Chapter 2 – "Ash Protocol"
Part 2 – "Residuals"
The door shut behind them with a sigh like a final breath.
Kael's boots hit the floor of the vault chamber first. The air here was colder than before—not biting cold, but still. Hollow. Like it hadn't been touched by warmth or breath in centuries. Dust motes floated, suspended midair like ash that had given up on falling. The only sound was the echo of footsteps and the subtle creak of bone-ribbed architecture adapting to the presence of intruders.
He scanned the room.
Circular. Vaulted. Etched from old Primeclade design—a synthesis of gothic sanctum and biotech crypt. The walls were engraved with what looked like circuit traces but pulsed faintly with blood-red light. Glyphs flared then dimmed as they passed.
Marion stepped forward and extended a hand. "Place it here," they said.
Kael blinked. "What?"
"The mark. On the plate."
He hesitated. Vireya nodded once, slowly. Kael pulled his coat aside, revealing the glyph burned into his skin—a spiral of sharp, intersecting lines and symbols, like a code or a curse. Marion touched the control pedestal and a thin plate of obsidian bone slid outward.
Kael stepped up and laid the back of his neck against it.
The room shuddered.
The glyph lit like fire.
And then—
everything broke.
He wasn't in the vault anymore.
He stood beneath silver arches, dressed in ceremonial robes not his own, eyes staring outward from someone else's skull. Gold banners hung from the ceiling. Rows of masked vampires knelt on either side of a black-carpeted path. The air smelled of incense, blood, and crushed nightshade.
Vireya's body. Vireya's eyes.
She walked—no, he walked—forward, each step echoing with ritual precision. A scepter of carved ivory glowed faintly in her hand. Her heart beat in strange, mechanical rhythm. A crown waited ahead—hovering above an altar of shaped obsidian.
As she approached, the masks began to chant.
Not in a language Kael understood, but the meaning filled him anyway:
"Long may she bind. Long may she bleed. Long may she rule."
He reached the altar.
Knelt.
The crown lowered, and—
The scene shattered.
Now fire.
Screams.
The cathedral burning. Vampires fighting vampires. Betrayal. A dagger in her side—his side—Kael's body couldn't tell anymore. A masked Clade elder stepping forward, hand raised, shouting:
"Unfit. Unsealed. We claim the bloodborne heresy!"
Then—
Darkness.
The cold silence of exile.
Kael awoke vomiting.
He was on the vault floor, curled sideways, gasping. Blood trickled from his nose, his ears. His hands trembled, and for a moment he didn't know where he was. Or who.
Then Vireya's hand touched his shoulder.
He flinched violently.
"Don't," he gasped.
She froze.
"It was a bleed," Marion said softly. "First resonance. Stronger than expected."
Kael rolled to his hands and knees. "You think?"
Vireya didn't speak. Her face was too still. Too neutral.
Kael forced himself upright, grabbing a bone-slab wall for balance. "I saw it. Your coronation. Your betrayal. Everything. Through your eyes."
Vireya didn't deny it.
"You were queen," he said.
"I told you."
"You didn't say you were overthrown in fire and blood."
"What would it change?"
Kael stared at her.
"A lot," he said bitterly. "You think I like being linked to someone with a crown in one hand and a knife in her back?"
"Would you rather it were the other way around?"
He winced. The glyph flared again. The echo of the memory hadn't left him. He could still feel the sensation of the crown touching his skull. Of betrayal twisting in his ribs.
"You were powerful," he whispered.
"I was necessary," she corrected.
"And now?"
Vireya's face was unreadable. "Now I am awake."
Marion interrupted quietly, "This bond will keep pulling memory fragments. That was only the first. As you continue, more will leak."
Kael turned on Vireya. "How much do you expect me to see? How much are you hiding?"
"I told you: I didn't choose this bond."
"But you did use it. You fed off me. You knew what the glyph meant."
She said nothing.
That silence stretched between them like a fracture.
Finally Kael turned away. "This bond isn't just rewiring me. It's rewriting you, too."
Marion spoke again. "He's right. The bond can evolve. And if the Protocol truly unlocks its deepest layers…"
"What happens?" Kael asked.
Marion gave a single smile. "Then neither of you will be yourselves anymore."
They left the chamber an hour later.
The door closed behind them. Kael walked in silence. The headache pulsing behind his eyes was still alive, still crawling through his skull like a thing trying to get out.
Outside the auction hall, the Sprawl's fringe had grown louder. More voices. More drones. Tension gathering like a storm.
They paused in the shadows near a canal where synthetic blood was dumped. Lights shimmered on the surface, rippling around the shapes of long-dead biotech husks.
Kael leaned against the rail, arms folded. "What are we becoming?"
Vireya stood beside him, cloak pulled tight.
"I don't know," she said. "But we've already started."
Kael stared at her.
This time, she looked back.
And for the first time since they met, her gaze didn't feel ancient or inhuman.
It just felt tired.