(Sable's POV)
The desert wind smelled like iron and silence. Always did. Even with three Night Creatures at my back—three figures in muted grays and silver seams, kneeling like statues awaiting a command—the air felt hollow, too wide, too empty.
I stood at the edge of the sandstone temple, pack slung over my shoulder, ring cool against my skin.
This was it. Isaac had taught me what he would. The forge was mine now—my ring, my creatures, my weight to carry. I glanced at them: each one a "Knight," variations on the theme because I'd learned quickly that consistency made orders cleaner. They were humanoid enough to register at a glance, distinct enough in armor lines to tell apart. Blade-arm right, shield left, dark gray flesh-armor laced with pale silver threads. Efficient. Manageable. Mine.
And yet… not enough.
I needed more.
My stomach knotted as the thought sat there like a stone in water. Night Creatures were leverage, force multipliers, the army I'd need for what's coming. But making them required corpses, and corpses meant killing.
I wasn't naive. I'd killed before. Demons, mostly, things that didn't bleed in ways that haunted you. But people? In numbers? That was another kind of math, one with consequences that don't stop at the battlefield. A mass killing spree would turn me into a target so bright every hunter in Europe would see me.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, breathing through grit-dry air. "Think, idiot."
The faces that surfaced weren't random. Pious sneers. The jeering crowd in Târgoviște. The man with the torch walking toward Lisa like it was his god-given right to set her on fire.
The Bishop.
The name came like a strike on an anvil. Heavy. Resonant. Obvious.
The man wasn't just corrupt—he was rot in robes. His followers? Cutthroats hiding behind scripture. I didn't need to invent a reason to hunt them. They'd already given me one. Take them apart, piece by piece, and I'd be doing the world a favor. And in the process, I'd get what I needed: vessels. Soldiers. An army built on the bodies of the very monsters who'd nearly murdered Lisa.
I exhaled, slow and long. "Yeah," I murmured to no one. "That'll do. Poetic justice and practical gain. Two birds, one smug sanctimonious stone."
But that thought bled into another, darker one: even with an army, I wasn't ready. Isaac's creatures had pushed me harder than anything in Seoul, and they were just warm-ups. I'd gotten used to enemies whose greatest trick was lunging straight at me. Here? Things moved faster, hit harder, thought nastier.
I glanced at my hand—the same hand that held the First Star's hilt when it mattered—and flexed the fingers. I could fight, sure. But fight well? Efficiently? Against what's coming?
Not yet.
I needed skill. Technique. Discipline with a blade that wasn't just "swing hard and teleport." And there was only one person I knew who could give me that without killing me first.
Adrian Țepeș.
The son of Dracula and Lisa. Half-vampire, half-human, all edge with a sword that could carve through things legends are afraid of. If anyone could drag me up to the level I needed, it was him.
Decision made, the knot in my chest loosened. Plan, finally. Clearer than the desert sky.
I turned to my Knights. "We're done here," I said. Their heads lifted in unison, silent acknowledgment.
With a thought, I folded space. The world rippled, sand and stone replaced by the high, cold air of the mountains. Pines whispered under a steel-gray sky. In the distance, like a black crown against the horizon, Dracula's castle waited—impossibly vast, windows like a thousand watching eyes, turrets piercing clouds.
The sight should've been oppressive. Instead, it felt like the first solid thing I'd seen in weeks. A destination.
"Alright," I muttered, adjusting my pack, silver-white lines faintly pulsing under my skin. "Time to see if the half-vampire prince wants to babysit a wannabe knight."
The Knights fell into step behind me as I started toward the castle, boots crunching over frost-hardened earth.
For the first time since leaving, I wasn't wandering. I was going somewhere—with a plan, a purpose, and maybe… just maybe… a fighting chance.