2025-12-12 18:47:35Aurelius
Five centuries. The word was a mathematical concept, devoid of feeling. Five centuries of cold, eternal night, where the only sensations were the gnawing thirst and the crushing weight of memory. Prince Aurelius, now the King of Ashes, stood immobile in the highest spire of Aethelred.
He had sensed the moment the four warm bodies crossed the cursed line but it was not the scent of their life that drew him. It was a resonance, a sudden, violent vibration in the heart he hadn't known could still beat.
He glided to the broken window, the air in the spire instantly falling to a temperature that would freeze mercury. He looked down upon the frail, fragile mortals setting up their strange, bright equipment. And there, standing on the desolation of his courtyard, was the impossible.
Maria.......
The gasp was silent, a physical impossibility that nevertheless ripped through his chest. Her face, the stubborn set of her jaw, the dark hair falling just so across her shoulders it was the flawless, painful mirror image of his lost fiancée. The resemblance wasn’t just physical; it was in the light in her eyes, the very way she carried her strength.
A torrent of memories, centuries suppressed, broke through the ice barrier of his mind.
A flash of candlelight and lace, Maria's soft laughter echoing in the ballroom.
The weight of her hand in his as they stood on this very parapet, planning a future that would never come.
Her eyes, wide and green, gazing up at him beneath the celebratory banners of Aethelred, before the horror came.
The yearning was a physical agony, a force so potent it threatened to shatter the stone walls he stood within. This was no trick of the light, no cruel mockery. This was his love, returned. She was here, standing on the soil where her life had been viciously ended and his immortality had begun.
„Preaiubita mea…” My beloved, the cold voice in his head, whispered possessively in Romania
te-am găsit în sfârșit. "I finally found you"
Aurelius watched her speak to her companions, her voice too far away to hear, but her movements radiating a defiant energy that thrilled him. He saw the way she looked up at the spire, directly at the patch of shadow where he stood. She sensed him. She felt the connection.
He melted back into the deeper shadows. The silence of the tower swallowed him whole. His mission was no longer merely to exist, it was to possess, to lure this fragile echo of Maria close, and never, ever let her go.
Isolde
The grand hall was enormous, its ceiling lost in perpetual gloom. Stepping across the threshold was like passing into a vacuum a place where history didn't just sleep, it actively resisted life.
Isolde, though shaken by the glimpse of the Zimbrul Fomist’s brutality, was determined.
“Right, team, eyes up,” she commanded. “Maya, get the LiDAR active. Ben, set up the base station. I’m taking the thermal camera into the central chambers. We need to find residual heat signatures.”
The team moved with stressed efficiency. The vastness of the ruins was overwhelming. Everything was blanketed in a fine, pervasive ash, the silent testament to five centuries of decay.
"Isolde, the LiDAR is working, but the thermal camera is reading zero," Maya reported, her voice hushed. "There is zero heat transfer in this stone. It's like a thermos filled with the coldest air imaginable."
“Document it,” Isolde insisted, gripping her camera. “Unprecedented cold preservation. I’m going deeper. Stay alert. Don’t move from this spot.”
She left the relative safety of the main hall, drawn toward the narrow corridor that led to the rumored Queen’s chapel.
The air grew not just colder, but charged. The metallic, coppery scent she’d noticed outside the one she thought was just rust intensified, mixing with something darker and sweeter, like old wine and ozone.
The chapel was a tomb of sickly, yellow-green light cast by the grime-covered windows. Isolde raised her camera, scanning the crumbling altar.
And then, everything stopped.
It was not a sudden sound, but a complete obliteration of sound. The oppressive silence in the corridor vanished, replaced by an even more profound quietness, like the world had paused just to listen. Isolde felt the intense pressure of being watched,
She spun around, dropping the thermal camera. The doorway behind her was a pool of darkness. But as she stared, her mind was violently flooded
she saw a flash of a man in silver armor, his face exquisitely handsome, his eyes burning with noble light and then, swiftly, agonizingly, those same eyes turning to twin chips of polished ice, reflecting only betrayal and endless regret.
The cold was unbearable now, pressing against her throat like a phantom hand. And something tells her this was not the Zimbrul Fomist.
Aurelius. The word came out of her mouth without her even noticing
Was she hallucinating or her head is making things up.
Aurelius
From the upper choir screen, Aurelius watched his beautiful bride drop her instrument. She felt him not just his presence, but the specific, heartbreaking pain of his existence. The moment he allowed the raw power of his immortal despair to touch her, her eyes widened in profound, mirrored sorrow.
She remembers me. He thought.......
He stepped marginally forward, allowing the faintest trace of his silhouette to be perceived. The craving for her was no longer simple thirst, it was the hunger of a soul starving for five hundred years. He wanted to crush her to him, to drain her life and replace it with his own eternal, cold existence, thereby binding her to him forever.
Yet, he could not rush this reunion. She was fragile, and her companions were nearby. He needed time to figure it out and not scare her
As she scrambled back, retrieving her fallen camera, he allowed his energy to recede, retreating into the deepest shadow. The psychic pressure lifted, leaving behind only the cold.
Isolde backed slowly out of the chapel, her terror now laced with a frantic, unsettling curiosity. She ran back toward the main hall, her scholarly pursuit utterly eclipsed by the terrifying reality of the emotional storm she had just encountered.
Aurelius watched her go. He raised a hand, tracing the phantom scar on his neck where the Malcor had delivered its final gift. He smiled, a cold, beautiful, utterly merciless expression he hadn't worn in half a millennium.
