The Space Aldric Left

In the vast great hall, the roar of the blizzard outside seemed to fill the empty space Aldric had just left behind. Only Victor and Vanya remained.

Victor stood motionless beside the oak table, like a convicted man with his head bowed, waiting for the court's final sentence. He knew he had been complicit through his carelessness, knew he had tolerated a crime because of a long-running misunderstanding. He stood there, his chest not rising with any breath, waiting for Vanya to draw the silver blade at her hip, or simply turn her back and walk out of his ruined life forever.

But Vanya didn't draw her blade, and she didn't walk away.

She walked slowly across the cold stone floor and came to stand right in front of him. This was her moment of choosing, the fated line she had to cross.

Vanya raised her pale gray eyes and looked straight into Victor's blazing red eyes, full of self-reproach. Her lip curled, and a sour, bitter smile appeared on her delicate face:

"I'm not leaving."

Victor stared at her, dazed, his long lashes trembling: "Vanya... I deceived you. I closed my eyes to the bodies."

"You think I have any right to judge you, Victor?" Vanya's voice was cruelly calm.

"Before I ever set foot in this castle, this hand of mine had taken the lives of 27 people. Some were targets who deserved to die, but there were also innocent workers who just happened to get in the way of my missions. I stabbed them through the heart and cut their throats without flinching on Aegis's orders, and I never once asked whether they had families. I'm a killing demon wearing the name of justice."

"There was a night watchman in Newark," she said, more quietly. "Sixty-something, and he came around a corner at the wrong time and saw my face. I never even learned his name."

She said it flatly, the way she might report the weather, and her hands at her sides were perfectly still. Only the thread under her breastbone gave her away, and he felt it pull tight enough to hurt.

She stepped even closer, raised her warm mortal hand, and pressed it flat against the spot over Victor's cold heart, beneath the dark brocade robe:

"You were careless because you looked the other way when it came to your servant. I was ruthless because I turned myself into a killing tool with no feelings. We both have hands so dirty they'll never wash clean, standing side by side in front of the bodies and the lies. I'm no better than you, so I won't hand out saintly forgiveness, and you're no nobler than me, so don't torture yourself like some martyr."

Two people with dirty hands standing side by side before brutal secrets—that was the darkest, truest, most unforgiving kind of love. There was no easy forgiveness, no fake words of comfort, only two guilty souls seeing a grim kinship in each other.

"Those 14 workers went through the vault to reach the organization on the other side," Vanya said decisively, her hand pressing hard against his chest.

"They might not be dead. I'm going to find them, and you're coming with me to pay this debt for your own soul."

Victor slowly raised his large, cold hand, closed it over her small, warm hand on his chest, and held it tight:

"All right. I'll go with you."

After that promise, a rare silence settled between them. Victor looked at Vanya—the woman who had just torn down the thin line between good and evil with her own hands to step over into the dark with him. He let go of her hand and walked slowly toward the stone fireplace in the corner of the great hall. The half-burned pine logs crackled, throwing flickering orange-gold light across his angular, stone-carved face.

"You never knocked on my door to ask what I am, and you never trembled either..." Victor said in a low voice, staring deep into the flickering flames. "You must have already guessed something about the creature called a vampire, haven't you?"

Vanya didn't look away; she walked closer and leaned back against the oak table, arms folded across her chest:

"Aegis made us memorize a few lines from old records before we went into the field. I know your kind don't turn to ash in the sun like the low-level demons in folk legends, and that light only weakens your strength and your healing. I know the only weakness that can finish you off is a silver-sheathed stake through the heart. But... that's all Aegis lets a killer know. They want us to see you as monsters that need to be destroyed, not understood. About the rest of your world, I know nothing at all."

Victor gave a self-mocking smile, his back casting a tall black shadow on the stone wall:

"Aegis only taught you how to kill, not the merciless hierarchy of my kind. Vampires in this world are not all alike. Purebloods like me are primordial immortals who have existed for a thousand years, with absolute power and the ability to wield Blood Armor. But vassal families like Aldric's... they're only half-vampires. They have their own limited life span; they live a little over 200 years at most, and then they age, wither, and fade away like mortals."

