We had barely crossed the invisible border of the central circle when already my steps, as if moved by an ancient will lodged beneath the skin, guided me without needing to think, almost in spite of myself, toward one of the camps erected in this too-vast silence. The camp of the vampires. My camp.
Each stride, though measured, seemed to carry an echo I did not yet understand, as if the earth itself recognized me. Or called me.
And I let it happen. Without haste. Without tension.
Only with that strange sensation that it could not be otherwise.
My current race. The one whose traits Lysara had gradually adopted, without even trying to force them, as if her body had simply recognized what it was meant to become. And in a way — yes — the one I had chosen myself, on an ancient night, at the bend of a pact, a cry, a refusal to die as I was.
Not out of biological necessity. But out of will. Out of affirmation.
