(1710)
The fortress loomed like a forgotten god carved into the bones of the mountain. Black stone walls jutted from the earth as if clawing toward the sky, etched with markings long lost to living memory. No sunlight ever touched its halls. Even at midday, the towers remained shrouded in a perpetual twilight, choked in mist and shadow.
Maya was dragged through the iron gates with her wrists still bound, her boots scuffing against the polished black floor. The air here was colder than it had any right to be, and it pressed against her skin like a wet shroud. Every part of her—every ache, every bruise, every pulse of pain beneath her ribs—screamed for her to fight. But for now, her strength had gone quiet, buried under layers of shock and rage and a hollow, ringing grief she hadn't yet found the space to feel.
The guards said nothing.
They didn't need to.
She could feel the way they looked at her—as if she were not a prisoner, but a riddle wrapped in skin. Something unnatural. Unwanted. Untouched by whatever rules their dark world followed. And maybe they were right. She didn't know what had happened back there—how she'd made that soldier drop like he'd been burned, how she'd felt something raw and ancient swell inside her.
All she knew was that the cost of it was paid in blood.
Stella.
Lena.
Their names hovered on the edge of her tongue, but she couldn't say them. Not here. Not while she was surrounded by monsters.
Two soldiers pushed open an enormous set of double doors, and the heavy groan of metal echoed through the corridor. The chamber beyond was vast, circular, and dimly lit by violet flames trapped in sconces along the walls. The floor was patterned with old runes—swirls and symbols etched in faded gold.
At the far end of the room, a figure stood with his back to her.
Tall. Still. Radiating something that made the air heavier the moment she entered.
She didn't need to be told who he was.
This was him.
The one who had ordered the destruction of her village.
The one whose name now lived in her bones like rot.
Luxien Draxen.
He didn't move as the guards shoved her forward and forced her to kneel in the center of the rune-marked floor. Her knees hit the stone hard, but she didn't flinch. She wouldn't give them that.
Luxien finally turned.
Gods, he was beautiful.
Not in a warm, earthly way. But in that cruel, haunting way marble statues were beautiful—elegant and unfeeling. His features were sharply cut, framed by loose black hair that brushed his collar, and his eyes… those silver eyes settled on her like blades.
For a long moment, he said nothing. He simply looked at her.
And then… something changed.
His gaze tightened, as if squinting at a puzzle. He tilted his head slightly. The silence deepened.
Maya felt it.
That cold brush against her consciousness. Like a fingertip scraping along the edge of her thoughts, probing for an opening. Testing.
She clenched her jaw.
Whatever he was doing, it felt wrong. Unnatural. A violation.
Luxien frowned—just barely.
Then, he tried again.
He pushed inward like he'd done a thousand times to a thousand minds. Slipping past mental walls, pulling loose secrets and thoughts as easily as turning pages in a book. But her mind…
Nothing.
Blank.
No static. No resistance. Just… silence.
His heart beat once, slow and low in his chest. His jaw twitched.
Unthinkable.
She wasn't blocking him—she wasn't there. At least, not in the way minds usually were. Her thoughts were completely sealed off. Opaque. Even feral vampires, mad with bloodlust, had minds he could touch. But this girl… this human…
She was a void.
And that unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice deep and smooth but laced with something sharp beneath.
Maya didn't answer.
Luxien stepped closer. The guards beside her stiffened but said nothing. She lifted her chin to meet his gaze, and for a moment—just a moment—they stared at each other like two creatures from warring myths.
He was ancient, cold, unreadable.
She was broken, bloody, and defiant.
"I said," he repeated, lower this time, "who are you?"
"I'm the girl you failed to kill," she said.
The words dropped like stones between them.
The guards tensed, clearly expecting him to strike her down, but Luxien didn't move. His face remained unreadable, his silver gaze narrowing slightly.
He could feel something in her—not just the mindless courage of someone with nothing left to lose. Something older. Something tangled in time.
"Your name," he said finally.
Maya hesitated, then replied with venom laced in every syllable, "Maya Montrose."
He stared at her a moment longer. That name. It was familiar. Too familiar.
It stirred something he hadn't felt in centuries—a ghost brushing against memory.
He turned from her suddenly, his coat whispering against the stone as he walked toward the firelit edge of the chamber. "You destroyed one of my soldiers."
"I defended myself," she shot back.
"You're human."
"I didn't say I wasn't."
"Then explain how you released enough psychic force to shatter a trained vampire's mind."
Silence.
She didn't know. That much was clear from the flicker of confusion in her eyes. But she masked it well—smothered it in defiance.
Luxien's voice softened, almost curiously. "Do you know what you are?"
She swallowed, then forced a bitter laugh. "The only survivor of your massacre."
That did something to him. Not outwardly. But deep beneath the surface, something stirred. Her words pressed against a part of him he'd buried centuries ago.
He stepped closer again, slowly, until she could see the ancient runes carved faintly into the skin of his throat. She felt her heart hammer in her chest, but she refused to look away.
"No fear," he murmured. "Even now."
"I'm not afraid of corpses in nice coats," she snapped.
A flicker of something passed through his eyes then—not anger, but interest. She wasn't lying. There was no fear in her. Grief, yes. Fury. But not fear.
Luxien looked at the guards and gave a silent signal.
They bowed and exited swiftly, leaving her alone with him.
The chamber grew heavier in their absence.
