The storm above the Veil screamed like a living thing. Crimson lightning split the horizon, striking the broken ridges that marked the edge of the Veil. Every bolt bled across the clouds, painting the sky in the color of spilled blood. Valerius stood in the heart of the ruin, the obsidian altar that once held the Veil between realms.
Wind howled through his cloak, carrying with it the scent of ash, blood, and vengeance. Behind him, his soldiers stood at attention, the army of the damned. Before him, the Oracle stepped forward, her presence radiating the calm fury of someone who had seen the end written and refused to look away.
"Do not make me say it again," she warned, her voice like tempered samurai blades. "The veil cannot be broken. You know what lies behind it."
Valerius smiled ,that same devastating, disarming smile that always made even the divine falter.
"And yet you perform your rituals to stop me," he murmured. "That means you already fear it is too late."
The Oracle's eyes narrowed. "Fear? You think I fear you? As long as I still breathe you shall never lay your hands on her."
A silence stretched between them, deadly as a blade. Then came the tremor, deep, bone-rattling, the kind that made the earth itself groan.
The Veil shimmered like liquid silver just beyond the cliffside. From within it, whispers leaked, an ancient language of hunger and destruction rippled through the Veil into the Sanguine Realm.
The Shadow General had spoken hours ago, his challenge echoing through the abyss. Come, King of the Blood. Come claim what you believe is yours.
Valerius had answered.
Now, as the air thickened with dark energy, a new shape emerged from the Veil. A feminine figure, cloaked in mist. Her skin glowed faintly, the hue of dying stars. Eyes the color of frost and blood. She was not fully shadow, not fully flesh.
The Oracle took a defensive step forward, summoning her flame blade. "Another demon," she hissed.
"No," Valerius said softly. "She is a mirror."
The creature tilted her head, lips curling in a near-human smirk.
"Valerius," she whispered. Her voice was low, cold, deliberate and yet so intimate. "Still so eager to play god."
The Oracle raised her weapon. "You will not cross this line."
Valerius turned toward her, that same calm in his eyes. "Oracle… I have crossed every line ever written. You simply never noticed."
The Oracle stepped beside him, defiant. "Then let this be the one you regret."
For a heartbeat, there was silence and in that stillness, Valerius looked at her the way one looks at a star about to fall. There was almost sorrow in his eyes. Almost.
Then he moved.
In one swift, graceful motion, faster than mortal sight could follow, he seized her by the waist and leaned in close. His lips brushed her ear. "Forgive me," he whispered and then his fangs sank deep into her throat.
The Oracle gasped a sound that echoed like a bell cracked in half. Her flame blade shattered in her grip. Silver blood spilled from the wound, glowing faintly before darkening to red. Her knees buckled as Valerius drew from her the ancient power that bound her to the Veil.
"You....." she breathed, voice fading. "You wanted the key all along…"
Valerius released her gently, almost tenderly, lowering her to the altar stones. "You were the key," he said simply. "And the one who locked me in that hell."
The female shadow stepped forward then, the one who had spoken from the mist. She knelt before him, her strange, near-human face calm, reverent.
"It is done, my lord," she said.
Valerius looked down at the Oracle's fallen form, her blood pooling into the cracks of the stone, seeping toward the rift. "Yes," he murmured. "And so it begins."
The Veil trembled.
From its depths, hundreds of eyes flickered open, red, violet, gold, the eyes of beings that had slept for eons. The Shadow creatures stirred, whispering Alexander Valerius's name in a thousand twisted tongues. Among them moved one figure, silent, tall, and half-shadowy, half-vampire in form, it was Alexander himself, trapped for eternity in his beast shape, clawing through endless tides of darkness.
He sensed it, the rip in the Veil. He lifted his head, blood-streaked hair bristling, eyes flashing molten gold. He roared.
The sound split the realms. Echoing through the planes. Every mortal soul in the Sanguine Realm heard it and felt it.
Genevieve felt it too.
In the depths of the Shadow realm, where frost grew like bone and the air itself pulsed with death, she stood atop a field of corpses, the remnants of her own army. Her white hair clung to her skin, soaked with dark ichor. Her eyes glimmered with a strange mix of exhaustion and longing.
"So," she whispered to the wind, "he finally calls to us again."
