Rain battered the windshield like tears of steel, distorting the grotesque gargoyles of the mansion. Their open mouths vomited water stained with rust, as if the house itself was bleeding.
Sanathiel stepped out of the car, his navy suit immaculate against the leaden sky. As he touched the ground, the puddle beneath his feet reflected two figures: his own and that of a wolf with amber eyes, its muzzle stained with blood.
His shadow flickered on the water. For a moment, he no longer had a human shape.
"Sir," the butler bowed his head, offering him an umbrella with a silver handle engraved with containment runes. "Casa Verona insisted you read this before your meeting with the Thirteen."
Sanathiel ignored the object. The icy drops slid over his crescent-shaped scar, igniting a burning that was not only physical. A memory enveloped him with the same intensity as that storm centuries ago.
The air smelled of orange blossoms and iron. Flowers and blood. Beauty and death intertwined.
Zaira screamed his name as the Nevri pack hunted them. Among the trees, silver eyes gleamed with restrained hunger.
But this was no simple attack.
They were waiting for him. Waiting for her.
The rain turned the earth to thick mud. Zaira slipped, her breath caught in fear. Sanathiel could have caught her. But he didn't.
"Do they think their poison affects me?" he murmured as he broke the green wax seal.
A sulfurous smoke escaped from the scroll, winding until it formed a face in the air. Aisha.
She was identical to Zaira. Even the birthmark on her neck. But she was not her.
Sanathiel staggered a step back as if the smoke had struck his chest. The memory of Zaira did not merely visit him… it bled him dry.
The last time he saw her, she was covered in mud and wounds, her black hair plastered to her forehead, her breath trembling.
"You will not die for me," she told him, locking eyes with him—the pale blue gaze that haunted him so much.
"You will live for the both of us. Even if you hate me for it."
And she hated him.
Not for what she did.
But for his lack of courage to tell her he loved her… before the fire consumed her.
Now fate placed before him a shadow of Zaira.
A woman with the same courage. The same light.
The same birthmark on her neck.
"What do you want from me, Moira?" he spat, eyes clouded.
"To see if this time I have the courage to save her?Or to watch her burn too?"
His claws scraped the edge of the table until it splintered.
Because if Aisha died, it would be his fault.
And if she lived…
It would be his fault too.
On her skin, a scar broke the symmetry of her reflection. A deep mark, left by the white wolf.
In the library, the blue curtains fluttered like dancing ghosts. The candle flames flickered as Sanathiel dropped the scroll onto the ebony table.
Bringing the candle close, the fire did not consume the paper. Instead, Latin verses coiled around his wrist like living snakes:
"Sanguis Zaïrae ligat te ad aeternum."(The blood of Zaira binds you forever.)
"Sanathiel!" Mica burst in, her face tense, clutching a pocket watch.
The ticking accelerated, pounding against her skull like a death drum.
"How many more corpses do you need to understand you're alone?"
Mica dropped the watch on the table with a dry snap.
"You keep pretending you're a king among corpses, Sanathiel," her voice was a venomous whisper laced with mockery. "But kings fall too. And your grave has already been dug."
Sanathiel clenched his fist on the table. The wood creaked. The clock stopped ticking for a moment… as if holding its breath.
In the mirror behind Mica, Sanathiel's reflection was no longer human. His nails became claws; his pupils burned like fire trapped in amber.
"Are you here to lecture me?" he whispered, tracing a circle with his own blood on the table. "Or to confess how you sold my location to Falco?"
Mica ground her teeth, still holding the smoldering fragments of the watch.
"Lionel… has Aisha."
Silence fell like a slab.
The metal scorched his skin, but did not let go.
"She will be given away as a bride at dawn."
Sanathiel stood motionless, the storm roaring in his veins.
"It's an edict of the Community of the Thirteen."
Mica looked up, tinged with rage and desperation.
"You can't break it. No one can."
The candle flickered. The air thickened like poisoned molasses, heavy with the weight of a thousand ancestral whispers. Sanathiel recognized it: the same stench of churned earth and dried tears that soaked the nights before the massacres.
Sanathiel turned. His lip split as fangs emerged, drops of black blood trickling to his chin.
"Tell Lionel I'm weaving his shroud with silver threads and laments." He roared, slamming the watch fragments on the table. "When he comes for her, I'll remember how she screamed watching her mother die."
Mica gathered the remains. Inside, a medallion bearing the symbol of the Thirteen pulsed, as if still alive.
"When you fall… not even your curse will remember your name."
In the forest, the stained glass shattered. Falco watched from the darkness, his silhouette barely visible among the trees.
In his hands, a diary opened by itself, the letters bleeding onto the page.
Zaira's drawing distorted, her eyes turning golden.
In the distance, three howls tore through the air.
They were not wolves.
They were something worse.