Just before dawn, I dream.
I haven't dreamt in years.
Sleep, when it comes, is more like sinking into stone, silent, shapeless. But this is different. This is vivid. This is sharp.
It's not memory.
It's not prophecy.
It's a warning.
The sky is bleeding. Thick ribbons of red split the clouds like veins torn open. I stand on a field scorched black by flame, the ground cracking beneath me with every step. There's no sound at first, only the hiss of burning air and the slow, deliberate churn of ash drifting like snow.
Then comes the music.
A choir, impossibly vast, singing in a language that doesn't exist anymore. Not on paper. Not in sound. But I understand it anyway. Not with my ears, but with my bones. The words speak of betrayal. Of an oath broken beneath a silver moon. Of something old and bound and buried, now stirring.
The fire moves like liquid, pooling around a single figure in the distance. I knew him before I saw his face. He carries the same weight the world does when it's about to collapse.
Kaelthas.
He stands still, but the world shifts around him. Buildings rise and fall in shadow. The stars above fracture like glass. His eyes are black suns, burnt out, but still pulsing with something ancient and cruel.
He doesn't speak.
He smiles.
And it's worse than a scream.
Behind him, other figures rise. Faceless, voiceless. Shapes that feel wrong, like reflections in warped glass. One wears the robes of a bishop, another a crown of thorns. All of them are watching me.
And I realize, I'm not just dreaming.
I'm being summoned.
When I wake, the candle is out.
And the night is too quiet.
The city doesn't sleep. Not really. It drifts.
By the time I leave my apartment, the streets are shrouded in mist. The kind that muffles footsteps and steals direction. I move through it like I belong to it. Like it knows me. And maybe it does.
Because things like me don't get forgotten. Not completely. We just get buried.
The boy from the alley finds me again, crouched on the edge of a rooftop near the harbor. He lands beside me without sound. Trying to impress me. He still doesn't know what he's playing with.
"I saw movement tonight," he says. "Not just whispers. Shapes. Below the city."
"The tunnels?"
He nods. "The ones under the old train line. Abandoned. But something's down there now. Breathing. Watching."
"Vampire?"
"Worse."
I don't ask him how he knows. Sometimes fear speaks with more clarity than reason. And his scent reeks of it.
"You shouldn't have come back," I tell him. "You were given a way out."
"Yeah, well." He shrugs, trying to mask the tremor in his voice. "Turns out exile's boring. And I think I'm on the edge of something big."
He looks at me like he wants something. A name. A purpose. A war to follow.
I give him nothing.
He exhales hard and moves to stand, brushing ash off his coat. "Whatever's waking up, it's not just looking for blood. It's looking for us. The old ones. The ones who remember."
I meet his eyes. "Then stay forgotten."
He flinches like I hit him, but he nods. That's the first smart thing he's done since I met him.
As he slips away into the fog, I don't feel relief. I feel the weight of inevitability. If Kaelthas is truly returning, there won't be many places left to hide. Not for us. Not for anyone.
And yet, amid all of it, my thoughts turn back to Evelyn.
Not with longing.
With dread.
The next night, I see her again.
She's not at the bookstore. She's at the river.
Standing at the edge of the railing, staring down into the black water like it might speak to her.
I watch from a distance for a long time. She's still. Too still.
Finally, I step closer.
"Looking for something?" I ask.
She doesn't startle. She turns her head slowly, like she expected me to appear.
"Memories," she says. "They get stuck here. In places like this."
I glance out at the water. It's smooth tonight. Lying, like always.
"What kind of memories?"
She shakes her head. "Not mine," she says quietly. "Not all mine."
Her voice falters just a little, like she's afraid of how that sounds aloud. But she doesn't laugh it off this time. Doesn't retreat into a safer sentence.
"You alright?"
She looks at me then. Really looks. And I see something flicker behind her eyes. Not fear. Not pain.
Recognition.
"I've had this feeling," she continues, her gaze fixed on the water. "Since I was a kid. Like there's more inside me than what I remember. Like… pieces of someone else's life stuck to mine. Emotions that don't belong. Fears that have no source. Names I never learned, but still seem to know."
She hesitates.
"Do you believe in the supernatural?" she asks. "Not in the cartoonish way. But in real things. Ghosts that leave more than hauntings. Creatures not yet discovered. Echoes of people who never left."
Her words stir something in me, something deep, and not entirely comfortable.
I go still.
She laughs it off immediately, waving her hand. "Sorry. That sounded weird. Ignore me."
But I don't.
Because it wasn't weird.
It was specific.
Intentional.
And it wakes something ancient inside me.
"What else do you feel?" I ask, voice low.
She hesitates, eyes drifting down again. "Like I'm being… watched. Pulled. Like I'm supposed to remember something, but I don't know what. Or who."
She presses her hand to her chest. "Like there's a door here, but no key."
Her words chill me in a way blood never could.
Because it's not just poetry. It's truth.
Some vampires claim to recognize souls across lifetimes, fragments that repeat, faces that echo. Most think it's sentiment. Madness.
But I've seen it. Once. Long ago.
And now I see it again, standing right in front of me.
Her.
Her.
Not Evelyn.
The essence of something I lost. Something I buried.
But the soul doesn't lie.
She sees the shift in me, and her brow furrows. "What is it?"
"Nothing," I say too quickly. "Just… déjà vu."
She nods slowly, unconvinced. "Right."
We stand in silence again, the city breathing around us.
"I believe," I say slowly, "that the world is older than we admit. And that some things linger. Things we don't have names for anymore."
She turns to me then, eyes searching.
"So maybe I'm not crazy."
"No," I murmur. "Not crazy."
Then she turns away from the water.
"You know," she says, almost playfully, "I still haven't figured you out. Most people fit in neat little boxes. But you… You're like a locked chest with no seams."
"Maybe you're not supposed to open it."
"Maybe I already did."
She smiles as she says it, but her voice carries more truth than she knows.
I reach out, gently, and take her hand.
It's warm.
So alive.
And suddenly, every instinct inside me screams to let go.
But I don't.
Because in that moment, I'm not just a predator pretending to be a man.
I'm a man remembering what it felt like to be touched without fear.
She meets my eyes, her voice quieter now. "Are you afraid of me?"
"No," I whisper.
But I am afraid for her.
Because something has recognized her. Something old.
And if Kaelthas is stirring, if the past is truly waking… then she is more than a girl with a name that echoes.
She's the reason I've been summoned from silence.
She's the reason the dream came.
She may be the reason I was made.
And God help us both if that's true.