The air in the Legacy Tower of the Carcalidum castle was always cold a biting, eternal winter that whispered of countless lost centuries.
But as King Theroren stood looking out over the moon-drenched cliffs, a warmth radiated from his chest, barely contained by the thick velvet of his royal coat
This warmth was the secret and the curse of their lineage the Burning Heart.
His younger sister, Eva, approached him, her steps silent on the polished obsidian floor.
She carried the restless curiosity that only youth and innocence could sustain.
"Brother," she murmured, her voice a careful question against the solemn silence.
"They say all vampires possess hearts of ice, an absence of heat.
If that is true, then why must we hide ours? Why must the kings of Carcalidum always conceal the fire within?"
Theroren did not turn. He gazed at the endless, churning sea below, the water reflecting the cruel crimson moon.
"We hide it, Eva, because fire can be betrayed," he finally said, his voice a low, resonant baritone.
"We hide it to protect it from the very world we were supposed to guard.
But you ask why we hate the witches, particularly the Stiltworts, when our very being is meant to repel malice?"
He finally turned, his eyes holding the immense weight of a betrayal a thousand years old.
"There was a time, my sister, when the Crimson Court was not isolated.
In those first centuries, the Stiltwort witches were our only trusted allies.
They were masters of the earth and the vine, renowned for their incredible knowledge of medicinal herbs remedies that could soothe a vampire's eternal restlessness and aid even our ancient wounds."
Eva stepped closer, hypnotized by the pain in his history.
"Our mother and father, the King and Queen before me, placed absolute, fatal trust in them. They relied entirely on the Stiltworts to provide their daily restoratives."
Theroren's fist clenched.
The light from his hidden heart seemed to beat through his coat, a pulse of pure, contained rage.
"But one solstice night, the restorative draughts delivered by the Stiltworts contained a silent, slow poison—a mix of deadly, meticulously gathered herbs.
It was not quick; it was calculated. It killed our parents over weeks, weakening their ancient vampire strength until they were finally extinguished."
A tear of pure, red sorrow tracked down his cheek—a rare sight for a king of the night.
"They did not kill us with fangs or blades, Eva.
They killed us with trust.
From that moment, the entire section of the forest where the Stiltworts kept their gardens and manufactured their herbs was branded Forbidden.
We placed a powerful, lineage-binding curse upon it.
Nothing grown there since is considered pure, and no Carcalidum is permitted to step on that tainted ground."
Theroren looked at his sister, his gaze hardening.
"We may have a burning heart, Eva, but the Stiltworts taught us that trust is the deadliest poison to our lineage.
And that is why we hate them."
Far from the towering Legacy Tower, in a small, cramped study smelling of dried roots and old parchment, Andrea Stiltwort worked.
Andrea was the youngest of the few remaining witches, and she was weary of the perpetual scorn.
She was surrounded not by magical relics, but by stacks of brittle, antique ledgers—the very records of her ancestors.
"It doesn't make sense," she muttered, tracing a passage in a centuries-old journal.
"The Carcalidum lineage survived the great plagues, the witch hunts why would my ancestors risk everything for an assassination that gained them nothing?"
The official story, taught since childhood, was that the Stiltworts were mad with power and desired the ruin of the vampiric dynasty. But the journal hinted at something else.
A passage, half-burned and smeared with a dried, metallic substance, was barely legible:
The payment was exacted.
The Shadow demanded the ash leaf. They left us no choice.
Forgive us, for the curse will fall not on the dead, but on the place itself
Andrea snapped the journal shut.
The "curse" the Carcalidum had placed on their ancestral herb grounds had been effective; it was known as the Banished Land, feared by all Stiltworts.
She realized the truth might not be in the written history, but in the silence.
The forbidden place was not just cursed; it was preserved.
The Carcalidum ban had created the perfect, untouched vault.
If she could brave the King's curse and enter the Banished Land, she might not find the poison, but the true records the evidence that could finally clear her family's name, or prove the Carcalidum King right.
She wrapped her cloak tightly around her. Tomorrow, she would walk into the past.