The sanctum beneath the mortuary was cloaked in flickering amber light. Stretched shadows licked the stone walls like slow tongues of smoke. A faint scent of dried iron lingered in the air—a memory of blood long spilled and channeled.
Veylen stood before a rune-inscribed basin filled with crimson liquid that never settled. Ripples pulsed across its surface, despite the absence of wind or touch. His coat hung open, dark and wrinkled with the remnants of ash from the Hollow. Behind him, Thae stepped into the room with slow, deliberate grace, her boots echoing like a metronome down the corridor.
"I adjusted the sequence," she said, offering a rolled parchment etched with clean, silver-lined sigils. "You were off by a degree on the tertiary line."
Veylen didn't turn, but his lip twitched in amusement. "Only a degree?"
"You're getting sloppy, old man."
That earned a glance. His eyes—sharp, hazel, amused—met her brown-gold eyes. Thae froze, as if catching herself in a trap she didn't mean to lay. "Sloppy," he echoed with mock offense. "Do remind me, who was it that set off her own glyph ward last year?"
She flushed lightly, the corners of her mouth twitching. "I was refining the layering."
"You were nearly refined into dust."
The banter thinned into a brief silence as Thae moved closer, pulling a small copper disc from her satchel. It was her sigil array—a creation of braided enchantments and geometric elegance. She placed it beside the basin and activated it with a whisper. Symbols flared to life.
Veylen watched her work, noting how her fingers moved like an artist's, precise and intuitive. He didn't interrupt—he rarely did when she was mid-casting. She only asked questions when she wanted to understand something beneath the surface. It was what made her invaluable. And occasionally annoying.
As the sigil pulsed, the basin began to shimmer. A distorted voice curled from the blood—like a whisper bleeding through water.
"…the one who keeps the crimson key… ues she stirs in the hollow… prepare for the Severing."
Thae's brow furrowed. "Crimson key?"
Veylen's jaw tensed, just slightly. "Prophetic speech. Ritual lexicon. They don't say what they mean. They veil it."
"Still," she murmured, "doesn't sound coincidental."
"No," he said flatly. "It isn't."
The voices continued—multiple this time. Low, urgent. Fear tucked beneath reverence.
"…the seal is fracturing… he was there with her… Graveblood walks and doesn't know what he carries…"
Thae looked up. "They're talking about you."
"I know."
She hesitated. "You're too calm."
"I'm never calm," he replied. "I'm calculating."
The blood stilled. The voices faded like breath on a mirror.
Thae exhaled. "Do you think they know you marked him?"
"No," Veylen said. "The magic is too subtle. It latches behind the ear canal, folds into neural echo. He doesn't know either. Yet."
"Then what was this?" she asked, tapping the edge of the basin.
"An overheard prayer," Veylen muttered, his gaze distant. "Or an opening volley."
Silence wrapped the room again.
Then Veylen moved, straightening. "You'll be taking your first assignment. One of the outposts—Sector Nine—has gone quiet. It was mine. It's no longer safe. I need eyes, not flames."
Thae looked at him long. "Understood."
He didn't say 'be careful.' He knew she would be. He also knew she didn't need it from him. But as she turned to go, he added, "If anything feels off, leave it."
She paused, halfway through the door, and for a moment her voice dropped softer than usual. "And if it's not off—just hidden?"
He smirked. "Then unravel it. Slowly."
She nodded, face shadowed in the light, and disappeared beyond the frame.
Veylen turned back to the basin.
The blood was still now, but he could feel it whispering.
Something ancient. Something watching.
Something that remembered him better than he remembered himself.
The chamber was dim, lit by a ring of red glass lanterns suspended from clawlike sconces. Their flickering cast shadows that moved like restless serpents across the velvet walls. Sylith sat on a chaise of obsidian and wine-colored silk, one leg draped elegantly over the other, a goblet balanced between slender fingers stained faintly pink from healing tinctures.
Her claw marks were nearly gone—flesh mended, skin paled, nerves still smoldering from the encounter. That encounter.
Veylen.
She hadn't said his name aloud since slipping from the chaos at the Hallows. But she'd been mouthing it in her thoughts, like a sacrament laced with arsenic.
He wasn't supposed to be clever. Or that strong. Or that smug.
One of her attendants, a pale woman with auburn curls and a jagged choker, stood at her side, adjusting a gauze wrap around Sylith's arm.
"He used a puppet," Sylith murmured, more to herself than the woman. "While speaking through it."
"You were deceived," the attendant said softly, eyes downcast.
"No," Sylith corrected. "I was tested."
The goblet met her lips, and she sipped, the taste of spiced bloodwine lingering against the back of her throat like a challenge not yet answered. "And he wasn't alone. Someone else interfered. Someone… not of the Choir. Those strikes were surgical. Celestial."
The air in the chamber grew colder.
Another figure stepped into the room—a Red Choir operative wearing robes embroidered with metallic veins. "We've received word. One of our feeding dens was raided last night. Nothing taken. Just... dissected."
Sylith's fingers tightened on the goblet. "The third party again?"
"Possibly. Or someone mimicking their methods."
"No," Sylith said, standing. "Whoever they are, they've been watching longer than we thought. And they've grown bold."
She walked toward a wall mirror veined with dark quartz. Her reflection blinked back with curious poise.
"Track Veylen," she commanded, voice smooth as velvet over a blade. "Don't engage. Just observe. I want to know who he speaks to. Who he trades with. Who he avoids."
