(Sable's POV)
The desert swallowed sound.
I'd been walking for hours across dunes that crested like frozen waves, heat still lingering in the sand long after sunset. When the temple finally rose out of the darkness, it didn't feel like salvation. It felt like a warning.
The structure was half-buried, its stone weathered to the color of bone. What had once been proud pillars now jutted from the dunes like the ribs of some dead giant. The entrance yawned wide, a black mouth in the sandstone, its threshold carved with symbols that time—and maybe intent—had worn to near-illegibility.
I stopped a few paces short of it. My proxies hovered overhead, faint blue lights against the night sky. They didn't like this place. I could feel their unease through the tether—the same gnawing discomfort that itched along my own spine.
"Well," I muttered to the sand, "home sweet nightmare."
I stepped inside.
The air shifted instantly. Outside had been hot and dry; in here, it was cool and heavy, smelling faintly of iron and old incense. The walls were carved with reliefs of men bowing to horned figures, their details worn but their intent unmistakable. Dust drifted from the ceiling like lazy ash.
Light came only from my proxies as they floated ahead, pale-blue glow stretching long shadows across the floor. The silence was absolute—so absolute that the soft crunch of my boots on sand felt like shouting.
I followed the main corridor, its walls narrowing slightly as I descended deeper. My Astral Sight pulsed faintly, reflexive. Souls were sparse here—one or two flickers deep within the stone, dim and weak, like embers about to go out. No life. Nothing… alive.
And then—sound.
A low, rhythmic scrape, like steel being drawn across stone. It came from deeper within, through a doorway half-collapsed with rubble. I dismissed my proxies with a thought, unwilling to announce myself more than I already had, and edged closer.
The room beyond was vast and circular, its ceiling supported by columns carved to resemble twisted, robed figures. At the center stood a stone table, waist-high, stained dark with old blood. And beside it—
Him.
Isaac.
He stood with his back to me, bald head catching the faint light, his broad shoulders roped with lean muscle. Ritual scars traced his dark skin like deliberate calligraphy, each one a story etched in flesh. In his hand, he held a curved dagger. Its edge smoldered with a deep crimson glow—no mere heat, but something darker, alive.
On the table lay a body. Human. Male. European features, maybe mid-twenties. I couldn't tell how long he'd been dead, but I could tell from the tension in Isaac's stance that this wasn't a ceremony. This was work.
He spoke without turning. His voice was low, smooth, and unyielding as the desert itself.
"You've been standing there too long to be a lost traveler."
I froze for a heartbeat, then forced my voice steady. "I was told you might be here."
"By whom?"
"Dracula."
That made him pause. Just for a second. Then he lifted the dagger.
"Watch," he said.
He plunged the blade into the corpse's chest.
The reaction was immediate: the red glow from the dagger burst into flame, rippling outward across the body like veins igniting. The corpse arched violently, mouth opening in a silent scream as the air filled with the stench of burning flesh and something far worse—the ozone-snap of raw magic.
Through Astral Sight, I saw it: a streak of red light tearing down from somewhere unseen, spearing into the corpse like a hook through water. Not a soul like a human's, no quiet starlight—it was jagged, wrong, a twisted brand of what might have once been human. It slammed into the body, fusing with it.
The transformation was savage. Limbs stretched and snapped, skin blackened and split to reveal raw muscle beneath. The corpse jerked upright, its eyes now glowing like embers. When it stood fully, it was a monster—long-limbed, hunched, its fingers tapering into hooked claws, mouth bristling with too many teeth. It dropped to one knee before Isaac with a low, guttural hiss, awaiting command.
Isaac wiped the dagger clean with a piece of cloth and finally turned to me. His gaze was like a whetted blade—sharp, reflective, and promising pain to the unworthy.
"Now," he said, "you'll tell me why you're here. And you'd better have a reason worth my time."
I met his gaze. My heart was hammering, but I held his stare.
"I want you to teach me," I said. "Forgemastery."
His expression didn't change, but the air seemed to tighten. "You? Why?"
"Because I need it," I replied, blunt. "I've got enemies I can't fight as I am. And I don't have the luxury of years to figure this out alone. I need what you know."
Isaac studied me for a long moment, then gestured lazily to the creature beside him.
"Then prove you're worth teaching," he said. "Survive."
The creature's head snapped toward me.
And then it lunged.