands—preserved by the cold. Their bindings were a mix of materials: hide, vellum, and something that looked disturbingly like thinly tanned flesh. A library, forgotten beneath the snow.
Selric stepped inside, and the shard thrummed once, stronger. The torches along the walls flared alive as if greeting him.
He spoke to the emptiness: "Show me what you want me to see."
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He found the first journal on a desk carved from a single slab of obsidian. The script was tight, angular, and written in alternating inks of red and black. He read slowly, translating from the archaic dialect he had been forced to memorize as a child.
To bind night and fang, we carved a heart from the mountain. It sang before it bled. We called it the Choir's Core, for through it both tribes might hear each other's hunger and make it one.
Selric's throat tightened. The shard pulsed in recognition.
Yet harmony demands sacrifice. The Choir's Core fed on memory. Those who tended it forgot themselves so that peace might endure.
He closed the journal. The hum under his ribs quickened; images flickered across his vision—figures kneeling in this very chamber, chanting in two tongues that merged into a single tone. A sense of weightless unity, then a sudden tear, like glass breaking under pressure.
He staggered back. The torchlight wavered.
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Another book lay half-buried under fallen dust. Its pages were brittle but legible.
When the moon turned crimson, the Core fractured. The shards scattered. We sealed what remained within the mountain, lest its song turn to thirst.
He ran a hand over the text, feeling the indent of each letter. "Fractured," he whispered. "So there are more of you."
The shard answered with a faint inner warmth—a pulse that was almost approval.
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He wandered deeper into the archives. Many of the scrolls had fused, unreadable, but the fragments remained: sketches of hybrid creatures, equations describing resonance between blood and moonlight, maps showing the spread of early kingdoms along what was now desolation. The more he read, the more the fortress seemed to remember itself through him.
At last, he came to a dais in the center of the floor. A slab of crystal rested atop it, cloudy but intact. Etched across its surface were two names, one in the script of vampires, the other in that of the Lupine tribes.
He traced the words aloud. "Serath and Kael."
The names meant nothing, yet his voice echoed strangely—as if the walls themselves repeated them.
For a moment, he saw them: two figures kneeling before the crystal, their hands joined, light pouring through their veins. He saw the moment the light turned scarlet, saw their faces twist in realization as the unity became hunger.
The vision vanished, leaving the faint smell of ozone.
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He sat heavily on the steps of the dais. The fortress's low moan filled the silence. He remembered his father's endless councils, the arrogance of pureblood rule, the war that had devoured every border. All of it had begun, perhaps, with this experiment—the attempt to end the hunger by sharing it.
A laugh escaped him, bitter and small. "Peace through shared damnation."
The shard pulsed once more, less rhythm and more heartbeat. He felt warmth spread down his arm, bright beneath the skin. When he looked, faint lines of light traced his veins, branching from his palm like roots.
He clenched his fist. "Not yet."
The glow dimmed.
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Outside, the storm broke again. Wind screamed through the cracks of the fortress, and the moan became a chorus. He rose, gathering what books he could carry—proof of what had been lost—and slung them into his pack. As he turned toward the exit, the shard whispered through the roar: Return to the mountain. Others wake.
He paused in the doorway. "Others?"
No answer, only the wind.
He stepped into the blizzard, pulling his cloak tight, and the fortress faded behind him like a dream collapsing. Yet its voice followed him, woven with the shard's pulse, a single phrase repeating under his breath though he did not remember speaking it:
The Choir was never silent—it was waiting.
Snow erased his footprints almost as soon as he made them.