Where did they go?
I wasn’t sure, that part of my memory was still broken.
I put the flames out in an overflowing sink, nothing left there but charred bone. Mercifully, it ached with healing. Even the touch of sunlight wouldn’t deter my vampiric restoration.
My people begged me for help, for answers, as more deaths reached me. The responsibility bore down on me, threatening to pulverize me into oblivion.
I am king.
I am responsible for all of them.
“What are we to do?” A woman’s voice sloshed in my head, propelling me through time.
Flash, flash, flash. Memories returning, vampires gathering in the caves and tunnels beneath Selene Haven. Structures carved from vampiric engineering, emergency shelters and escape routes we gathered in.
But the humans were right behind us, galvanized into action by the sunlight and hunting us with stakes and explosives, creating apertures for the killing light to spill into, leaving us no choice but to run.
Were the thralls with them?
We ran, we burrowed where we had to, thirsty for blood, desperate for a miracle.
I led my people through the dark until we found a doorway. A strange, shimmering rectangle fringed by glacial blue ice.
Beside it, coiled up, was Medusa. I grabbed her, draping her around my neck. I was beginning to forget her shifter nature and her power as Aidan’s rot seeped into my mind. Rewiring my brain piece by piece, making me see her as a python only.
In desperation, the hum of sunlight constantly at our backs, I made the decision to pass through the door into caverns of ice swarming with monsters.
Frostbrood. We’d discovered a new species and a new world.
The frostbrood attacked, and we fought our way through their tunnels and caverns. Many of us were injured, but none dead, for nothing here could kill us, only break our bones and spill our blood.
Miraculously, we smashed our way to freedom, finding a place of rock and dirt beyond a dead end of ice. We broke out into a new world at nighttime, the air choked with smoke, yet fresh enough to be a relief.
The Hinterlands of Quintrealm. A place of violent storms, of earthquakes, of falling ash and deadly ravines.
I still didn’t know the story of why this place was in such a state, nor did the natives of this realm to this day.
Our freedom came with many prices. Like the freed frostbrood spreading across the world, and the attacks against us when we passed into the Human Domain—with whom the Hinterlands shared their northwestern border.
We were the invaders, not welcome, and so the war began.
More blood.
More death.
And a complete unraveling of my past, thanks to Aidan.
I became a new Silvanus, the one with no memory, sharing the amnesia with my vampires. We fought for our lives, creating a stronghold in this realm with too many holes in our pasts.
Until this very moment.
I collapsed to my knees in the mental Carving Glade, petals falling around me with tears of blood streaming down my face.
My realm was cursed by sunlight. Did it still burn?
I must go back…
My sister may still be alive.
