Chapter Ten: Blood Remembers
The forest swallowed them.
Elena and Lucien ran without looking back, branches clawing at their skin, roots grabbing at their feet. Behind them, the sanctuary burned — flames licking the sky like a pyre built for the past.
They didn't speak. Didn't need to. Every breath was survival. Every heartbeat, borrowed time.
Only when they were deep beneath the forest's ancient canopy — where the light no longer reached and the world was silent again — did they stop.
Lucien collapsed against a tree, blood soaking his coat.
"Let me see," Elena said, kneeling beside him.
"It's nothing," he muttered, grimacing.
"You're bleeding everywhere. That counts as something."
She pressed her hands to his side and felt warmth—blood, fresh. His wound was deep, clawed open by Valen's magic.
Lucien's hand shot up, grabbing her wrist. "No. You can't heal me."
Elena's brow furrowed. "I wasn't—"
"Yes, you were." His eyes were sharp, almost afraid. "You don't know what your blood will do."
A silence passed between them.
And then she asked the question that had been growing in the dark corners of her mind:
"What's inside me, Lucien?"
He looked away.
"Tell me."
"You're not just Virelli," he said slowly. "You're descended from something older. Before the Virelli were nobles, before they betrayed Valen… they were guardians."
Elena blinked. "Guardians of what?"
"Of the Veil," he whispered.
She stared at him.
"The barrier between this world and the one beneath it," Lucien continued. "The realm where the Old Ones sleep. The Virelli were born with blood that could seal it — or break it."
A chill swept over her.
"So Valen… he doesn't just want me for revenge."
Lucien met her eyes. "He wants to use your blood to tear open the Veil and awaken the ancient ones. Gods older than death. If he succeeds, it won't just be vampires ruling the world. It'll be them."
Elena sat back, stunned.
"But… how can I stop him?"
"You already are," Lucien said. "Every time you resist him, you make his power weaker. But it won't last forever."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a scrap of parchment, brittle and yellowed with age.
"Isolde left this. A map. To the Sanctum of Chains. It's where the Veil was first sealed. If you can reach it… if you can awaken what sleeps inside you before Valen does…"
He trailed off.
Elena looked at the map — an ancient forest, a mountain torn in half, a lake shaped like an eye.
A place not found on modern maps.
"I'll go," she said.
Lucien stared at her. "You might not return."
She gripped the obsidian blade.
"Then let him follow me into the dark. I'm done running."