(2025)
The city stretched endlessly beyond the fog-kissed glass, its towers clawing at the silver dusk like steel fingers lost in prayer. Distant sirens howled somewhere below, blurred and muffled by the rain tracing slow rivulets down the floor-to-ceiling windows. From where he stood, Luxien Draxen could see the pulse of modern life—cars flickering down wet streets, neon signs stuttering against the storm—but none of it stirred him.
Not anymore.
Not in years.
He stood with his gloved hands clasped behind his back, unmoving, like a forgotten statue in a world that no longer needed marble gods. The dark wool of his suit stretched crisply over his shoulders, tailored to perfection, yet heavy with the scent of ash and old blood. His reflection stared back at him faintly in the glass—pale, pristine, cold-eyed—but beneath it all, he was unraveling.
Rotting.
Silently, slowly, mercilessly.
"Sir," came a voice from behind, smooth and firm but lined with concern.
Luxien didn't turn.
Matthew stepped into the light, his presence precise and clean, suited in gray with his sandy hair slicked back and not a single thing out of place. The human world might see him as nothing more than a sharply-dressed assistant. But he had been Luxien's steward for over a century. A vampire turned through ancient rites. Loyal. Efficient. And one of the few who dared speak freely.
"We've searched the last remaining bloodlines tied to the Montrose name," he said quietly. "Every documented reincarnation profile. Every gifted orphan. Every death-born cluster from the Seer's records."
Luxien remained silent. Rain pattered against the glass like whispers.
Matthew hesitated, then added gently, "I believe she hasn't reincarnated yet, sir."
The words hung in the room like a sentence passed.
Luxien's jaw tensed as he slowly pulled one of his gloves off with smooth, practiced movements. His breath did not hitch—he didn't allow it to—but his hand… the skin beneath was black-veined and gaunt, laced with a slow-spreading decay that had begun near his knuckles and was now creeping past his wrist. The flesh shimmered faintly with a sickly sheen, as if something beneath it—something ancient—was eating him alive.
The rot had started a year ago. A warning. A punishment.
She had not returned.
And without her, the curse stirred again—deeper, more violent this time.
It would not let him live.
Not without her.
His fingers curled into a fist. He hated the sight of it—the slow evidence of his unraveling. Once he had been called the Immortal Fang, the General of Shadows, the Silver Death. Now he was just a relic with fading power and a ticking death sentence.
He blinked.
An emotion passed—too quick to name. Then another. Hunger.
"I want to feed," Luxien said simply.
Matthew's eyes flicked once to the black-veiled hand and then back to Luxien's face. He did not question the order.
"Of course, my Lord."
Luxien exhaled slowly, but the hunger stayed. Not the manageable ache of the past—this was something more feral. Lately, one was never enough. He required multiple vessels now just to feel anything. His restraint frayed each time, and the scent of fear only sharpened his appetite. It made the blood sweeter.
The curse was twisting his nature. Making him more than predator. Less than sentient.
His reflection in the window smirked faintly, as if it, too, knew what he was becoming.
He turned from the glass and faced the room.
His cold eyes—silver still, but now rimmed faintly with crimson when the light caught them—settled on Matthew. His expression remained unchanged, but the tension beneath his features could be read like the weight of a blade unsheathed.
"You know what to do," Luxien said. "Adorn them before my feast. I don't want my food looking like filth."
Matthew bowed his head slightly, the barest show of respect. "Yes, my Lord."
Then, with a flicker of motion too fast for human eyes, he vanished—just a blur of wind and shadow dissipating into the corridor.
Luxien stood alone again.
The silence returned, but it didn't soothe. Not anymore.
He walked back to the window, bare hand still curled at his side, and let his gaze drift beyond the skyline. Somewhere out there, under steel and sky and dust, she existed. Not Maya. Not yet. But the soul that once lit his darkness.
He could feel the pressure of time coiling tighter around him. He would find her. He had to. Or he would disappear—not into death, but into something far worse.
Something rabid.
He pressed his veined hand against the cold glass and stared out.
"She's out there," he murmured.
And this time, when she returned…
He wasn't sure he would be the same creature she remembered.
——
The world had never quite felt real to Faya Stone. Not fully.