He turned around and leaned back against the edge of the fireplace, the firelight blazing in his red eyes:

"This world has long been split into two sides locked in a fight to the death. On one side are the Pureblood aristocrats, trying to preserve the original blood in their solitude. We hold an absolute taboo against drinking mortal blood, because the poison of human greed, craving, and chaotic emotion corrupts ancient blood cells and turns us into mindless demons with an insane thirst for blood."

He paused for a moment, his voice dropping, full of contempt:

"The other side... is the power-mad led by House Dumont. They're a coalition of twisted families that deliberately drink mortal blood to gain a violent burst of strength in a short time. They use networks of slave trading and underground blood deals to manipulate human kingdoms from the shadows. The utmost hunger for power has turned House Dumont into a ruthless criminal empire. And those 14 workers who went through that vault... are exactly the kind of merchandise they crave most to keep their army going."

Vanya listened in silence. The full picture of this dark world slowly came into focus in her mind: on one side, the lonely ancient aristocrats bitterly trying to stay pure, and on the other, those corrupted by power who were ready to turn all of humanity into a blood farm.

She looked at Victor, and something deep flickered across her pale gray eyes:

"And you? Nine hundred years of living in this loneliness, clinging to that pure blood, for what, when all you have around you are lies, betrayal, and the ghosts of the past?"

Victor took one step forward. The icy air radiating from his body wrapped around the space around Vanya and overpowered the warmth of the fireplace. He bent down and looked deep into her pale gray eyes, his rough voice shaking with a fierce intensity from the very bottom of his heart:

"I used to think preserving this blood was an eternal punishment. I've seen dynasties fall, seen tens of thousands of mortals born and then crumble into dust, seen even my most loyal butler quietly turn his back and walk away. I lived in such utter loneliness that I thought of death as a release... Until you showed up."

There had never been a sweet declaration of love between them. They didn't use sappy words like "love" or "cherish," because in this dark world full of blood and tears, those words were far too cheap and fake. Their feelings were carved out of a stark acceptance of fate.

"You're not afraid of me, you don't flatter me, and you're the only one who's ever dared to put a silver blade to my throat," Victor murmured, his large hand rising but stopping in midair, only a few inches from the warm skin of her cheek.

"Vanya, you're the only pain that makes me feel alive in this rotten world. I don't know when it happened... but you've become the one exception in this world I'd be willing to give my life for."

Vanya went still. Her heart—frozen after hundreds of bloody kills—now jumped in wild, jangling beats. She looked at the proud vampire who was laying down a thousand years of pride in front of her.

She reached up on her own, pressed her warm hand over his cold, hesitating one, and pulled his hand to her cheek:

"Me too, Victor. I don't know if this is love. But from this moment on, if the whole world or the Dumont empire comes hunting you, I'll be the one standing at your back taking the blade. And if one day the poison corrupts you into a mindless monster... I'll be the one who drives the silver stake into your heart with my own hand."

It was the most ruthless, deepest, most fated declaration of love two people with bloodstained hands could make. A promise to live together, or to finish each other off with their own hands to keep the last of their dignity.

Victor smiled—a rare, genuine smile without any bitterness or self-mockery. He gently squeezed her hand: "All right. If that day comes, you have my permission."

Neither of them said anything more. The fire burned down to red coals, and the snow hissed against the tall windows, and for a little while the great ruined hall felt almost like a room where people could live.

A long, warm silence settled between them—a rare light shining on two dark souls. Only when a pine log in the fireplace crackled and threw a streak of orange light across the stone floor did the stray glow catch on the stone shelf beside the door of the great hall, flashing a cold metallic gleam.

Vanya gently let go of Victor's hand and stepped over to pick up the object Aldric had deliberately left behind

It was a dark blue wax seal, engraved with the emblem of an ancient white lily rising from sharp thorns.

Victor walked slowly up behind her. But when his blazing red eyes fell on the white lily seal in Vanya's palm, the whole body of the 900-year-old vampire suddenly went rigid. Killing intent flared and died in an instant, replaced by a sheer horror that had never before appeared on his face.

"What is it?" Vanya asked, sensing the change in the cold air around him and turning at once.

Victor stared at the white lily seal. His lips trembled slightly, his blazing red eyes contracted, and he slowly spoke a name that carried a thousand years of dark memory:

"Seraphine."