The mountains of Ashfall Ridge loomed like teeth against the sky.
Damien stood at the edge of a crumbling cliff, cloak whipping behind him, eyes fixed on the valley below—where Xander's war camp spread like a cancer. Fires burned day and night. Blood rituals danced in the dark. His brother wasn't hiding anymore.
He was building a throne.
"We slip in through the eastern perimeter," Damien said. "They rotate guards every forty-seven minutes. We have a window."
Ariana studied the camp through his spy lens, her fingers steady despite the chill. "And once we're inside?"
"We find his seer. Kill her. Then we find out where he's nesting."
They moved before the moon hit its apex.
---
Inside the camp.
Smoke. Ash. The stink of burning blood.
Ariana and Damien wore illusion cloaks—stitched from stolen skin and laced with glamour magic. They passed as soldiers, eyes down, weapons hidden.
Ariana's pulse was steady, but her heart was a drumbeat.
They reached the seer's tent without a word.
Inside, the air was heavy with rot and roses.
The seer—an old vampire woman with stitched lips and hollow eyes—knelt over a black mirror.
She looked up. Smiled.
"I've been waiting."
Damien struck first.
His claws drove through her throat, silencing the prophecy before it could be spoken.
Her mirror shattered.
But before she died, she whispered:
> "He's already here… inside one of you."
---
They fled the camp before the alarm rang.
Back at their hideout, Ariana began removing her gear, adrenaline still surging.
Then a voice—cold, distant—spoke from the shadows behind them.
"You should've let her finish. Maybe then you'd have known which of your loyal ones now belongs to me."
Damien spun, fangs bared.
A shadow stepped forward—Theron.
His second-in-command.
The vampire who had been with Damien for centuries. The one who had led the last charge against the Blood Court. Trusted. Deadly. Loyal.
Or so Damien thought.
Theron's eyes bled black.
A blood sigil burned on his chest.
"I fought it," he said, voice shaking. "But he's too strong. He fed me her soul—Clara's. It was the price."
"You bastard," Ariana snarled.
Theron lunged.
Damien caught him mid-air, but he didn't want to kill him—not yet. There was still hope. There had to be.
But Theron wasn't there to fight.
He was there to deliver a message.
---
As the sigil flared, Theron's body convulsed, and his mouth opened with Xander's voice:
> "You killed my seer. I've killed your brotherhood. Now let's see what you'll do… when your own blade turns on you."
With a howl of agony, Theron impaled himself on Damien's sword.
Blood sprayed across the cave.
His body collapsed, smoking.
Damien stared at it, expression blank.
Then he turned to Ariana, eyes unreadable.
"We kill him," she said quietly.
"No," Damien said.
> "We erase him."