Run, Maria... he thought, the possessive love a sharp, icy ache in his dead heart. You are home now. And this time, nothing will ever take you
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Chapter 13: The Trial of Silver
The silence in Maya’s room was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic, heavy breathing of her drugged sleep. Ben didn't move. He stood by the frost-covered window, his shadow long and jagged against the floorboards. He wasn't looking at Maya anymore, his eyes were locked on the shimmering, impossible silver of Isolde’s gown."The dress, Isolde," Ben said, his voice dangerously quiet. "I’ve seen every piece of equipment we brought. I’ve seen every stitch of clothing in your suitcase. That... that is a museum piece.Isolde felt the weight of the gown suddenly become unbearable, like a suit of lead armor. "I found it, Ben. In the archives. I thought... I thought it would help me understand the period.""Don't lie to me!" Ben’s voice cracked like a whip. He stepped toward her, his face illuminated by the pale moonlight. "Leo is half-dead from a beast attack. Maya is turning into a statue of ice in front of our eyes. And you? You disappear and come back looking like you’ve stepped out o
Chapter 12: The Shattered Mirror
The Prince and the PredatorThe third night at Aethelred began with the same ethereal promise as the others, but the air in the Great Hall felt thick, charged with an electric tension that made the hair on Isolde’s arms stand up. She was dressed in a gown of shimmering silver, trailing like moonlight across the floor, but Aurelius did not move to greet her.He stood by the massive hearth, his back turned, his fingers digging so deeply into the stone mantle that it began to crumble.The fire in the hearth wasn't orange, it burned a low, spectral blue, casting long, distorted shadows against the tapestries."Aurelius?" Isolde whispered, stepping closer, her voice echoing in the vast, hollow space.He turned, and for the first time, she saw the cracks in the mask. His golden eyes were gone, replaced by a swirling, predatory obsidian that seemed to swallow what little light remained.His skin looked tighter across his cheekbones, and his breathing was a jagged, wet sound. The romantic
Chapter 11: The Waltz of the Damned
The chariot ride was faster tonight, or perhaps Isolde’s perception of time was simply dissolving. Marius drove the obsidian stallions with a reckless grace, the carriage swaying as they ascended the hidden paths to Aethelred. Inside, Isolde sat in a daze, her hand tracing the velvet upholstery. She felt like a bride being delivered to a temple.When the doors opened, she didn't wait for Marius. she ran up the stairs to the "Chamber of Relics."The green fire was already roaring. On the mannequin sat a new gown, this one of heavy, blood-red velvet with sleeves that trailed like wings. It was lined with ermine and cinched with a belt of solid gold.She dressed with a feverish haste, her fingers fumbling with the laces. She didn't look in the mirror this time. She didn't want to see another memories fondling her brain this time.*************Aurelius was waiting in the Music Room, a circular chamber walled with mirrors and dark mahogany. A single instrument sat in the center, a harp
Chapter 10: The Silk Labyrinth
The return to the Corbul Negru felt like falling from a dream into a gutter. Marius dropped Isolde at the edge of the village just as the sky began to bleed a pale, sickly gray.She walked toward the inn with her head down, her fingers curled tightly around the sapphire necklace hidden beneath her heavy wool scarf. The stones were freezing, a jagged reminder of the waltz, the starlight, and the way Aurelius had looked at her as if she were a resurrected goddess.She slipped through the front door, the floorboards groaning under her boots. The air in the inn smelled of stale tobacco and woodsmoke, mundane and suffocating.In the safety of her room, Isolde carefully removed the necklace. She pressed the cold gems to her lips, her eyes closing as she tried to summon the phantom scent of incense and roses. She hid the jewelry deep in the lining of her suitcase, burying it under her field notes. As she lay in bed, the coarse linen sheets felt like sandpaper against skin that had spent th
Chapter Nine: The Ghost of the Bride
Isolde waited for the entire team to go to bed, then she slipped outside, the entire village was quiet.But why would she actually agree to meet this mysterious man, what if the Zimbrul Fomist attacked her? But curiosity already gotten the better of her.Nothing will stop her, and even though she wants to, there's something pulling her towards the castle.The mountain air was a razor against Isolde’s skin as she walked, but the cold couldn't stop the fire burning in her veins.She reached the trailhead, expecting the lonely silence of the woods. Instead, she found a scene pulled from a nightmare of royalty.In the center of the path stood a massive, high-backed chariot. It was carved from wood so dark it seemed to absorb the moonlight, adorned with silver filigree shaped like weeping vines.Two obsidian-black stallions stood at the front, their eyes glowing with a faint, milky luminescence, their hooves striking the frozen earth with a sound like muffled thunder.Standing by the
Chapter Eight: The Archaeologist Obsession
The near-death encounter with the wolves failed to scare Isolde out of the High Carpathians, instead, it solidified her strange, dangerous obsession.She spent the morning of the attack narrating to Ben, Leo and Maya, insisting the man she saw was the same man she saw in the castle, the night of the bonfire as well.Leo, however, was thrilled. "A physical encounter! She was saved by something real. This is not a ghost story anymore!"The person you have been seeing was actually a real person?? Alive and breathing!! Ben howledMarius brought this, earlier this morning, Leo pointed to a large, brittle map he had spread out on the Corbul Negru’s table, pointing at a small structure half a mile from the main castle ruin.“This is the only auxiliary structure labeled in the 17th-century texts, the Watcher’s Tower. It was supposedly the private archive and observation post for the Von Caerstein family, sealed after the catastrophe. If there’s uncensored history, it’s there.”Ben was liv
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