"Tristan's POV"
I should have stayed with her.
That single thought carved through my mind on repeat as I stood in her garden, staring at what they'd left behind.
Should have stayed. Should have never left her side.
Should have known that three hours was too long, that danger didn't wait for convenient timing.
The roses were dying. All of them, simultaneously, petals browning and curling as if the life had been sucked from the soil itself.
The moonflowers she'd shown me that first night hung limp and gray. Even the weeds looked desiccated.
In the center of it all, Zhilara lay motionless.
They hadn't been kind. Witches rarely were when they wanted to make a point.
Symbols covered her skin, carved with precision that spoke of ritual rather than rage.
Her blood had been used to paint a circle around her body, sigils I recognized from my centuries of watching the supernatural world tear itself apart.
A completion ritual. They'd used her death to fuel their magic.
I dropped to my knees beside her, and my hands shook as I reached for her face.
Still warm. I hadn't been gone long enough for her to grow cold.
If I'd come back ten minutes earlier, five minutes, if I hadn't stopped to feed on my way back from town.
Her eyes were open, staring at stars she could no longer see.
I closed them gently, the way my mother had closed my father's all those centuries ago.
The parallel wasn't lost on me. I was always too late. Always arriving just in time to bury the people I couldn't save.
Something inside me cracked. Not broke, because broken implied it could be fixed.
This was different. Final. The last piece of whatever humanity I'd been clinging to simply ceased to exist.
I stood slowly, and the garden withered further around me.
My rage had a presence, a weight that pressed against reality itself.
Elysia's blood ran through my veins, and she'd been powerful enough to make even ancient vampires nervous.
That power flooded through me now, uncontrolled and hungry.
They would pay. Every single one of them.
I found the first witch three miles away, still celebrating with her coven sisters.
Seven of them total, drunk on the magic they'd stolen from Zhilara.
They'd gathered in an abandoned church, because witches always had a taste for irony.
I didn't knock.
The doors exploded inward, wood splintering like paper. They turned, surprise flickering across their faces before fear took over.
They recognized me. Of course they did. Seven hundred years of existence left a reputation.
Tristan, the eldest one said. She tried for calm and almost managed it. This doesn't concern you.
You killed her.
She was a means to an end. The witch's hand moved, starting a spell. Her bloodline was corrupt. We did what was necessary.
I moved before she could finish the incantation. Vampire speed, enhanced by Elysia's power, made me nearly invisible.
My hand closed around her throat, lifting her off the ground.
Necessary, I repeated. My voice didn't sound like my own. Too cold. Too empty.
You tortured and murdered a woman whose only crime was being born, and you call it necessary.
Her sisters started chanting. Protective spells, binding magic, anything they could throw at me.
The spells hit like rain against stone. Ineffective. Pointless.
Elysia had been a witch before she became a vampire. Her magic had merged with the vampirism, creating something hybrid.
Something that didn't follow normal rules. That immunity had passed to me. Their magic couldn't touch me.
I dropped the elder witch and moved to the next one. Younger, maybe thirty.
She tried to run. I caught her before she reached the door, and my hand went through her chest. Her heart stopped before she could scream.
The others scattered. I let them run for exactly ten seconds before I followed.
Two made it to the woods. I found them huddled behind an oak tree, holding hands and crying. Sisters, probably. The resemblance was clear.
Please, the older one begged. We were just following orders. The elders said it had to be done.
Who gave the orders?
The Shadowveil Coven. They're the ones who wanted her dead. We just performed the ritual.
Where are they?
I don't know. We're low-level, we don't get that information.
I believed her. Didn't matter. I killed them both anyway, quick and clean. Mercy they hadn't shown Zhilara.
Three witches remained inside the church. They'd formed a circle, combining their magic in a last desperate defense. The air around them shimmered with power.
You can't break through, one of them shouted. This is ancient magic. Older than you.
I stopped at the edge of their circle. Tested it. The magic held firm, pushing back against my presence. They were right. I couldn't break it.
So I burned it instead.
Fire was tricky for vampires. We were vulnerable to it under normal circumstances.