Even on the good days—when the sun filtered gently through the curtains in her dorm room or when her mother smiled at her from across the kitchen—there was always a strange distance to it all. Like she was watching her own life through glass.
It was the dreams, mostly. The dreams that made reality feel like a ghost.
They came every night, vivid and unrelenting, like scenes from a life she didn't remember living. Sometimes she was barefoot in a garden, sunlight dancing through fig trees. Other nights, she ran breathless through a burning village, smoke blackening the sky, screams clinging to the air.
And always—always—there was a man.
She never saw his face clearly. Just pieces. The edge of a jawline in torchlight. A silver gaze that watched her like it knew every secret she didn't. A voice that spoke in silence. He never touched her, not once, but the weight of him in her dreams felt like gravity. Heavy. Constant. Comforting and terrifying all at once.
She had stopped trying to explain the dreams.
Not to the therapists. Not to her professors. And certainly not to her parents.
Especially now.
Because reality had taken on a sharper edge. A countdown.
Cancer.
Terminal.
Four weeks, the doctors had said. If you're lucky.
Faya didn't feel lucky. Not anymore.
---
It started with a cough. Just one. But it rattled out of her like it had teeth.
Faya curled forward on her bed in her small off-campus apartment, one hand clutched over her ribs as her lungs spasmed. A warm, coppery wetness filled her mouth, and when she pulled her hand away from her lips, it was slick with blood.
Not specks. Not streaks. Pools.
She blinked at it, swaying slightly, her vision pulsing at the edges. She tried to stand but stumbled against the nightstand, knocking over a stack of half-read poetry books and pain medication.
"Mom," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse. "Dad…"
The door burst open before she could collapse.
Her mother was first, already reaching for her, hands shaking but steady where it counted. Her father followed a heartbeat later, a phone clutched to his ear, barking frantic instructions to emergency responders.
"Oh my God, Faya—" her mother's voice cracked as she guided her down gently onto the carpet. "Breathe, baby. Just breathe—"
"I am breathing," Faya rasped, her teeth stained red, her body trembling like a leaf in a storm.
She wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much.
The paramedics arrived too fast and yet not fast enough. Everything after that blurred. She was lifted onto a gurney, an oxygen mask pressed over her mouth. But she still managed to tear it away long enough to meet her parents' tear-rimmed eyes.
"Please," she croaked, blood threading down her chin. "Let me go. Let me live. I don't want to die like this… trapped between hospital walls."
Her mother shook her head. "You're not dying. We're not giving up—"
"You're protecting a ghost," Faya said bitterly. "I want to feel something before it's over."
Her father knelt beside her, eyes glossy, jaw clenched. "You're our daughter. We're doing what any parent would. We're trying to save you."
Faya couldn't argue anymore. The pain drowned out every word.
They rolled her into the ambulance as her parents followed closely, holding each other like a fragile thread stitched them together.
---
The hospital was bathed in pale, sterile light. It hummed with movement and machines, nurses rushing in like whispers and urgency pressed into uniforms.
They pushed Faya through automatic doors, past patients and waiting rooms and blinking monitors. The hallway stretched long and white and endless. The world felt like cotton. Her fingers twitched uselessly at her sides.
"BP dropping," someone called out.
"Get her into Theater 3 now."
She was barely conscious by the time they reached the operating room. Her limbs felt weightless. The pain was still there, but distant, as if it had stepped back for a moment, allowing numbness to take her hand.
The gurney jerked to a stop under the surgical lights, and above her—those blinding fluorescents flickered.
Faya blinked slowly.
And there he was.
Not standing in the room. Not real. But there.
The man from her dreams.
He wasn't a vision this time. He felt close. Too close. Like someone had peeled back the veil between time and slipped his presence beside her, breathing against her thoughts. His eyes—silver, endless, aching—held her gaze as her vision blurred.
He didn't speak. He never did. But the warmth in her chest told her everything.
He knew her.
Had always known her.
And she—despite never meeting him—missed him. In her bones.
Tears welled in her eyes as the anesthesia crept into her veins.
If this was dying, maybe it wasn't so lonely after all.
Maybe, in that place between life and death, he would be waiting.
As the world slipped away, her lips parted into a name she didn't understand but knew she had once whispered across lifetimes...
"Luxien."