RHIANNONE'S POV
The Moon Sanctum breathes like a living thing at night. Its pillars hum with quiet hymns, and mournful, as if the stones themselves dripped every drop of blood that was ever spilled.
I stand barefoot on the cold marble, my pulse aligned with the winds rhythm. Each brush of wind carries the scent of incense and steel, a strange marriage of devotion and violence. The High Priestess calls it the colliarne where faith and fury must learn to coexist if one is to survive what is coming.
They say the Moon watches, but sometimes I feel like it judges.
Tonight, the head priestess moved like a shadow made of silk. Her staff cracking against the floor three times. "Again," she commands. I lift the crescent-shaped blade, muscles trembling. My wrists aching, but I refuse to give in. Each strike sends ripples of silver energy through the air. The training ground of the Sanctum was built upon ley lines, veins of lunar energy that amplify every motion, every breath.
The priestess circles me like a vulture measuring the lifespan of a dying animal. "Your stance betrays your mind," she says coldly. "The Oracle trusted you with more than prophecy. You carry the blood bond of Valerius himself. If you cannot master it, it will consume you."
The name burns through me like venom. Valerius. The blood king. The executioner. The exile.
I can still feel his presence in the back of my mind, like frost crawling beneath my skin. When I close my eyes, I still see the moment his fangs tore through the Oracle's throat. I feel her dying breath like wind against my cheek. I wake drenched in sweat, trembling, as if her death echoes inside me.
But worse than the nightmares is the pull. The bond he left behind.
There are moments during meditation when my pulse doesn't feel like mine. It beats heavier, slower, and insatiable as if something else breathes through me. Something watching. Waiting.
Later that night
The Sanctum falls silent, but the Moon burns red. I sit before the sacred mirror, its surface made from carsadian rocks laced with lunar crystal. They say it reflects not what is seen, but what Fate draw in. I draw the sigils of awakening upon the surface with starless dust. The reflection flickers, then bends.
And suddenly, I'm no longer looking at myself.
I see him.
Valerius, not as he was in the temple, but deeper. Trapped within the Veil's abyss. His form is monstrous, shifting between shadow and flesh. His skin glows faintly from within, veins lit like rivers of magma. And before him, countless shadow creatures rise from the mist, shrieking.
He moves like wrath incarnate. His hand splits the air, claws of blood tear through the creatures. Each one that falls dissolves into black mist that flows back into him. His wounds close instantly, as if time itself kneels before him.
The power radiating from him is almost unbearable. Then I hear the whisper, it was inhuman.
Vraa'alkum.
A surge of pain splits my temples. Blood trickles from my nose. Then the mirror starts cracking slowly as if its following an already predetermined path of destruction.
Valerius turns, his eyes like twin eclipses, and for a heartbeat, I swear he sees me. The bond ignites like wildfire.
"You shouldn't be here. "The words slam through my mind. I stagger back, gasping, clutching my chest. The mirror fractures completely.
"You call to me, even as you are afraid of me. Is this what the Oracle taught you? To despise what you are?"
His voice isn't entirely his, it's layered, distorted, as though echoing through a thousand lifetimes.
"I didn't call you!" I shout into the silence. But the mirror responds with his laugh, low, and sorrowful.
"You think your will alone binds you, child of the Flame. But blood remembers. Even when the gods forget."
Then the reflection dies, and I collapse.
When I wake, the High Priestess is standing above me, her expression unreadable. "You saw him again," she says quietly. I nod, still shaking. "I don't know what I saw in the Veil."
"Good," she replies. "Staring too deep into the veil will destroy your will. The Veil was made to punish those who defied the Divines Laws. Let it devour him until nothing remains."
But I can't tell her what I truly saw, that I saw another Valerius who was growing stronger. That every creature he destroys only fuels his anger.
Days pass. My training intensified. We spar with moon-forged weapons under the rain. We chant the hymns that summon spectral guardians. The priestess teaches me to fight not as a mortal, but as a warrior. I bleed, I fall, I try to rise again. The Sanctum accepts nothing less.
But every night, the dreams return. And every dream shows me more of Valerius's imprisonment and his evolution.
I wake in cold sweat. My hands trembling. I can feel faint burns on my palms, as if the cold had seared into me through the dream.
And here, in the mortal plane, strange things begin to happen.
The witches of the Sanctum whisper that the tides have reversed. That shadows linger longer than light. That the dead murmur near the wells. Even the wolves in the Eastern Domain refuse to howl under the Blood Moon.
It's as if something vast was shifting while we were left behind.
The head priestess summons the council. "The Veil has been torn," she says. "Its guardian seals weaken. If Valerius attacks before the convergence, we will not survive another First War."
But deep within me, I already know, the convergence has already begun.
The Training Hall .Two Moons Later
I stand before the circle of the priestesses, the mark of lunar initiation glowing faintly across my collarbone. "Step forward, Rhiannon," the High Priestess commands. "Today you are not merely a disciple of the Sanctum. You are the weapon it wields."
I kneel. The ceremonial blade touches my shoulder. I feel a rush of energy through my veins cold, silver blade on my shoulders. The moonlight burns brighter through the stained glass, igniting the air with celestial heat.
But then, everything stops.
The air shifts. The moonlight turns crimson.
The priestesses staggers off her pedestal, their chants begin faltering. From the mirror behind the altar, black mist begins to pour, slow at first, then violent. The sigils on the floor flare red, corrupted by something evil than the Sanctum itself.
And then, I hear him again.
"Rhiannon."
His voice isn't distant this time. It's here. Inside the Sanctum. Inside my bones.
I turn, and for an instant, the silhouette of Valerius stands within the smoke, half-real, half-shadow, eyes burning like two dying suns.
The priestess raises her staff. "Do not let him through!" she cries. They chant spells of sealing, but my blood betrays me. I feel it surge toward him, pulled like a tide. The bond between us hums violently, and unbroken.
He reaches towards me, his hand shimmering through the smoke. I feel the air fracture between worlds.
"You still don't understand what they've done to you." His voice drips with something between sorrow and fury.
The mirror shatters. I scream.
When I open my eyes again, he is gone, but there's a mark that burns faintly upon my palm.
That night, as I stand on the Sanctum's roof, watching the Blood Moon rise, the wind carried whispers of war.
Scouts reported that the vampire clans were fracturing, their bloodlines fighting over allegiance. The witches of the northern covens had sealed their gates.
Even the wolves stir uneasily beneath the crimson sky.
The world felt like it's holding its breath.
And in my reflection, I saw the faint outline of him again, Valerius, standing over the Oracle's dead body, whispering across the distance.
"When the blood remembers, no sanctum can hide you."
The wind howls. The moon burns brighter. And I realize, this is no longer training. It's war beginning to seep into my reality.