The Sanctuary of Decay
Far from the noise of the Knights Stalkers' headquarters, in the misty hills overlooking the Tiber Valley, stands a ruined Roman villa. Here, in the darkness of an atrium where moss has devoured the marble, Silas—the man the Order calls the Gambler—has gone to ground. But the man who entered the Ebony Gate centuries ago is not the one who emerged.
Silas sat alone on a stone block, surrounded by the deathly silence of the ruins. The immortality of the Fountain of Youth still flowed in his veins, but his stay in the void between dimensions had altered his very structure. His physical appearance had become fragile, almost translucent in places. Under the moonlight, his skin looked like wet parchment, and his hands, once elegant, trembled with molecular instability.
To Silas, reality was no longer firm ground, but a slippery surface. Every second spent in our world gnawed at him, the physical dimension rejecting his body impregnated with ebony energy. He was not a predator by choice, but out of a visceral and terrifying necessity.
"The Exile's Hunger"
The sound of footsteps echoed at the entrance of the villa. A lost tourist, or perhaps a local grave robber, was venturing into the ruins. Silas did not move, but his eyes, glassy blue and without pupils, lit up with a primal hunger.
He had no accomplices, no servants. Other creatures were nothing more than batteries to him, reservoirs of time he had to drain so as not to evaporate.
The man entered the atrium, a flashlight in his hand. "Who's there?" he called out, his voice shaking with instinctive fear.
Silas stood up. His movements were jerky, like a film with missing frames. In an instant, he was upon the intruder. He used no weapon; he needed no brute force. He simply placed his hand on the man's throat.
The victim's scream died in his throat. What Silas extracted was not blood, but the very essence of the man's presence in the present. Beneath Silas's fingers, the tourist's skin withered, his hair turned white and fell to dust, his eyes sank into their sockets. In less than ten seconds, the man was nothing more than a dried mummy, an empty shell whose every minute of life had been sucked dry.
Silas inhaled deeply. The silvery glow of his skin stabilized, his contours became sharper. He felt, for a few more hours, anchored in reality.
"Whispers from the Gate"
Despite his physical solitude, Silas was not entirely cut off from the Order. The resonance gem he had stolen from the Palladium vibrated on the stone table. It was not a classic communication tool, but a link to the mind of the one who had freed him.
A voice rose from the void, a cold echo that seemed to come from inside his own skull. "You are weakening, Silas. Your consumption is increasing. Soon, an entire city will not be enough to keep you here."
Silas sketched a smile that looked like a tear. "My fragility is my strength. The more I disintegrate, the more I can bend the laws of this world. Rose and Maya are approaching, I can feel it. Their energies are... vibrant. Maya especially. Her immortality is the key. If I absorb her, I will never again need to feed on these mortal insects."
The voice paused. "Rose is not an easy prey. She is unstable, like you."
"Rose is an error of nature," Silas spat. "A chimera who thinks she's human. She is the perfect entertainment before the main course. I will use her to lure Maya into the darkness of the catacombs. That is where it all began, and that is where I will finish my work."
"The Solitude of the Game Master"
Silas turned to the debris of the villa. He picked up a gold coin, but it instantly crumbled between his fingers, unable to withstand his touch for long. He had nothing human left, no connection to warmth or affection. His solitude was total, a desert of ice surrounded by fire.
He remembered the Fountain, the sweetness of the water and Maya's skin against his. This memory was the only thing he had left, but he had turned it into a hateful obsession. He didn't want to find Maya to love her, but to merge their eternities and never again feel this fear of disappearing.
He left the atrium, walking toward the hills. Wherever his feet touched the grass, it instantly yellowed and died, leaving a trail of desolation behind him.
"Bloom Town, Rome... all of this is just dust that doesn't know it yet," he whispered. "The great game is almost over."
He vanished into the Italian night, a flickering shadow, a walking rift in the fabric of the universe, heading toward the Catacombs of St. Callixtus. The hunter was hungry, and the next game would be played with the blood of the Knights Stalkers.