New Avalon was a city of ghosts…
Not the whispering kind that drifted through walls or haunted dreams, but the ones that wore faces and walked among the living, hollow-eyed and silent.
The city hummed under a bruised twilight sky, where neon signs buzzed like dying fireflies, casting their epileptic glow across rain-slick streets. Buildings leaned against each other like drunkards at the end of the world. The air reeked of rust, ozone, and the kind of sorrow that clung to the skin.
Julian Vire moved through it like a shadow in mourning, not hurried, not hesitant, just there. Present only in the sense that his body had not yet given up.
His coat, once a soldier's uniform, now sagged off his frame like a tired memory. Frayed at the cuffs, the color leached by too many winters, it barely kept the cold at bay. But he wore it like armor, like ritual. Something had to hold him together.
The Forgotten District curled around him, half-asleep and wholly dangerous. Buildings stood like rotted teeth, their windows blacked out with plywood or time. A narrow alley sighed beside him, its darkness shifting ever so slightly, as if it breathed.
This was where the city buried what it didn't want to remember.
And perhaps, that's why he belonged.
A billboard loomed ahead, its cracked screen spasming between static and the face of a grinning politician frozen mid-promise. The man's teeth were too white. His eyes were too wide. Julian didn't bother deciphering the slogan; he knew it would be the same syrupy lie poured into every broken corner of New Avalon.
The Conclave loved its illusions.
Julian's boots broke the silence with soft splashes. The puddle beneath him rippled red.
Paint? Maybe.Blood? Also maybe. He didn't pause to care. What difference would it make?
He passed a crumbling church, its steeple snapped like a broken finger pointed at heaven. A line of candles flickered behind the glass—an offering from someone who still believed. Or someone desperate enough to pretend.
Julian didn't stop. He hadn't believed in anything in years.
Yet beneath the numb rhythm of his steps, beneath the weary weight of the night, something in his chest stirred. Something faint and traitorous.
Memory.
A child's laugh, far away. A woman's voice calling his name like it meant something. The rustle of maps and war plans spread across a kitchen table. Hope, in another life.
He shook it off. Let the city swallow it. That man was dead.
He was here now. Walking through the bones of a place that had once dared to dream.
And somewhere in the rot and ruin, something watched. Something waited.
***
The party was already in full swing when Julian arrived.
The Conclave's tower cleaved the sky like a blade, cold, obsidian, merciless. A jagged monolith of black glass and steel, it pulsed with sterile light from within, each window a glowing eye that neither blinked nor slept.
At its base, twin vampires stood sentinel, dressed not in armor, but in sharply tailored suits that clung to them like second skins. Their eyes glimmered faintly in the dark; embers banked but never extinguished.
One of them tilted his head, a smirk curling at his lips.
"Lord Vire. We were beginning to suspect you'd finally given up on society."
Julian didn't return the smile. "Still hoping."
The smirk wilted, leaving the guard with nothing to say. He stepped aside, wordless.
Julian entered.
Inside, the world changed.
The air thickened with the perfume of roses and sin—floral top notes floating over the copper sting of blood. The chandeliers above looked as though they wept light, casting fractured brilliance across the marble floors. Laughter echoed like silver bells, charming at first, until one noticed the fangs behind the lips.
Vampires moved like dancers across the floor, clothed in velvet, silk, and centuries of entitlement. Their laughter was sharp and brittle, their beauty carved like porcelain. At their sides, humans in crisp suits and jeweled gowns clung to the illusion of safety, throats bare and smiles forced.
Julian drifted through them like smoke, present, but untouchable.
"Julian."
The voice curled through the noise, too familiar. A touch caught his arm, soft but firm.
He turned.
Lady Seraphine stood before him, a vision sculpted for admiration and for war. Her gown, silver as starlight, shimmered with every breath she took, and her dark hair coiled into a crown of diamond-pinned elegance. Her lips, wine-red and sculpted into a knowing smile, held a thousand unspoken accusations.
"You're late," she said.
Julian's gaze didn't waver. "I wasn't aware I'd agreed to come at all."
She laughed, a sound more blade than balm. "Still playing the brooding exile? It's getting old, darling."
He slid his arm free, the gesture gentle but final. "Then stop inviting me."
Her smile deepened, thin and sharp. "Where's the fun in that?"
A server drifted past, weightless as a dream, bearing a tray of cut-crystal glasses. Julian took one out of reflex, its contents as dark as memory. He didn't drink. He only held it, the way a soldier might hold an unloaded gun, just in case.
Seraphine leaned closer. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Tell me, do you ever miss it? The blood, the battles. The way they screamed your name?"
His grip tightened around the glass.
He didn't have to try hard to remember. It was always there, behind his eyes; the thunder of hooves, the clash of steel, the stench of burning flesh. The chaos. The power.