He circled her slowly now, like a wolf scenting something unfamiliar.
"You interest me, Maya Montrose."
She glared at him. "I'd rather die than be useful to you."
"You may not have a choice."
"Then you'll find I'm very good at being inconvenient."
He stopped behind her, just out of reach. She could feel his gaze on the back of her neck.
"I can't read your mind," he said, as if confessing a sin. "That's never happened before."
She turned her head slightly. "Good."
He studied her profile for a long time. A whisper of curiosity flared in his chest, but he tamped it down quickly. Still, the silence of her mind…it wasn't natural. It was as if someone—or something—had buried her identity in a lockbox he didn't yet have the key to.
And for the first time in centuries, Luxien Draxen was intrigued.
Not by power. Not by blood.
By her.
The chains around Maya's wrists bit deeper as the guards dragged her down the winding stone corridor. Her feet stumbled over uneven ground, and still she fought—wrenching, kicking, twisting—anything to keep from being moved like an animal through this place of echoes and rot. The torchlight flickered dimly along the walls, casting distorted shadows of her captors as they descended deeper and deeper into the underbelly of the fortress.
The air grew colder with every step. Damper. More foul. It reeked of mildew and blood long dried. Somewhere in the darkness, someone coughed. Farther in, someone sobbed. And then silence again, like the walls themselves swallowed sound.
They reached a rusted iron gate with a heavy lock bolted into the stone. One of the guards rattled it open while the other gave Maya a shove that sent her crashing forward onto the cold floor. Her knees scraped the rock, but she barely felt it through the adrenaline and fury roaring through her.
The gate slammed shut behind her with a metallic clang that reverberated down the corridor.
Maya didn't hesitate.
She pushed herself up from the filthy ground and gripped the rusted bars with her bound hands, slamming her fists against them with all the strength she could muster. Her voice exploded through the dungeon, raw and guttural and thick with rage.
"You coward!" she screamed. "Luxien, you hear me?! You miserable, blood-sucking bastard! Come back here and finish what you started!"
There was no reply. Just the steady drip of water from somewhere behind her.
"I hope you rot in your own crypt!" she spat, still clinging to the bars. "You and your cursed kind—kings of ashes and corpses. Is that what you are? Proud of slaughtering girls in their gardens?! You'll choke on your throne, you demon!"
She slammed her hands again and again until her knuckles bruised. The fury inside her felt volcanic, like it could tear through her skin if it didn't get out. Everything had been taken from her in a matter of hours. Her family. Her home. Her friends. And now, her freedom. Her voice was all she had left—and she would use it to scorch the very walls.
When her breath finally ran ragged and her throat burned, she sank back against the cell wall, hands still trembling.
The silence that followed was oppressive. He hadn't answered. Of course he hadn't. Monsters didn't care about the noise their prey made.
As her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the cell, she realized she wasn't alone.
In the far corner, huddled in the damp, were three figures—two women and one man. All looked older than her, maybe by a handful of years, but their expressions were hollowed out, etched by time and terror. Their clothes were worn thin and stained, skin pale and marked with bruises.
One of the women—a raven-haired girl with haunted eyes—flinched when Maya moved. The other, blonde with a streak of dirt on her cheek, simply watched her with a tired, silent curiosity.
The man sat apart, knees pulled up to his chest, rocking ever so slightly. He didn't speak. He didn't even blink.
Maya stared at them for a moment, her own breath still catching in her lungs. Then, wordlessly, she turned away from the bars and slid down against the opposite wall, her hands still bound in front of her.
No one spoke.
Her wrists ached. Her shoulders were sore from fighting the guards. Her chest throbbed with emotion she hadn't yet named. And her dress—once soft and stitched by her mother's hands—was now stained with the blood of her best friends. The weight of it clung to her.
Something sharp built in her throat again. Not rage this time. Not grief, either. Something lonelier.
She didn't want to cry. She wouldn't. Not here. Not in front of strangers. But the shaking started anyway. A tremble through her arms, a pressure behind her eyes.
She leaned her head back against the cold stone and squeezed her eyes shut.
This can't be it. This can't be where it ends.
---
Across the fortress, high above the dungeon's choking damp, Luxien stood by the window of his private chambers, staring out into the pale blue mist curling over the cliffs. The report had been delivered: the girl had been placed in the holding cells as ordered. No further incidents.
Still, he didn't move.
His mind wasn't on the view. Not entirely. He was listening—reaching outward.
He could feel the thoughts of his guards even now. Their surface emotions—discomfort, unease. A few of them already whispered about the girl as something unnatural. They didn't understand what they'd seen. Didn't know how rare it was for Luxien to hesitate, even briefly. Didn't understand how deeply it unnerved him that he couldn't hear her.
He could touch the minds of wolves in their frenzied rage. He could pry memories from dying men. But not her.
It was like leaning against a door that should have opened but was instead made of solid stone.
No noise. No flicker. No entry.
And yet, when she looked at him, he could feel something brush against his own thoughts—not her mind, but something else. A kind of presence that vibrated just out of reach.
He clenched his fists slowly, jaw tightening.
The humans always spoke of prophecy in whispers. In superstitions. But he had long since discarded those tales—until now.
Until her.
Luxien didn't believe in destiny.
But he did believe in anomalies.
And Maya Montrose was no ordinary girl. Of that, he was sure.
He would find out what she was.
Even if he had to peel back the very skin of time to do it.