Epilogue
Xander
The Rot Beneath the Hunt
There is a differencebetween patience and decay.
For most of my life, I believed I understood patience.I believed it was discipline, faith, and strategy.The quiet certainty that God rewards those who endure long enough to see evil destroyed.
Now I understand something else entirely.Patience rots.It festers.It hollows a man from the inside until all that remains is the thing he is waiting to destroy.
And still, Aziel lives.
My cane strikes the stone floor as I cross the war room, the sound echoing sharply through the empty chamber.Once this space held maps, strategy tables, and reports stacked in careful order.Now it holds only fragments of information and too many unanswered questions.
Too many failures.Now there are three teams gone, not defeated, just ...gone.
No bodies.No survivors.No explanations.Just silence.And silence is never natural in war.Silence means something is watching back.
I stop in front of the central table where the single, newest map lies stretched beneath the flickering light.Pins mark suspected territories, old feeding grounds, and travel corridors used by covens when relocating across provinces.
Every single one of them is useless.Every single one is wrong.
“They’re moving again,” Oliver says from behind me.
I don’t turn.“How do you know?”
“Because they aren’t where they were supposed to be.”
My fingers tighten around the handle of my cane.“They were never supposed tobeanywhere,” I say quietly.“They were supposed to be dead.”
Oliver exhales slowly, and that fucking sound irritates me more than words ever could.It shows resignation, acceptance, and fucking weakness.
“They’re not ordinary vampires, Father.”
I turn slowly.Deliberately.“And what,” I ask carefully, “exactlyisan ordinary vampire?”
He doesn’t answer immediately because he knows the truth.There is no such thing.There never has been.
“They’re organized,” he finally says.“Structured.Protected.Someone is shielding them.”
My jaw tightens.
Shielding.
