The vampire and his Bride

In the middle of the night, in the bedchamber, suddenly her windows went wide open.

Lora's fingers brushed the edges of the bed.

She looked around and couldn't find Dorian. She was becoming weak and all her strength caged by the reality.

She didn't notice the candlelight dimming.

She didn't feel the cold creep into her chamber.

Only when the world tilted, shadows spinning in dizzying spirals, did she realize something was pulling her under, not physically, but deeper, into the marrow of her blood.

A thread of power unravelled, and then.

She fell.

Not down, but through.

The Dreamworld

The silence struck first.

Then came the heat.

Lora stood in a grand hall, unfamiliar, but known to her bones. Pillars of ivory bone reached into a blackened sky, while the floor beneath her feet pulsed like living marble. Crimson banners hung limp, soaked in something darker than blood.

Before her, a throne of twisted iron and flame.

And seated on it,

A girl.

Ten? Maybe Eleven. Her long silver hair flowed like starlight, but her eyes… her eyes were bright gold rimmed in red.

Eyes Lora had seen only once before. In a cradle of screams and shadow.

The girl looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood.

"What have you done?" Lora tried to shout, but the words echoed like dust.

The girl looked up.

And smiled.

The Vision Fractures

Suddenly, the hall shifted.

Flashes of war. Smoke rising from human cities. Vampires feeding in the open. Dhampirs leading armies under crescent moons. Magic erupting from the earth like geysers.

And the girl, her daughter, stood at the center of it all.

Both queen and destroyer.

At her side: a blade, curved, obsidian, glowing with Lora's own sigil. One that should not exist.

One Lora remembered forging for herself.

"Only the Queen can kill the daughter," a voice whispered behind Lora, ancient and female.

"Unless the daughter kills the queen first."

The girl turned again, her voice like silk dipped in fire.

"You abandoned me."

"I didn't know, I couldn't—"

"You chose them over me," she said bitterly. "You always do."

She raised the blade.

And Lora's heart screamed, not from fear, but heartbreak.

"You don't have to do this—" Lora begged.

But the girl's expression cracked, and momentarily, the child inside her was visible. Lost. Wounded. Wanting to be held.

And then—

She drove the dagger forward.

It pierced Lora's chest.

The world shattered.

Back in the present world.

Lora gasped awake, lungs burning.

Her bedsheets were drenched in sweat.

Her chest ached, exactly where the dagger struck.

Blood smeared her palm from a nosebleed she hadn't felt.

She staggered to the mirror. Her reflection was pale, but her eyes…

Her irises shimmered, gold bleeding into the usual green.

A voice, hers, but not hers, whispered through her mind:

"If you want to save her, you'll have to become what they fear."

She lay on the bed, gasping for breath.

Though that was not the end.

The vision did not end when Lora awoke.

Immediately she went into another.

In her vision...

Blood still wet on her lips, she staggered from her bed and stumbled down the corridor barefoot, as if drawn by something ancient—something buried deep beneath the castle's bones.

She followed a pull in her chest, a pulse echoing like a war drum in her veins. The silk-binding spell cracked at the edges. She felt it unraveling.

A secret stair behind the eastern tapestry opened for her touch, which had never happened before.

She descended.

Then she saw herself in the Chamber of Memory.

The spiral staircase led to a circular chamber carved entirely of white stone, lit by candles that had no flames.

At the center stood a pedestal with a crystal basin of blood.

Her reflection shimmered red on its surface.

Then the liquid swirled—alive, aware.

Whispers rose from the stone. Not in language, but in memory.

The blood called to her. And she understood:

This was no dream.

It was a prophecy, written in blood.

A figure emerged within the swirling blood—an ancient seeress cloaked in crimson and bone.

Her voice echoed through Lora's soul:

"The vampire bride shall awaken the storm of two realms.

She shall bleed the first king.

She shall bear the last queen.

And when the daughter turns her blade upon the mother,

The world shall choose:

Order… or Reign."

The basin turned black. Smoke rose.

"But beware, . For the child you bore was touched by two fathers."

Lora's heart stopped.

"Two?" she whispered aloud.

"By blood, the vampire lord.

By soul, the enemy king.

She stumbled backward. "No. That's not possible."

But the basin showed more.

A Flash of Memory

A memory not her own.

A night bathed in silver fog. Lora, cloaked and trembling, kneeling before a stranger—a man with golden eyes and a voice like thunder.

To the enemy king—his face obscured, but his arms wrapped around Lora in passion and desperation. His mouth was at her throat. Her gasping whisper: "Just for one night…"

A truce.

A betrayal.

A pregnancy.

Dorian's face—full of rage and heartbreak.

She'd forgotten all of it.

Then she heard Dorian's voice outside her dream.

"Come back, my love. You shouldn't be there."

"Lora look at me, "Dorian shouted

Lora turned sharply. Her eyes were a little open, not fully, but she wasn't awake.

Dorian stood at the edge of the chamber, cloaked in fury and fear.

"I knew this was going to happen eventually," he whispered. "It was only a matter of time."

Lora, still in her vision, pointed to the basin.

She stepped toward it, eyes glowing. "And now?"

"She's alive, Lora. But she's not just human nor vampire." the basin said

He pulled something from his coat—a torn letter in ancient script. Blood-dyed.

Lora went cold. "They'll use her to destroy the boundary between death and life."

The basin said. "And if she ascends—neither vampires nor humans will survive."

The basin roiled again, unbidden.

A new image burst forth: a city of bone. Ash was raining from a dark sky. A throne of cinders rising from scorched earth.

Upon it sat a figure cloaked in smoke. Her daughter.

But no longer human. No longer a vampire.

Something else.

Beneath her feet, hundreds of corpses burned—vampire elders and human kings alike.

Dorian swore in an ancient tongue as she tried to wake her up.

"She's already begun the transformation." the basin said

Lora stared in horror. "Then we have to stop her."

But the voice from the basin spoke again:

"You cannot stop her.

You can only choose how it ends.

Love her. Kill her. Or join her."

Lora gasped as she woke up from her vision

As she looks around for Dorian who just ran into the bedchamber.

"We have to look for her, Dorian," she cried out.

" I have to look for my daughter." Tears fell from her eyes as she held Dorian firmly.

But only one person knows where she was....

Gabriel

The traitor in the castle....

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