🎵 Music Suggestion:
"Path of the Fireflies" by BrunuhVille
(A soft track that burns with forgotten truths.)
---
He couldn't move. Not really.
The room swayed and swam, and when Kyrell opened his eyes, all he saw was red light. Not fire. Not blood. Something older. Like memory woven into the color of pain.
Chains? No—roots. Or maybe veins. They pulsed. Gently. With him.
He blinked.
And blinked again.
Until he saw her.
The woman in white. Pale as bone. She didn't speak. She only placed her hand against his chest… and that was when he realized—
His heart wasn't beating.
It should've been.
Because he remembered.
He remembered Lucian.
He remembered the cave, the old kingdom, the voices. The boy in the forest. The kiss that never came. The hands that held without taking.
But most of all, he remembered what that strange, ancient voice had said in the dark.
> "You were made for war, but you were born for him."
His breath caught.
The woman in white nodded, like she heard the thought.
And then the pain came.
---
It wasn't the kind of pain that broke the body—it was the kind that unstitched the soul. Memories surged into him like fire through open wounds.
He saw Damien.
He saw the Brotherhood.
He saw blood rituals and stolen children.
He saw Lucian. Always, Lucian.
Even when he wasn't supposed to be looking.
Even when he was taught that vampires were monsters. That feelings were lies. That desire was death.
He saw the night he was meant to kill Lucian.
He never did.
He couldn't.
But someone else tried.
---
Kyrell gasped.
The memory tore open like silk:
A meeting. A whispered name.
"If Lucian falls, he takes the prophecy with him."
Who had said it?
Who?
The shadows bent in, trying to swallow the moment.
But Kyrell's eyes turned gold.
Not human gold. Not vampire gold.
Something else.
The veiled woman had lied. So had Damien. So had—
Silas.
The quiet one. The scholar. The man who never raised his voice.
He was the one who passed Lucian's secret to the Council.
He was the one who knew where Kyrell would go.
He was the one who planned the betrayal.
---
Kyrell screamed.
Not because of pain, but because he remembered why he had fallen into the forest that day, why his body had shut down, why he had forgotten.
Silas had fed him something.
A numbing draught laced with bloodbane.
Not to kill him.
To erase his bond with Lucian.
To sever him.
But it hadn't worked.
It never could.
Because the heart remembers what the mind forgets.
---
His body surged forward.
The chains snapped.
Or maybe they bowed.
The red light shattered like glass, and for a moment, Kyrell floated between memory and madness.
He opened his eyes.
The woman in white was gone.
But Lucian was there—
—or had been.
A scent lingered.
A presence burned through the room like ink across parchment.
Kyrell whispered his name.
"Lucian..."
And every part of him—bone, blood, hunger, love—answered.
---