The sky over Noctra never changed. Crimson clouds, heavy with ash, hung like a bloodstained veil above the Obsidian Keep. Beneath it, the vampire city slumbered—cold, breathless, eternal.
Prince Raven Drayke stood at the edge of the high spire, his black cloak stirring in the wind like smoke. From here, he could see the fractured ruins of the outer ring, where bone towers leaned like gravestones and shadows clung to alleyways like cobwebs.
Tonight, the silence felt... wrong.
Too still.
Too expectant.
The city had always feared him—its cursed prince. Born of royal blood, yet touched by something older, something forbidden. His mother never spoke of it. His father never dared. The court only whispered. But Raven knew—he was different.
He had never slept.
Never dreamed.
Never felt his heart beat.
Until last night.
One thump.
Then silence.
Then another.
Now, it pulsed quietly in his chest. Uneven. Hesitant. Like something long-dead struggling to remember what life felt like.
He hadn't told anyone. Not even Ardyn.
"Thinking of throwing yourself off again, brother?"
Raven didn't flinch at the voice. He recognized the cold amusement. Valen, his elder half-brother, stepped onto the balcony, his silver armor gleaming beneath the cursed moonlight.
Raven said nothing.
Valen leaned beside him, gaze sweeping over the horizon.
"You've been brooding more than usual," he said casually. "Should I be worried, or are you finally growing a conscience?"
"I didn't know corpses needed one."
Valen chuckled. "Still charming as ever."
They stood in silence for a moment, until Valen spoke again—softer this time.
"You've felt it, haven't you? The shift in the air. Something's coming."
Raven's jaw tensed. He didn't answer.
Valen's gaze darkened. "The witches have stirred. The Council believes they're crossing into the border forests. Something about the stars moving... and dreams."
Dreams. That word made Raven pause.
"Dreams?" he asked, voice lower now.
Valen nodded. "A few of the elders have been having them. Visions. A woman with silver fire in her eyes. A voice calling from beneath the roots of the world. The old ones think it's the beginning."
"The beginning of what?"
Valen smiled faintly.
That night, Raven walked the palace halls alone. The air inside the Keep was colder than usual, filled with echoes that didn't belong.
He stopped at the sealed wing. A long corridor chained shut, marked with ancient sigils that glowed faintly whenever he came near. No one entered this place. Not even his father.
But he had always been drawn to it.
A whisper slithered through the cracks beneath the door—faint, almost imagined.
She is coming.
Raven froze.
The voice wasn't his. And it didn't belong to the dead.
---
Far away, in a realm not yet named, a girl dreamed beneath a sky full of stars. She didn't know why the moon had turned red. Or why her breath fogged despite the fire. But she knew a name.
A name she'd never heard before.
Raven.