The castle didn't try to eat her that afternoon. It ignored her. Elara wandered the west wing's labyrinthine corridors, her footsteps echoing. She found dusty drawing rooms with sheet-covered furniture, a gallery of portraits with eyes that seemed to track her (a trick of the light, she told herself firmly), and a music room with a grand piano layered in grey dust. It was a monument to stillness, a museum of a life not lived but endured.
Her analytical mind itched for data, for a pattern beyond 'bored immortal collects statues.' She needed to understand his world, not just his rules. Eventually, she pushed open a pair of towering oak doors and found the library.
It was immense. Three stories of shelves carved from dark wood spiraled up into shadow, connected by delicate iron walkways. The air smelled of aged paper, leather, and that ever-present hint of frost. Light came from glowing orbs floating peacefully near the ceiling. It was breathtaking, and it was the first place that felt *lived-in*. Books lay open on reading stands, a velvet-covered armchair was slightly dented, and a forgotten cup of cold tea sat on a side table.
She was running her fingers along the spine of a massive, gold-tooled volume when his voice came from behind her, making her jump.
"Looking for a specific tactical manual? 'How to Ensnare an Immortal in Ten Easy Steps,' perhaps?"
She turned. Valerius leaned against a bookshelf a few yards away, arms crossed. He'd changed into a deep blue jacket. He looked like he belonged here, a part of the library's atmosphere.
"Just browsing," she said, recovering. "I didn't take you for a reader of romantic poetry." She tapped the spine she'd been touching. It was a volume of sonnets.
He made a dismissive sound. "A gift from a particularly optimistic contestant, centuries ago. I keep it as a reminder of the genre's persistent failure." He pushed off the shelf and walked toward her. "Do you read?"
"When I have time. Mostly reports, analyses." She looked around. "This is… impressive."
"It passes the time." He stopped beside her, looking up at the shelves. "What do your reports tell you about eternity, Elara the Analyst?"
The question was a trap, or a test. She considered her words. "They don't. My work was about the immediate future. Next quarter's profits, next year's market trends. Eternity isn't a useful data point in finance."
"How practical." He walked to a reading stand and closed the open book upon it—a treatise on celestial mechanics. "Eternity is the only data point that matters here. And it renders all your human endeavors… quaint. Pointless." He turned to face her, his expression cool. "You build your little cities, write your little books, fall in your little loves, and then you die. Dust. And a century later, no one remembers the color of your eyes or the sound of your laugh. What is the point?"
The contempt wasn't personal; it was vast, cosmic. It should have made her feel small. Instead, it sparked a familiar fire—the frustration of dealing with a grand, obtuse theory that ignored practical reality.
"The point isn't to be remembered forever," she said, her voice sharper than she intended. "The point is to *live* while you're here. To feel things, to learn, to connect, even if it's just for a moment. Your 'quaint' human endeavors are what make the time *matter*."
"Matter to whom?" he challenged, stepping closer. "To you? You'll be gone. To the world? The world forgets. It is a cycle of meaningless noise. I have watched it spin for centuries. The same wars with different weapons. The same loves with different faces. The same art, repackaged. It is a wheel, and you are hamsters running on it, thinking you're getting somewhere."
"And you're not on the wheel?" she shot back, anger overriding caution. "You sit in your castle, frozen in your own way, collecting statues of people who tried to reach you! You've taken yourself *out* of the mess, the noise, the *life* of it, and you call it pointless from the sidelines! That's not wisdom, Your Grace. That's surrender. That's boredom so deep you've mistaken it for philosophy."
The air in the library crackled. The floating orbs dimmed. Valerius's face went perfectly still, his eyes turning to chips of glacial ice. She had gone too far. She had insulted not just his mood but his entire existence.
"You dare—" he began, his voice a low, dangerous whisper.
"I dare to tell you the truth!" she interrupted, the words pouring out. She was terrified, but she was also furious. At him, at the game, at the waste. "You asked me for honesty. That's it. You think our lives are fleeting and pointless? Fine. Maybe they are. But we *choose* our point. We find meaning in the chaos. You? You've had eternity handed to you, and you've used it to build a beautiful, silent, *empty* museum. Who's really wasting their time?"
He was in front of her in an instant, not with a vampire's blur, but with a swift, predatory stride that made her stumble back against the bookshelves. He loomed over her, his cool presence enveloping her. She could see the faint, unnatural silver flecks in his grey irises.
"You speak of choices," he hissed. "What choice did I have? This 'gift' of eternity was a curse laid upon me. This castle is a gilded cage. This game is a recurring joke at my expense. You come here with your seventy-year lifespan and your vibrant, *messy* little heart, and you lecture me on wasting time?"
His anger was a living thing, cold and sharp. But beneath it, she heard something else—not just indignation, but a raw, old pain. It wasn't a calculated reveal; it was a slip, a crack in the immortal façade caused by her direct hit.
She didn't apologize. She held his furious gaze, her breath coming fast. "Then break the cage," she said, her voice steadier now. "Stop playing the game's joke. You have all the time in the world. Figure it out. Or is that too much effort? Is it easier to just sit on your throne and be bored?"
For a long, terrifying moment, she thought he would strike her. Or freeze her where she stood. His hand twitched at his side.
Then, the anger seemed to drain from him, leaving behind a profound, weary emptiness more unsettling than his rage. He took a step back, the cold energy around him dissipating.
"You are…" he searched for a word, "…infuriating."
"I've been told that before," Elara said, her knees weak with relief.
"I do not doubt it." He turned away from her, running a hand through his pale hair. He looked at the closed book on celestial mechanics. "Get out of my library."
It was a dismissal, but not a final one. It was the order of someone who needed to be alone.
Elara didn't hesitate. She walked quickly toward the doors, her heart still hammering. As she reached them, his voice stopped her, quiet now.
"Elara."
She turned.
He hadn't moved. His back was to her. "Moonrise. The main hall. Do not be late."
She left, pulling the heavy doors shut behind her. She leaned against the cold wood in the corridor, letting out a shuddering breath. That had been a colossal risk. She'd attacked the core of his cynicism head-on.
But as her panic subsided, a new realization dawned. He hadn't punished her. He'd gotten angry—*genuinely* angry, not performatively bored. He'd shown her a flash of the pain underneath. And then he'd told her to come to dinner.
He was still collecting data. And so was she. The argument wasn't a setback. It was the first real interaction they'd had. It was messy, loud, and honest. It was, in a way, terribly human.
Inside the library, Valerius stared at the books without seeing them. *Infuriating* was too simple a word. She had looked at his eternity, his prison, his curated despair, and called it *surrender*. She had taken the bleak truth of his existence and reflected it at him not with pity, but with defiant, illogical, vibrant contempt.
He picked up the cold cup of tea from the side table. The ghost servants hadn't cleared it. He looked at his reflection in the dark liquid. A frozen face in a silent castle.
*"You've used it to build a beautiful, silent, empty museum."*
His hand tightened on the cup. For the first time in a very, very long time, the silence of his museum felt accusing. And the memory of her angry, alive eyes was louder than any of the ghosts.