The ruined fortress plaza fell away behind them, swallowed by distance and the unnatural crimson haze that clung to everything like smoke. The packs moved in steady formation behind Vahriun, their boots crunching rhythmically against the frost-hardened ground. Every step carried them further from the carnage of the battle they had barely survived, and closer to something none of them could yet name but all of them could feel. It pressed against their chests like a hand, heavy and deliberate, a presence that had no shape but filled every shadow.
The sky was wrong. That was the only word for it. The sun still hung high, burning where it had always burned, but its light had been stolen and replaced with something else entirely. Crimson bled across the heavens in slow, rolling waves, deep and dark at the edges, brighter and more terrible at the center, like a wound that refused to close. It was beautiful the way a fire is beautiful when it is consuming something that cannot be saved. Beneath that haunting glow, Vahriun's pale silver hair caught the light and held it, a sharp beacon cutting through the red. Beside him, Ethan's own silver hair mirrored it, clumped with sweat and pressed against his forehead by a wind that carried the scent of iron and cold earth.
The warmth the sun was supposed to give had vanished completely. In its place was something stranger, not cold exactly, but heavy. A pressure in the air that settled on the skin and stayed there. The Veil was tearing. They could all feel it, not just the wolves and vampires whose senses ran deeper than human, but everyone. It moved through the ground beneath their feet, a low, dark vibration that traveled up through bone and settled somewhere behind the ribs. The sacred fabric that had held the worlds in their proper order, that had sealed the old enchantments and kept the ancient evils behind their barriers, was coming apart at the seams. Its golden threads drifted visibly in the air when the light caught them right, shimmering and fraying like the edges of something burned, beautiful even in their destruction.
And Dracula was awake.
Not fully. Not yet. But the pulse of his return moved through everything the way a heartbeat moves through a body, steady and growing stronger with every passing moment. It was not a sound or a sight. It was older than both. It was the feeling of something immense turning its attention toward the world, of ancient eyes opening after centuries of forced sleep, of a will so vast and so dark it bent the air around it. The red sky was his breath. The creatures stirring in the mist were his whisper. The Veil tearing was his hand, reaching through.
Wolves padded through the frozen underbrush at the edges of the path, their paws silent on the frost. They moved with the careful precision of things that understood the moment they were living in, cautious but unafraid, drawn out by the shift in the world's order. Bats circled in ragged formations overhead, dark shapes flickering against the crimson light. Wraiths drifted between the skeletal trees, their forms less solid than shadow, their eyes catching the red glow and holding it like embers. None of them attacked. They watched. They waited. The world was changing and even its darkest creatures seemed to understand that patience was the right response to what was coming.
The Nightbound moved in their formation behind Kael, seventeen strong, their ember red eyes brighter than usual beneath the strange sky. The complete Rite pulsed gently in their veins, the vampire-like healing working quietly and steadily, closing the cuts and bruises of the morning's battle with a warmth that felt almost alive. They were tired in the way that only real fighting produces, a weariness that lives in the muscles and the mind both, but they moved without complaint. Kael set the pace and they matched it, his broad frame steady ahead of them, his healed arm flexing at his side with quiet power.
Rufik walked at the rear, his sharpened four-cornered blade resting easy in his grip. He had tested it against a low branch as they entered the tree line, a casual swing that met almost no resistance. The edge was better than it had been, refined by the morning's use rather than dulled by it. He nodded to himself and said nothing, filing the observation away with the practical calm of someone who had survived enough battles to know that small advantages matter.
Helena moved somewhere in the middle of the group, her face pale and drawn. Her chants had failed at the critical moment, the Veil's sacred magic slipping through her fingers like water when she needed it most. She walked with her eyes moving constantly over the shadows, searching for something she could not name, some sign that the magic was still accessible to her, that the connection had not been permanently severed. She found nothing. The silence where her power used to sit felt like a missing tooth, noticeable with every breath.
Elara stayed close to Ethan, her golden eyes wide and slowly recovering from the long blackout that had nearly taken her. Her body trembled slightly with each step, the accumulated weight of everything since dawn pressing down hard. But the vial at her neck burned warm against her skin, pushing back the exhaustion with a stubborn, quiet vitality that refused to let her stop. She watched the red sky and felt Dracula's pulse in her chest and said nothing, because there was nothing useful to say.
Ethan walked beside Vahriun and kept his silence. The Blade of Severance sat heavy in his hand, its light dimmer than it had ever been, muted by the oppressive crimson that pressed on everything. His jaw was tight. His mind was not quiet. The anger was still there, the hot bitter burning of years lost, of a father who had been absent through everything that shaped him. It sat right next to the strange fragile joy of Vahriun's presence, and the two feelings ground against each other without resolution. He had asked his question. Vahriun had answered with four words. No time. We move. Ethan had swallowed everything else and followed, because what else was there to do.
By late afternoon they reached a high ridge that broke through the tree line and opened onto a wide view of the valley below. Vahriun stopped. The packs stopped behind him without a word needing to be said. The valley stretched out beneath the red sky, vast and still in the way that places become still when something terrible is gathering in them. Movement shifted in the shadows below, formations taking shape in the mist, legions organizing themselves with the slow terrible patience of forces that believe they have already won. The generals of Dracula's army were down there, manifesting fully now that the Veil's resistance had weakened enough to let them through. They moved like the mist itself, shapeless at a distance but gaining definition with every moment, darkness learning to wear a body.
Vahriun studied the valley for a long moment, his ancient eyes moving across it with the calm of someone reading a page they have read before. Then he turned to the packs. "We rest here," he said. His voice was not loud but it carried completely. "Not long. But enough."
The packs settled onto the frozen ground without ceremony. Bodies dropped into whatever position offered relief, weapons laid close but not gripped, the healing magic doing its quiet work through muscle and bone. Kael positioned the Nightbound in a loose perimeter, their bows ready, their eyes on the valley. Rufik sat with his back against a rock and ran a whetstone along his blade one last time, the sound steady and low in the cold air. Helena sat apart from the others, her hands folded in her lap, still searching inward for something that might have returned.
Ethan sat beside Elara and looked at the valley. The Veil's golden threads were visible even from here, drifting apart in the red air above the tree line, separating slowly like the last stitches of a wound torn open. Each thread that came loose sent a fresh pulse through the ground. Each pulse was Dracula breathing deeper. Each breath brought his generals one step closer to full form.
Vahriun stood at the edge of the ridge and did not sit. His long sword rested at his side, catching the crimson light and holding it cold. He watched the valley the way mountains watch valleys, without urgency, without fear, simply present and immovable against whatever was coming.
The packs waited beneath the red sky, weapons ready, bodies healing, minds steadying themselves against what they all knew was almost here. The world balanced on the moment like a blade standing on its point, and the valley below filled slowly, inevitably, with the dark shape of war.