"And if he's working with the others?" her attendant asked carefully.
"Then we bleed them all."
Sylith turned, her reflection catching firelight.
"But not until I know what makes the Graveblood tick."
Elsewhere…
Deep beneath tangled roots and folded stone, a hidden chamber pulsed with ancient energy. Carved into its black walls were symbols older than cities, glowing faintly with a breathless cadence—as if the cavern itself listened, hungered, waited.
In its center, the watchers stood.
Fae and Nephilim, gathered in subtle concentric rings. Their magicks tangled like star-thread and soil. Their armor did not shine—it absorbed light. Their voices didn't echo—they sank like whispers into water.
"He walked free," murmured one of the Fae, long-limbed and silver-eyed. "The vampire returned, bruised and trailing his own fear. But alive."
A Nephilim snorted. "We should have sent a hawk, not a bloodsucker. Letting filth deliver words is like drinking from a rotted flask."
"Even rot can carry truth," the leader said from the shadows. Cloaked and faceless, they stood unmoving—but the air bent slightly where they breathed. "He passed on what he could. Graveblood was there. In the Hollow. He faced the Choir and danced through the flames untouched."
"The fool let him live," hissed another. "Graveblood marked him. We felt it. A drip of sentient blood lies beneath his skin. Clever. Too clever. I hate it."
"He is clever," said the leader. "And clever men are dangerous. Especially when they don't yet know what they carry."
"You still think it's him?"
"I think blood knows its own."
Silence, thick and bristling.
A Nephilim cracked his knuckles. "So, what's he doing in the game? Graveblood's never knelt to the Choir. He sells to them, but doesn't serve. Now he infiltrates them. Tricks them. Watches. Waits."
"He's circling the truth," the cloaked one said. "We stirred the water. Now the current carries him. He may not even realize the undertow."
A different Fae knelt and traced a sigil into the floor—crimson leaves blooming around a burning circle. "If he gets too close to the seal... if his blood remembers..."
"Then the lock may weaken," the leader finished. "And her name may rise again."
"Really?!" Another voice echoed, "He could be…"
"The Crimson Key," one whispered.
Another: "Or its vessel."
The leader nodded. "He is tied to it. Whether by fate or design, I do not know. But he cannot be ignored any longer."
"So, we end him?"
"No. We watch. We listen. We wait. He has not chosen a side."
"And the Choir?"
The sigil on the floor pulsed once.
"The Choir will bleed. But not yet. Let them think they're safe behind theatrics and girls with crimson lips. We'll purge them soon."
"And what of Graveblood?"
The cloaked one turned. For the first time, a flicker of light revealed the curve of a jaw, the hollows of eyes... but not enough to name.
"If he remembers too much..."
A pause.
Another voice, different—harsher, colder—echoed from the far shadows:
"What if he's with them?"
The room was quiet, save for the soft simmering of the blood lanterns suspended over the sanctum. Veylen stood at the central table, fingers clasped behind his back, eyes locked on a shimmering circle of crimson light that pulsed faintly above the wood. Within it, distorted ripples of Thae's surroundings flickered—a field of fractured stone and broken divinity. The Sable Hollow Outpost.
No sound. Not since she first slipped into the chapel's catacombs. The spell only transmitted through bloodline proximity—she'd left a sliver of her lifeblood in his care, woven into a listening thread—but that connection was faint now, like a whisper caught in wind.
"She's still alive," he murmured. "Otherwise the tether would've snapped."
Still, something itched beneath his skin. He hated silence. Silence always led to the worst kind of noise.
He turned to the side of the chamber where a sealed stone coffin rested—its runes glowing faintly red. Inside, one of his oldest servants slumbered, recovering. The other—the one he'd used as a puppet—hadn't fully reformed since the ambush. It still wore traces of the mark he'd allowed to be placed, hidden behind layers of necrotic misdirection and blood enchantment.
But that mark… had gone frustratingly quiet.
Veylen ran a knife across his palm, allowing a few drops of blood to drip into a shallow bowl carved with ancient glyphs. He whispered, eyes closing.
"Where are you…?"
The blood in the bowl shimmered. For a moment, he caught a flash of movement—a corridor? Voices too distant to distinguish. Someone arguing. A boot kicked something metal. Then, static. A magical dampening field? Or worse—removal?
He hissed softly.
"They're shielding him. Or silenced him. Either way… they're getting smarter."
He sealed the blood with a motion, letting it hiss and vanish. Another lead, going dim.
His eyes drifted to a nearby wall where sigils were being updated—routes blinking out as others shifted. His undead network had begun rerouting quietly. The Choir had noticed. But the coalition hadn't… yet.
Or so he hoped.
Cutaway Scene – The Watchers
Deep in the high tree line outside the city's western rim, two cloaked figures knelt in the crook of an ancient root bridge, masked from scent and sound by layered magic.
Below them, the faintest pulse of red echoed from the city's veins, bleeding up through the soil like trapped light.
The smaller figure, clearly fae, turned a golden eye toward their companion. "The tether held longer than expected."
The taller one, voice half-shrouded in static from a charm at their throat, replied:
"He manipulated it. Let the mark fall."
"And still saw through us."
A pause. The leaves rustled, though no wind moved them.
"He was in the Hallow. He walked beside her."
The taller one stilled.
"What if he remembers too much?"
Silence again. Then the softest murmur, like moss brushing against stone:
"What if he's really chosen their side?"
A cold shiver passed through the trees.
And the red light continued to pulse from beneath the roots.