Her soldiers, twisted echoes of once-human forms, stirred. "The Crimson Emperor has broken the boundary," one hissed.
Genevieve smiled faintly, though her lips trembled. "Then perhaps it is time the banished returned to the world that forgot them."
And yet, in the dim light of the Blood Moon that filtered through the Veil, her thoughts were not on conquest. They were on Alexander, the enemy she had fought for centuries. The one she could never quite kill. The one who once saved her from being devoured by her own kind.
"Will you come, my Lord?" she murmured. "Will you remember me when the light breaks?"
The Veil screamed again, and opened wider.
Back in the mortal realm, Valerius watched as the blood from the Oracle's wound seeped fully into the altar. The runes ignited, burning red, drawing symbols across the stone that had not glowed in a thousand years.
Behind him, Rhiannon stirred, her breath sharp and fearful. "What have you done?"
Valerius turned, his expression softening for a fleeting moment. "What I was born to do."
Rhiannon's voice shook. "You killed her."
"I freed her," he corrected. "And in doing so, freed what was trapped beyond the veil."
He raised his hand and the shadows answered. They coiled around him, crawling across the ground like serpents made of smoke. The female Shadow, his emissary, looked up at him with devotion that was almost love.
"This world was never meant for peace," Valerius continued. "It was built on war, sealed by lies. I will bathe it, in blood and darkness."
A sound interrupted him.
Boots scraping stone.
Caspian emerged from the tree line, dragging his staff along the ground, sparks flying. His gaze fell immediately upon Rhiannon. "Uhm, sorry for intruding on your little montage," he said, voice dripping venom. "But I don't think you should still be here."
Rhiannon froze as he stepped behind her, arms circling her waist possessively.
The air rippled.
In the space of a breath, Valerius's aura exploded outward, invisible but suffocating. Shadows bent. The ground cracked. The female Shadow dropped to one knee in reflexive submission.
Caspian's smirk faltered. His grip on Rhiannon loosened involuntarily as every nerve in his body screamed.
Valerius took a single step forward, and that was all it took. Caspian gasped, dropping to one knee, blood running from his nose, veins bulging under his skin from the pressure.
"Mine?" Valerius said quietly. "You think anything in this realm is yours?"
Caspian struggled to breathe, his bravado collapsing under the sheer weight of the Blood King's power. Rhiannon stumbled free of his grasp, clutching her throat, eyes wide with horror and awe.
Valerius didn't move again. He didn't have to. The message was written in the silence that followed in Caspian's trembling form, in the way even the shadows dared not whisper.
The Veil roared once more behind them. The first of the shadow legions began to emerge slow, crawling, countless.
Valerius turned back toward the rift, his eyes blazing red beneath the moonlight. "Let them come," he said, voice dark and triumphant. "Let the world remember what it cast away."
Rhiannon backed away slowly, her mind reeling. She could feel the echo of his power in her bones, in the blood that thrummed beneath her skin. Caspian took the opportunity to cast a ritual that would send Rhiannon to safety to the Moon sanctuary.
Rhiannon felt somewhere deep inside her, she felt the connection between them was more than fate. It was like a chain.
And now, the chain had begun to tighten.
By dawn, the Oracle's body was gone. Her blood had vanished into the altar. And the sky bled crimson for three days straight.
In the Eastern Domain, the priests of the Moon Sanctuary felt the shift immediately as the Veil tore the skies open and could be seen as far as the Northern cold domains.
Rhiannon was carried inside by the High Priestess herself, veiled and trembling, half-conscious from the weight of what she'd seen. The Sanctuary's marble halls glowed with silver light, home to witches and humans who lived and worshiped under the gaze of the moon deities.
"She has been touched by the Blood King," one whispered. "She carries his mark."
The High Priestess silenced them. "Then she will learn to bear it. Or it will consume her."
And so it was that Rhiannon, last of the flame bearers, slept for seven nights, her dreams bound to the face of the man who had damned the world.
At first, she could still see him. The flashbacks came like waves, his eyes, his touch, his voice like a storm at the edge of reason.
But as the days passed, and the Sanctuary's wards deepened around her, those memories began to blur. His image faded. The sound of his voice became distant thunder.
Until one night… it was gone entirely.
And for the first time, the world knew quiet, the kind that comes not from peace, but from waiting.
Waiting for the next Great War of the Realms.