Chapter 2:
Sanathiel closed his eyes for a moment. But darkness brought no peace—only a vision he couldn't tell was his or spun by the echoes of the medallion.
A hanging garden. Crimson and pink roses blooming among blue and yellow flowers. Sunlight filtered through drooping leaves, the scent of spring thick in the air.
And at the center—a girl.
Red dress, pigtails dancing in the wind. A fallen basket. Crimson roses scattered at her feet.
"Are you alright?" he had asked, his voice still adolescent, uncertain.
The girl looked up, and her green eyes pierced through his chest.
"Thank you, kind knight," she said with a smile made of light and clay, as if the world had not yet stained her.
Sanathiel had laughed then, without knowing why.
"Your name?"
She curtsied like a lady from old fairytales and answered between her teeth, as if trusting him with a sacred secret:
"Aisha."
The scene vanished as delicately as it had come, but the emptiness it left behind was real. Deep. As if he had lost her twice without ever knowing when the first time was.
"How do you miss someone you saw only once?""Or was it more than once?"
Sanathiel's eyes snapped open.
He wasn't asleep, but the voice calling him rose from somewhere deeper than thought—an echo resonating in the shadowed corners of his being.
"Aisha…"
The voice spoke again, more insistent now, like an invisible hand reaching for him from the dark.
His jaw clenched. Hearing his name in the air—like a whisper.
"Sanathiel…"
It was another presence. One he recognized but had not expected to feel at that moment.
"You had to show up sooner or later…" he muttered to himself, closing his eyes briefly.
The bond with his brothers was a distant echo, a broken chord that sometimes still vibrated with the memory of who they once were. And now, in this night steeped in omens, one of those echoes rang clear.
His eyes flew open again—into a silence darker than the dream itself. And then, the voice reached him…
Sariel.
The name burned in his mind like a searing brand.
He who was once his shadow… and now only the echo of betrayal.
"Don't play games with me," Sanathiel growled, crushing the sketch of Aisha in his hand, as if he could wring the truth out of paper and ink.
The voice faded, but its presence lingered in the air, sticky like a persistent perfume. Sariel was watching him—from the shadows, from some hidden corner of the city.
Two decades had passed since that failed attempt to destroy everything tied to the name Kerens. Even upon waking, he had found himself a prisoner—punished for defying the Council of Thirteen.
Until winter arrived, cloaking the world in white silence.
He gazed at the landscape bathed in moonlight, and his thoughts drifted to that fateful night.
The night of the crimson moon.
Sanathiel sighed and turned his gaze toward the horizon.
"Aisha…" he whispered, clenching his claws into his palm until they broke skin.
Aisha. A figure who—though he didn't know how or why—was bound to him.
Trying to shake off the thoughts, he returned to his room, grabbed a pencil, and with restrained fury, began sketching on paper, tracing Aisha's face.
It was only a rough outline, but within the lines, he sensed something unsettling—like she was a mirror reflecting his own curse.
"Perhaps you're the key to my revenge against Luciano, the Exiled. Perhaps you are the path I've long sought."
The car descended through an avenue framed by high-rise buildings and neon lights. Artificial glow replaced moonlight, but the real darkness hid in alleyways—where creatures like him waited unseen.
The limousine pulled up before a luxury hotel. A man in a suit opened the door with practiced grace.
"Welcome, Mr. Ruanda."
Sanathiel stepped out in silence, his innate elegance mirrored in every movement. He grabbed his bag and crossed the chandelier-lit lobby. Opulence didn't impress him; he'd once owned wealth far beyond this, but nothing could fill the hollowness he carried inside.
At the front desk, the woman offered a polished smile, unaware of the shadow cloaking him.
"Your room is ready, sir. Shall we send anything special up?"
"No." His voice cut like frost.
He took the key card and headed to the elevator. As the doors closed, he caught his reflection in the mirror.
A handsome young man with intense eyes and a commanding presence stared back.
But behind those golden eyes... the wolf prowled.
Sariel's voice had only been the first warning.
Tomorrow—he would find Aisha.
And the hunt would begin.
Meanwhile, in the Unidad Grand College, Aisha struggled to ignore the suffocating heat in the classroom. Yet a chill crept down her spine. Something was watching her.
Crossing the hall on her way to the library, a flash of an image slammed into her mind—a white wolf with gleaming eyes. The force of it stopped her cold, breath short.
"The stench came before the vision: flesh, gunpowder... death. And something in her recoiled, as if her body recognized an ancient threat."
She covered her mouth and rushed into the bathroom, her stomach rebelling against whatever she'd just felt.
"There's nothing there…" she whispered, clinging to the sink.
But the echoes remained. A mournful wail stirred in her mind—grief that wasn't hers.
Hours later, alone in her room, her fingers moved across an old book without realizing. The title froze her in place:The Nevri.
Her heart thudded, recognizing something she shouldn't.
Far away, in the shadows of his refuge, Sanathiel felt the subtle touch of a presence brushing his thoughts.
It wasn't Sariel.It wasn't Luciano.
It was her.
A wolven grin crept across his lips as the car cruised down the highway.
"Soon, Aisha… very soon," Sanathiel whispered, the echo of his voice curling into the night like a promise.
And in that moment, the girl's voice trembled within him—an echo she did not yet understand.
"And as the wolf advanced into the night, the echo of his name slipped from unfamiliar lips… as if fate had already begun to whisper it."
"Sanathiel…"