The Coffin of Crimson Memory
Darkness.
Heavy, smothering, boundless.
Alex's eyes flew open—if they had ever closed at all. He couldn't be certain. No light flickered, no walls loomed, no sky existed. Only an inescapable blackness closing in on all sides, devouring sound, space, even thought. A crushing weight rested upon his chest, as though the world itself was holding its breath in resistance to him.
Am I dead?
He attempted to move, but his body was disconnected from his will—slow, numb, as if asleep. He was not floating in mid-air. It was something else. He was suspended, suspended… underwater.
That's when he smelled it.
Thick. Metal. Bitter iron and something else—sweet, odd, lingering on the back of his nose, trickling down his throat like syrup. The smell filled his lungs, too dense to be neglected.
Then it hit him—not only the smell, but the taste.
Metallic. Sharp. Familiar.
His mind spun as recognition burst through the fog. It was the same taste that had filled his mouth when he was shot—when his own blood had spilled across his tongue. Thick. Warm. Heat and iron.
This is blood.
Like a spark of fire, panic flared within him.
His body convulsed, instinct winning out over thought, but still he could not move right—like his limbs were tied up, sluggish, immobile. He wanted to scream, to spit, to claw his way loose, but his mouth only filled with more of the thick liquid.
Where… am I?
His heart thudded with greater urgency now, a crazed drumbeat in his chest. He contorted instinctively, muscles tensed against the invisible force, lungs searing for air. But there wasn't any. No air. No blue. Only the nauseating heat of fluid pouring into all the spaces of him.
And something touched his lips—something thicker than water. Something that was full of memory.
He was drowning.
The reality hit like a thunderbolt. He wasn't drifting. He wasn't dreaming. He was underwater—in blood.
A gagged gasp escaped him, and the moment he opened his mouth, the fluid flooded in. He choked, coughed, flailed upward in agonized panic. His hands lashed forward, tearing in the darkness, and finally crashed against something unyielding—cold, immovable.
Stone.
A ceiling.
Near. Too near.
A box.
He was trapped. Buried. Sealed alive in a coffin of blood.
Fear spiked. His heart pounded against his ribs as if desperate to escape. The blackness wasn't just enveloping him—it was inside him, tearing at the borders of his mind. He struggled to inhale, to yell, but the force in his chest did nothing but increase.
"What the.?" he rasped, his throat thick and sore. "This can't be happening—what was it? The canyon—my mom…"
And then the memories came.
One crack in the dam, and all the water came surging through. Pain blasted through his skull as though someone had pounded a hot nail between his eyes.
The canyon.
The fossil.
The gunshots.
His mother's voice.
The blood.
"Mom…" he gasped, his voice cracking at the corners. His fingers shook as they pushed against the stone lid over him, powerless. The pain in his chest wasn't from fear alone—it was sorrow. She had been there. She had screamed. He had witnessed her fall.
They had killed her.
And then. they killed him.
The last thing he recalled—her blood, hot against his cheek. The world ripping apart. A tear, blinding and screaming, devouring her. Devouring him. Light and wind and darkness drawing him into something beyond sanity.
Here he was now—imprisoned in a quiet mausoleum, covered in blood, or whatever it was. Alive. Somehow.
"What is this place?" he whispered, barely able to get the words out. "Where is she… my mom?"
But no response.
Only silence—and the pounding of his own heartbeat resonating in his ears.
Grief burst over him in crashing waves, constricting around his chest with a vice-like grip. The cramped space he occupied became colder, the heavy liquid enveloping him clinging tighter, heavier. His body would not move. Not only paralyzed—detached. As if it no longer belonged to him.
Then it struck.
A burning burn tore through his skull, swift and pitiless. The agony wasn't physical—not exactly. It pierced inside his mind, hot and intrusive, like clawing made of fire ripping through his recollections.
"Ah—!"
He screamed, reaching for his head as if it could stanch it, as if he could possibly hold back what was occurring in there.
His thoughts shattered. Visions crashed through the blackness behind his shut eyes, bright and unbelievable.
A newborn baby.
