[Alistair POV]
The shift in the city's pulse hit me before dawn.
I was sitting alone in my study, surrounded by quiet. The only sounds were the faint hum of the city through the windows and the low ticking of the old clock on the wall steady, predictable, controlled.
Then the air trembled. Not physically. Not enough for a human to notice. But to someone like me, it was a fracture in the world's rhythm.
A ripple of power so faint most beings would dismiss it as imagination. A whisper, a pulse, a breath. But I knew what it was. I closed the book in my hand slowly, as though it weighed something different now.
No, It couldn't be.
I stood, my jaw tightening as an echo shivered along my spine, threading cold strands of heat through my bones.
Bloodborn.
The word rose uninvited, scraping against memories I'd buried by force. After all these years, after everything that was destroyed, after the wars after the purges.
The line was supposed to be extinct.
Yet the city pulsed again, a small, sharp tremor, like a dying star flaring its last. Except this was no dying star. This was an awakening.
I exhaled slowly, controlling the storm inside my chest. My face remained as unreadable as stone. Emotion was a luxury I had strangled a long time ago. And yet, my gloved hands curled at my sides.
"Impossible," I murmured.
Because if a Bloodborn lived, then the world was about to change.
And if she had awakened, even barely the hunters would already be moving. Which meant I needed to move faster.
Night fell quickly over Valeries City.
I crossed the rooftops like a shadow stitched into the skyline, the wind tugging at my coat as I moved. My boots touched down without sound. Every leap was precise. Every landing silent.
Down below, the city roared with life. Neon signs bled across glass buildings, casting shifting colors that washed over the streets in waves. But under all of that i felt it. A faint, rhythmic thrum.
Like a heartbeat trying to remember itself. The Bloodborn signal. Her signal.
I gritted my teeth.
The last thing I needed was another complication. Another vulnerability. Another ghost from the past clawing its way back into existence.
And yet I couldn't ignore it.
I landed across from an abandoned warehouse on Fifth Avenue. A cluster of shadows shifted inside, quiet, but not quiet enough for someone like me.
Rogue killers. Same faction as the ones who had been hunting innocents nearby. I didn't waste time.
Steel whispered as I drew my blade. A step. A breath. A blur.
I entered the warehouse like a gust of wind.
The first man didn't even see me. The second barely turned before my blade found him. The third lunged with a sharp cry that died halfway through as I ended him with a precise strike. Their blood hit the floor before their bodies did.
But halfway through the next movement. The resonance slammed into me again. Stronger, sharper, closer.
My muscles locked mid-strike, and for a fraction of a second the assassin I was aiming for actually grazed my arm. His eyes widened, he'd hit me. No one ever hit me. Then I slit his throat.
He collapsed in a wet heap.
I stood still, breath low and even, letting the blood settle into silence.
But my heart, my heart had jolted.
I hadn't felt that in years. Not fear. Not shock. Something worse. Something dangerous. Recognition, an unwanted relief.
She was alive.
The resonance hadn't been a death tremor.
It was new, raw, uncontrolled.
A heartbeat struggling to match itself to the world.
I glanced toward the open warehouse doorway, toward the glowing veins of the city. She was out there, awake, breathing.
My fingers tightened around my blade even as I sheathed it. Damn it.
I stepped outside, letting the night air wash over me. The faint hum tugged at my senses again, like her blood was calling out to something ancient and dormant inside me. I shut it down. Hard.
I wouldn't feel this. Not again.
I launched upward, scaling the building in a heartbeat. The city unfolded before me in a riot of light and shadow.
Her presence pulled at me like gravity.
I followed.
From the rooftop, I spotted her.
Sarafina Ainsley.
Walking alone beneath a streetlamp, clutching her jacket, eyes distant. She looked normal, almost painfully so. Hair still damp from a shower. Face tired from a long day.
And utterly unaware of the storm building beneath her skin.
Her body should've been broken, dead, cold.
Instead she walked like nothing had happened.
I crouched on the ledge, breath steady though my chest felt anything but. The sight of her was a fist closing painfully around my ribs.
Alive. Still her. Still breathing.
My mask didn't crack, but something inside me did.
She paused under the light, rubbing her arms against the cold. The lamppost flickered,just once and her head snapped upward in confusion.
The awakening was stirring.
Her aura shimmered faintly, like heat rippling off stone.
She didn't notice. Of course she didn't.
She had no idea what she was. What she was becoming. What danger she'd stepped into simply by existing.
I clenched my jaw and forced myself to keep watching instead of descending. She needed distance from me. From what I was. From what she was about to become.
But the memory of her falling, her blood spilling, her heartbeat stopping, It slammed into me with brutal force.
I had felt her die once, I would not let it repeat again.
My fingers curled around the rooftop edge.
"If she dies again…"
My voice was low, a growl swallowed by the wind.
"…I won't forgive myself."
The vow hung in the air, heavy and binding.
Below, she exhaled a shaky breath and continued walking, head down, unaware her death had already stirred an entire world awake.
Unaware she was the spark at the center of a war she didn't know existed. Unaware that two factions were already moving toward her. Unaware that I…. I was the only one who had ever killed a Bloodborn
and regretted surviving it.
Her resonance pulsed one more time, brushing against my senses like a soft plea.
My jaw tightened.
"The Bloodborn lives," I whispered.
And everything will burn because of it.