Morning arrived over Greenwalls without warmth. The sun rose pale and distant, veiled behind layers of cloud, its light spilling weakly over rooftops and frozen streets. Pine trees surrounding the city shimmered with frost, their tall forms resembling cathedral spires carved from ice, solemn and watchful. Smoke drifted lazily from chimneys as villagers moved through their routines, boots crunching against snow, breath fogging the air. Bells rang from the square, steady and reassuring, calling the city into order.
Nyx Gald ignored all of it.
While Greenwalls woke to structure and schedules, Nyx slipped free of them. He did not put on his school coat. He did not reach for his books. Instead, he wrapped himself in heavier wool, tucked the Book of Blood beneath his arm, and left the house before the bells finished ringing. He moved quickly, decisively, as though afraid that hesitation might break whatever fragile resolve had taken root inside him overnight.
He climbed.
Past the last houses, past the roads beaten flat by years of footsteps, into the rising wilderness where the city thinned into silence. Snow deepened beneath his boots, untouched and pristine. The air sharpened, biting at his lungs. With every step upward, Greenwalls shrank behind him, until it became nothing more than a suggestion of stone and smoke far below.
Here, there were no rules. No eyes.
Nyx found a stone ledge overlooking a ravine, the wind howling through skeletal trees stripped bare for winter. He sat, steadying his breath, and opened the book.
The pages responded instantly.
The script seemed darker than before, thicker, as though the ink itself had deepened overnight. The words no longer waited politely on parchment—they pulsed. They whispered. Nyx felt them seep beneath his skin, syncing with his heartbeat, dissolving the world he knew into something sharper, richer, crueler.
The Mirror World revealed itself in fragments—cities carved from black stone, skies forever starless, castles drinking the light around them. Blood was not simply spilled there; it was currency, language, devotion. Sacrifice shaped landscapes. Curses outlived empires.
Nyx leaned closer, breath shallow, utterly consumed.
Then a single line burned brighter than the rest.
Offer a drop of your blood, and the truth shall be revealed.
He did not question it.
Nyx pressed his fingertip against the corner of a page. Pain flared—brief, clean—and a bead of crimson welled up, trembling before falling onto the parchment.
The world shattered.
The sky split apart with a sound like glass tearing. Snow dissolved into ash. The blue daylight collapsed inward, folding into itself until only an emerald moon remained, vast and glowing, pulsing with unnatural life. The mountains twisted into jagged crimson cliffs. Pine trees groaned, their trunks elongating, branches warping into skeletal arms reaching blindly through the air.
The wind reeked of iron and smoke.
Nyx stood frozen at the center of it all, heart pounding—not with fear, but with something dangerously close to joy.
This world was wrong.
And it was beautiful.
He laughed softly, the sound ripped away by the howling air, and moved forward. He leapt across blackened stone, boots skidding on surfaces slick with dried blood. He ran his fingers along hollow bark that felt warm beneath his touch, inhaled the bitter scent of decay and power. The emerald moon bathed him in green fire, stretching his shadow into something monstrous that followed eagerly behind.
Time ceased to exist.
Nyx forgot the bells. Forgot the city. Forgot the boy he had been yesterday.
Only when the cold sharpened into something unbearable did reality claw its way back into his awareness. The thought of the Lory household surfaced reluctantly, like an unwanted obligation. With visible reluctance, he closed the book.
The world snapped back.
Snow. Pines. Dying daylight.
Nyx staggered, breath catching—not from cold, but from loss. He descended the mountain slowly, clutching the book to his chest like something living, every step away from the Mirror World feeling like abandonment.
By the time he reached the Lory house, lanterns glowed in the windows.
Diana Lory stood at the door, rigid and furious. "Why are you late?" she snapped.
Nyx didn't slow. "You are nothing to me," he replied flatly, brushing past her as if she were air.
He went straight upstairs to Eleus.
Eleus embraced him immediately, holding on longer than usual. Nyx noticed the hollowness beneath his eyes, the way exhaustion clung to him like rot. "Why don't you sleep?" Nyx asked quietly.
"I'm just getting old," Eleus said, forcing a smile that convinced no one.
Later, on the balcony, Nyx reopened the book. It spoke now of vampires—of choosing a form, an age, a perfection, and wearing it forever. Immortality not as curse, but as control.
Nyx traced the letters, breath unsteady.
The balcony door creaked.
Eleus entered, holding a letter delivered by a sparrow. He shoved it away too quickly. Nyx noticed the drawer behind him—stuffed with unopened envelopes, wax seals marked by unfamiliar black sigils.
"Why don't you read them?" Nyx asked.
Eleus said nothing.
At dinner, Farana handed Nyx a tray. "Take this to Eleus."
When Nyx returned upstairs, the washroom door was closed. Water ran endlessly. Too long.
Fifty minutes.
Nyx knocked. No answer.
He pushed the door open.
Steam poured out.
Eleus lay submerged in the tub, eyes open, lips barely above water.
Nyx reacted instantly—dragging him out, water flooding the floor, heart slamming against his ribs. "Are you mad?" he hissed, shaking as he dressed him.
"I want to die," Eleus whispered, over and over, before collapsing into sleep.
Nyx sat beside him long after, staring at the drawer. At the letters. At the truth pressing against his mind.
Something had its claws in Eleus.
And Nyx knew—without doubt—that whatever it was did not belong to the human world.