Small, frail, swaddled in a silken towel, shaking with unnatural frailty.
He was not alone. He was cradled—reverently, gently—in the arms of a woman who appeared sculpted from moonlight and goddess. Towering. Refined. A vision of unearthly elegance.
Her face was pale and perfect, as if not touched by the hands of time. And then there were her eyes—deep crimson, softly glowing—conveying more than heat. Conveying power. Ancient. Limitless. Divine.
She looked down at the child in her arms with a sorrow that pierced the soul, but also a tenderness that could silence gods. Rocking him gently in a chamber aglow with soft golden crystal light, she whispered something only he could hear.
"My little one… My Alex… One day, you'll be stronger than them all… Until then, I'll protect you, my son."
Her voice was music. Not the kind one hears with their ears, but feels in their bones. It was soft and song-like, like lullabies swathed in hurting love—yet beneath, it held sorrow. Deep. Old. Unsaid.
Alex felt it.
The love.
The pain.
The burden of her vow.
His breath stumbled. His heart squeezed.
"I know her…" he breathed, his voice shaking. "Mother… she is my mother… but she's not Anna… still… she's, my mother."
His lips trembled. Eyes still clenched tight, shut under the shroud of blood. His face contorted, lost in the pain of recognition, as the vision pulled him further into its hold.
More images poured through the fog—vivid, haunting.
An candlelit room drenched in red heat. Velvet curtains cascaded from the tall walls like liquid wine. Red roses unfurled around every corner, filling the air with something dark and sweet. She was at the center of it all. A woman draped in refinement and obscurity, holding a newborn against her breast.
Her fingers were cold and white, nails hard and glassy like rubbed rubies… but her touch, so unbearably tender. She bent down and swept a tender pink curl from the baby's brow, smiling as if the world itself had come to stand still for this one instant.
The child's eyes burned a familiar deep red.
His eyes.
And her smell—it wasn't only familiar. It enveloped him like a recollection of home, warmth he hadn't realized he'd missed until it enveloped him.
It wasn't merely a recollection running through his mind.
Something more.
He wasn't observing from a distance—he was there. On the inside. Sensing everything.
He was recalling it.
Or perhaps. becoming part of something that had always been inside him.
A name filtered into his awareness, not heard but borne on the beat of blood and years. It did not belong to the life he knew, but it beat in his bones like it always had.
Rose Bloodheart.
His mother.
Not Anna River.
Someone else altogether.
And yet. that same heat. That same love. The same loving mothering tenderness he recalled in Anna's eyes. was also here. This was not a stranger. She was his mother also. In some way, somehow—impossibly—both were.
The visions poured ahead without stopping.
He looked like a baby—no, not like him… and yet he did. The same red eyes. The same pink hair. Delicate. Silent. Wrapped in blankets covered with ancient signs, hugged in velvet-draped corridors, beyond the reach of light or noise.
No children elsewhere. No recess laughter. Just her.
And one other.
There was a quiet figure haunting the periphery of all memories—a black-haired, still-eyed woman observing from angles with inscrutable serenity. She barely ever spoke. She merely observed.
But Rose was always present.
She never departed his side.
He recalled the way she had fed him with her own hands, the bites tender, fingers sometimes resting against his cheek afterward, as if to remind herself he was real. How she sang her lullabies in a nameless tongue, her voice soft enough to sew the shadows shut.
He noticed the evenings she slept beside his bed, gaze never wavering even when his fevers caused him to shake and cough on his own breath. Her hands never faltered—not once. Even when his tiny body was on fire, her hands remained steady.
She didn't treat him like a son.
She treated him like something holy. Something sacred. A miracle. A treasure too precious to speak aloud.
The years whizzed by in a blur.
From newborn… to toddler… to boyhood.
Then ten.
Then fifteen.
Each birthday marked him. A flash of candles. One cake. A subdued celebration of three—him, Rose, and the taciturn black-eyed maid. No throngs. No commotion. Just them.
He recalled her smile on his fifteenth birthday. That last smile.
And then— Nothing.
The warmth disappeared.
The pictures dimmed.