But rage has a way of overriding survival instincts. I grabbed a fallen beam that had caught flame from their defensive spells and drove it into their circle.
The wood burned hotter than it should have, fed by my fury and whatever magic still lingered in my blood from Elysia. Their protective barrier shattered like glass.
The witches screamed. I didn't hear it. Didn't hear anything except the sound of Zhilara's voice in my memory, telling me that some things surprise you, that I wasn't as dangerous as I thought.
She'd been wrong.
When the fire died down, seven bodies lay scattered across the church floor.
Seven witches who'd participated in Zhilara's murder.
Seven corpses that did nothing to ease the emptiness in my chest.
I walked out into the night, covered in ash and blood, and realized I'd only scratched the surface.
The Shadowveil Coven. They were the real target.
They'd given the orders, planned the ritual, marked Zhilara for death before she'd even known she was in danger.
I would find them. Every single one.
Three months. That's how long it took to track them down.
Three months of hunting, interrogating, killing anyone who stood in my way.
I stopped feeding on animals. Stopped caring about the distinction between guilty and innocent.
Everyone who knew about the ritual and said nothing was complicit.
The body count grew.
I found the Shadowveil Coven in a compound deep in the mountains.
Thirteen witches, ranging in age from twenty to two hundred.
They'd warded the place heavily, protection spells layered so thick the air tasted like copper.
It didn't matter. I walked through their wards like they were smoke. Elysia's immunity was absolute.
They fought. Credit where it was due, they fought hard.
Threw everything they had at me. Binding spells, fire, lightning, curses meant to rot flesh and shatter bones.
I felt some of it. The fire burned, the lightning hurt. But pain was temporary. My rage was eternal.
I killed them methodically. One by one, moving through the compound like death incarnate.
Some begged. Some stayed silent. A few tried to bargain, offering information or power or their own service.
I killed them all the same.
The last one was young. Couldn't have been more than twenty-five. She cowered in a corner, mascara running down her face, hands raised in surrender.
I didn't do anything, she sobbed. I just joined the coven last year. I didn't even know about the ritual until after.
You stayed, I said. You knew what they'd done and you stayed.
I had nowhere else to go.
Neither does Zhilara.
Her scream cut off abruptly.
I stood in the center of the compound, surrounded by bodies, and felt nothing.
No satisfaction. No justice. Just emptiness so profound it could have swallowed the sun.
Twenty witches dead. Twenty lives ended in revenge for one. And Zhilara was still gone.
I heard later that other members of the Shadowveil Coven had escaped.
Scattered to different regions, went into hiding, changed their names. Smart. Some survived to spread stories about me.
About the vampire who'd massacred an entire coven in a single night.
About the creature that magic couldn't touch, that walked through wards like they didn't exist.
My reputation grew. Witches whispered my name with fear. Vampires gave me wide berth.
I became the thing parents warned their supernatural children about. The monster in the darkness.
And I didn't care.
I returned to Zhilara's garden one last time. The plants were all dead now, brown and brittle.
I'd failed to water them, failed to maintain what she'd built. Failed her in every way that mattered.
I buried her there, in the center of her garden. Said words I didn't believe to gods I'd stopped trusting centuries ago.
Stood over her grave until the sun threatened the horizon and I had to leave.
Walking away felt like dying. But I'd had practice at that.
Practice at losing everything, at surviving when I shouldn't, at carrying grief like a second skin.
Seven hundred years old, and I still hadn't learned. Love was poison. Connection was weakness. Every time I let myself care, the universe found new ways to punish me for it.
My family. Elysia's victims. Zhilara. All dead because I'd been foolish enough to feel.
Never again.
I shut it down. Every emotion, every hope, every last scrap of humanity I'd been hoarding.
Locked it away where it couldn't hurt me anymore. Became what everyone already thought I was.
A monster. Cold. Brutal. Unstoppable.
It was easier that way. Safer. You can't lose what you never let yourself have.
I walked into the night, leaving Zhilara's grave behind, and I didn't look back.
Looking back implied regret, and regret implied feeling, and feeling was what got people killed.
So I felt nothing.
And the centuries stretched ahead, empty and endless, exactly as I deserved.