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 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
Chapter Seven: The Bride, Rose, and the Wolves
Isolde returned to the Corbul Negru after the festival, her mind reeling. The image of the pale man in the black coat, the man who looked the same as the man she saw in the castle burned behind her eyelids.After bidding the others goodnight, she couldn’t sleep, she tossed and turned for hours.When she finally drifted into a fitful doze, she was awakened by the sound of her window latch clicking shut.She sat up, heart pounding. "Who’s there?"The room was empty. The window, which she was certain she had locked, was unlatched. But on the sill, bathed in the pale moonlight, lay a single object.It was a black rose.It was fresh, velvety, and impossibly perfect, with thorns that looked like polished obsidian. Next to it was a small piece of parchment. Isolde picked it up, her hands trembling.There was no text. It was a charcoal sketch.It was a drawing of her, standing by the bakery wall at the festival, looking into the shadows.The skill was masterful, capturing not just her
Chapter Six: Bon fire Night
A week passed, and the sharp edge of terror began to dull, replaced by the mundane rhythm of recovery. Leo was discharged from the regional hospital, with his arm in a sling.He set up a command center in the Corbul Negru’s common room, analyzing the few blurry frames of data they had captured before fleeing the castle.In the meantime, Isolde and Maya tried to integrate themselves into the village. They spent their days in the small market square or the bakery, buying bread and asking questions.The answers they received were a frustrating tapestry of contradictions.Everyone only talked about one person, The youngest prince of the Von Caersteins "The Prince?" a baker said, dusting flour from his hands. "He was a great military leader who went mad with grief. He jumped from the spire.""No, no," an old weaver corrected them later. "He was a sorcerer. He dabbled in alchemy to bring his bride back and blew himself up. The castle is haunted by the explosion, not a man.""A tyran
Chapter Five: The mysterious Servant
The moment Isolde stumbled out of the Great Hall, her hands over her eyes, the sheer terror radiating off her was palpable. She didn't have to utter a word to signal the danger.Maya, whose nerves were already shattered by the attack of the Zimbrul Fomist earlier that day, waited for no one. Seeing Isolde’s face was enough. She abandoned the tripod she was holding and raced down the slope to the parked minivan, wrenching the door open and diving inside.“Marius! Go! We are leaving!” Maya shrieked from the passenger seat, her hands trembling as she fumbled for her seatbelt.Marius, who had been guarding the perimeter, moved quickly. He packed up the remaining gear with practiced efficiency, throwing the bags into the trunk before jumping into the driver's seat. Isolde scrambled into the back, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. Ben hopped in after.The minivan tore away from the castle gates, bouncing violently down the treacherous King's Road.**********The chaotic journey
Chapter Four: The scent of old Blood
AureliusFive 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 w
Chapter Three: Aethelred
The frantic journey down the mountain road ended just as the sun broke fully over the distant peaks. They reached a regional hospital on the outskirts of Cluj-Napoca.After hours of tense waiting, the doctor confirmed Leo’s prognosis: a deep, ragged laceration, severe blood loss, and a clear need for heavy antibiotics. He was stable, but he would be grounded for weeks.In the hospital cafeteria, the remnants of the team Isolde, Maya, and Ben stared into their lukewarm coffees.Isolde broke the silence, the road to the clinic took us three hours.That’s six hours round trip on those roads. We’d be traveling well into the night to get back, and we know what happens after dark.”Maya, still shaken from the attack, stared down at her hands. “The Zimbrul Fomist. He called it the Hungry Auroch.”“It’s tied to the castle, Maya. That means this entire valley is a perimeter,” Isolde explained, drawing strength from the cold logic she was imposing on the situation.“Marius has organized a ro
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