Alex flung himself up—or at least attempted to—within the stifling nothingness. His fingers buried in his scalp as a searing, burning pressure ripped through the rear of his eyes, crushing into his mind like a closing vise.
Then—
Darkness alone.
All crumpled into silence.
His mind went blank. The vivid images dispersed like mist, the shreds of remembrance sliding beyond his comprehension like water. All of it—lost.
Yet something within him came alive. An uncanny tug, a profound anguish, as if an echo of a life he had not merely imagined… but lived. The sensations lingered on his chest. Those women—he had no idea of their names, yet in some inexplicable way he knew them with incredible closeness. He recalled the warmth of their gazes. The hurt in their tones. The connection he shared with them was not a stranger's—it was intimate, painfully close, as if bound to the marrow of his bones.
He clamped his hands harder against his temples, his heart pounding.
"What… what in the world is this?" he panted. "Why am I having these visions? And that baby… I was that baby. I was feeling everything he felt. How…?"
No reply. Only the beat of confusion breaking through him, wave upon wave.
Then—
A noise.
A voice.
It resonated across the darkness. Not externally, but within his head—tipped, metallic, and yet somehow. alive.
[—Initializing Core Sequence—]
[Bloodwing System successfully integrated with Host Soul]
[Welcome, Bloodwing Heir. System bonding: Complete.]
His own breath lodged in his throat.
A system?
He wasn't hearing it—he was sensing it. The words were not said out loud but thrummed through his head as if they were his. As if they'd always existed, hidden away.
[Host is undergoing dual-soul merging. Stabilization is needed.]
[Primary Bloodline: Vampire Royal Class—Direct Lineage.]
[Secondary Resonance Detected: Ancient Dragon Core—Sealed.]
His whole body responded.
The rich, hot fluid enveloping him pulsed in return, glowing softly. His heart pounded against his ribcage, keeping time with some deep, old cadence beating in his chest.
"Bloodwing System: Tied specifically to this soul signature."
"Warning: Integration is permanent. Fate has been determined."
His mouth dropped open, parched and shaking. "What… what system?"
Nothing answered. His mind rang with a distant chime like a cold, metallic bell, echoing in the distance.
He swallowed hard. "Bloodwing?" he whispered. "Is that… you speaking to me?"
[BLOODWING SYSTEM INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
His mind spun. He attempted to put all of it together, but every answer just led to more questions. His thoughts knotted into knots.
He had died—he was positive of it. He had fallen, consumed by an obliterating void.
And yet… he was here. Somewhere different. Somewhere else.
The visions weren't dreams. They were memories. Real ones.
The woman—Rose—her name resonated within his chest. Her voice still within his soul, warm and authoritative. And then there was another voice—one that was familiar in an entirely different sense.
Anna. His mother. His true mother. Her face… he recalled it vividly. Her hands, her laugh, the warmth in her eyes.
But if Rose was his mother, too… and Anna, also…
His heart contorted.
"How can I be both?" he breathed. "How am I. two persons at once?"
There was no reply. Only the oppressive hush of the emptiness.
The blood that surrounded him started to settle, its former bright sheen darkening into foreboding quiet.
The memories of Anna came flooding back—to his first mother. The one who had brought him up. Who had died saving him. That ache still pulsed within him like an open wound that could never close.
But now… here, in this odd new world, there was another presence—another self—emerging from within. Older. Deeper. Like an echo patiently waiting lifetimes to find its voice.
Was this him too?
The cocoon thudded once with a soft, hot bump, as though responding to a question he hadn't yet asked.
Alex closed his eyes, breath shaky, chest constricting. His mind reeled, impossible to ground.
He didn't even know where he was.
Was it death? Was it birth? A cell?
The only sound was the soft hum, like a distant heartbeat—low, slow, primal.
But the coffin did not spring open.
No light broke forth.
He lay trapped in that red, heavy liquid, suspended in crimson nothingness, his body motionless, his mind caught between two worlds.
Two lives.
And in that eternal nothing, shrouded in blood and disorientation, Alex comprehended the terrible truth that frightened him most.
He was alone.
Dreadfully, completely alone.