The Crimson Reckoning.
That's what they had called him. That's what he had become. A legend sharpened into a weapon.
Now, just a man. Haunted, half-forgotten.
He set the glass down on a marble table, untouched. The clink of crystal against stone rang too loudly.
"Goodnight, Seraphine."
She sighed as though disappointed, but not surprised. "Running again, Julian? How dreadfully predictable."
He walked away, his back straight, his steps unhurried. He didn't look back.
And yet, as the elevator doors closed behind him, he thought he could still feel her gaze—sharp, searching—like a knife pressed to the space between his shoulder blades.
***
The streets had grown quieter, subdued beneath a veil of mist and melancholy. Rain, once fierce, now fell as a whisper, tiny beads of silver drifting lazily through the air. Streetlamps flickered against the fog, their light dim and uncertain, like memories fading at the edges.
Julian walked without purpose, letting the weight of his body decide where to go. Each step echoed with a kind of weariness, not from the distance but from the years.
Ahead, it loomed. The Obsidian Spire.
Once, it had touched the heavens with its pride. A monument to power and dominion, its towers had gleamed with obsidian and fire, a fortress feared and revered. Now it stood broken, abandoned by time, cloaked in rot and ruin.
The gates dangled off rusted hinges, groaning in protest with every breeze. Weeds, wild and unrepentant, broke through the cracked flagstones like fingers reaching for a forgotten sky.
Julian pushed the doors open. They gave way slowly, their groan rolling down the empty corridor like a sigh from the bones of the house itself.
Inside, the air was stagnant, thick with dust and decay. Paintings lined the walls, their subjects trapped in fading oil: nobles with hollow eyes, landscapes of dead empires, moments preserved long after they'd lost meaning.
Julian didn't look at them. He didn't need to. He had memorized each ghost.
He climbed the grand staircase, its once-regal banister now splintered and worn. His footsteps echoed through the hollow belly of the Spire, lonely as the wind.
His bedroom was no refuge. Spartan in its silence, it held only what was necessary: a narrow bed, a writing desk, a single chair, and empty walls where mirrors had once hung. He hadn't owned a reflection in centuries. Why invite the reminder?
The hunger stirred again.
It curled in his gut, coiled like smoke, persistent and cold. He could have fed at the Conclave's gathering. There had been more than enough willing necks offered with flirtatious smiles and glassy stares. But he couldn't bear the taste of false consent; blood laced with fear, vanity, or desperation.
So he left. Again.
***
The air outside was colder now, thick with damp and the tang of oil and old stone.
He found the man in a narrow alley, slumped like a forgotten sack of bones beneath a broken neon sign that blinked "OPEN" in weary defiance.
Julian smelled him first—cheap wine, sweat, the faint tang of despair. Human. Alone.
The man mumbled something incoherent, his words slurred by drink and time. His head lolled against the wall as though even gravity had given up on him.
Julian moved like a shadow drawn in ink.
One hand pressed over the man's mouth, muffling the startled gasp. The other tilted his head gently, exposing the fragile skin of his throat.
The pulse there fluttered: frantic, birdlike.
Julian bit down.
The taste was bitter, soured by alcohol and neglect. But it was warm, and it was enough. He drank only what was needed, enough to quiet the gnawing within.
When he pulled away, the man gasped, eyes wide and vacant, blinking at shadows.
"Go home," Julian murmured, his voice low and firm.
The man stumbled, limbs clumsy, scrambling into the night with panic in his breath and confusion in his bones.
Julian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The hunger had quieted, but it still lingered, always lingering. He had made peace with its permanence, if not its weight.
And then—
He heard it.
Music.
It sliced through the silence like light through fog: raw, aching, human. A violin, but not the pristine, calculated notes of the Conclave's orchestras. This was untamed. Alive.
The melody twisted in the air, trembling with something almost too fragile to name. It was not perfect. It was honest.
The sound burrowed under Julian's skin, wrapped around his ribs, and tightened. Something long buried stirred within him. Faint, but real.
He followed it.
Down crumbling steps, beneath the city's skin, where forgotten tunnels stretched like veins into the dark. Water dripped steadily from above, echoing with the rhythm of a world abandoned.
The music guided him. It rose and fell, breathless in its urgency, like a soul trying to speak without words.
Julian moved deeper, drawn not by hunger, but longing. He couldn't remember the last time he had wanted anything.
And then...
Silence.
He turned the final corner and found nothing but shadows. The tunnel was empty, still, and waiting.
He stood motionless, listening. Not with his ears, but with something older, something more wounded. The music lingered in his mind, a ghost melody curling through the echo of memory.
For the first time in centuries, he felt something other than hunger or grief.
Something with edges soft and sharp all at once.
Something dangerously close to hope.