At midnight, I rose to inspect the seal of the second shackle once more.
The iron plate, pitted and corroded by acid, weighed heavy in my palm with the cold finality of a sentence passed a thousand years ago.
The crest of the Holy Order of Althea—a blazing phoenix encircled by seven engraved stars—glared back at me from the rust and grime. I clenched my porcelain fingers around the metal until the jagged edges bit deep into my skin, drawing beads of living silver that welled up and dripped over the relic.
The same saints. The same hypocritical faith.
The knights of the capital hadn’t just consecrated Lucas’s blade at the edge of the precipice; for centuries, they had used this bottomless abyss as an open sewer for their sins, casting their fallen paladins down here so the miasma would warp them into grotesque carrion. And worse, they had locked away an ancient dragoness and a vampire of the night, cowardice masking their desperate hope that hunger and hatred would drive the two to tear each other apart—all while the kings above were crowned with unblemished laurels in the pristine sunlight.
Sickened with disgust, I turned on my heel and walked toward the colossal starstone wheel of the Seal of the Abyss.
The second lock pulsed with a spectral blue radiance—calm, steady, and mesmerizing. Unlike the first mechanism, which had gaped like an insatiable maw demanding a tribute of blood and fire, this second lock took the form of an oval mirror. A clean fissure ran down its center, cleaving its polished obsidian surface into two distinct halves.
As I extended my hand, there was neither gravitational pull nor elemental backlash. Instead, a dull thrum resonated in the center of my brow, as though thousands of ethereal needles were pricking at the gates of my consciousness.
“He who claims the key must descend into the abyss of another’s memories and drink the venom of the primal trauma...”
The archaic voice echoing from the seal did not lie. This mechanism could not be breached by physical violence or sheer stockpiles of mana. It demanded a Memory Synchronization. To mend the mirror and shatter the second shackle, I had to plunge into the psychic core of one of my companions, bear witness to the exact moment her soul was fractured, and shatter the illusion of her imprisonment from within her own mind.
The prospect was utterly terrifying.
A stealthy step sounded behind me, followed by the faint rustle of silk skimming the stone floor.
“Awake ahead of schedule, little vixen?” Carmilla’s voice drifted through the gloom, soft as a velvet caress.
I turned. The vampire approached with languid elegance, wrapped in the dark folds of her gown. Her midnight hair spilled over marble shoulders, and her crimson eyes gleamed with a sharp, dangerous clarity. She halted two paces away, glancing down at the shard of metal clasped between my fingers.
The moment her gaze locked onto the engraving of the seven-star phoenix, every ounce of poise vanished from her frame.
The cavern’s temperature plunged five degrees in a heartbeat. Carmilla’s pupils contracted to needlepoints of raw, liquid hatred. Her pale hand whipped forward, tearing the plate from my grip with a violence that made the air itself whistle.
“Where did you find this?” Her voice carried none of its usual sweetness; it was a jagged, harrowing snarl that sent a chill straight down my spine.
“On the back of the aberration we just put down,” I replied without flinching, holding her gaze. “It wasn't a beast spawned by the cavern, Carmilla. It was once a paladin of Althea’s cathedral.”
A heavy crunch of bare footfalls shook the basalt ledge.
Ignis strode out from the rocky shadows, wiping the sweat from the nape of her neck with the back of an armored forearm. Her fiery mane hung disheveled, glowing with a subdued golden ember, while her black horns trailed wisps of aromatic smoke.
“What are you two squawking about?” the dragoness grunted, rolling a shoulder still smeared with black, viscous ichor from the battle. “I lay down barely two hours ago, and you're already raising a racket by the stone wheel.”
Carmilla didn't bother trading insults. She simply hurled the iron plate at the dragoness’s feet. The scrap of metal struck the basalt with a hollow clang.
Ignis looked down. Her clawed foot halted bare millimeters from the engraved crest.
For three agonizing seconds, the Calamity didn't breathe. Then, her crimson scales bristled with a collective metallic scrape, and her slitted pupils ignited into blinding white fire. A low, tectonic rumble rose from deep within her chest, like a continental fault splitting open beneath an ocean trench.
“The sun cross...” Ignis ground the iron plate beneath her heel, crushing it into a warped, unrecognizable clump of mangled slag. “Those filthy pigs. Those white-robed cowards.”
“The very same ones who ran you through with mithril spears while you slept,” Carmilla said, her lips curling into a bitter sneer as she crossed her arms. “Mithril forged to pierce dragon bone. The same ones who shackled me in silver to rot in this godforsaken pit.”
The hatred simmering between them was no longer the petty squabbling of cellmates. For the first time, I saw the true thread tying them together: both were survivors of a purge orchestrated by the exact same hypocrites who had murdered my mortal life and crowned my betrayers.
I seized the moment, catching them before their wrath could settle back behind defensive walls.
“The door knows who did this to you,” I said, indicating the fractured mirror on the Seal of the Abyss with the tip of one of my silver tails. “And it demands a reckoning before it lets us climb to the surface to bleed those bastards dry.”
Both women turned toward the monument.
“Explain yourself, Elina,” Ignis commanded, crossing her muscled arms, though her eyes remained riveted to the stone’s azure glow.
“The second lock won't yield to blood or brute strength,” I explained, closing the distance and positioning myself at the exact crossroads of their auras. “It requires a Memory Synchronization. My consciousness must dive into the abyss of the past—into one of your minds. I have to witness the moment of your betrayal, grasp the root of your agony, and break the illusion of your imprisonment from the inside out.”
A suffocating silence descended over the cavern.
If the air had been thick with hostility before, it was now choked with an ancient, paralyzing dread. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Carmilla took a full step back. The aristocratic grace of her features fractured into an expression of unvarnished paranoia. Her gloved fingers clawed into her skirts, and the shadows at her feet churned like a tempestuous sea.
“No,” the Progenitor said. The syllable was as sharp and final as the blade of a guillotine.
“Carmilla—” I started forward, but she raised a hand, razor-tipped nails cleaving the gloom.
“I said no!” she hissed, her fangs visibly trembling against her lower lip. “No one enters my mind. No one. Do you think that because we’ve shared a bed and I’ve tasted a drop of your blood, you have the right to dig through my rotting bones? For what? To look at me with the same revolting pity you harbor for your dead fiancée?”
“It isn't pity, you brainless leech,” Ignis cut in, her voice low and gravelly, her jaw clenched so tightly that the cords in her neck stood out like taut bowstrings. “It’s the only way out of this hell.”
“Then let her enter your beast's den!” Carmilla spat, turning her rabid glare upon the dragoness. “Let her watch your wings get torn to ribbons like a blind lizard! Let’s see if your grand Calamity pride can stomach a little vixen watching the day you crawled through the mud, begging them to spare your hatchlings!”
The strike hit like a whip of pure fire.
Ignis erupted with the violent fury of an exploding caldera. Her scaled hand clamped around Carmilla’s throat, and before the vampire could scatter into mist, the dragoness slammed her back against the volcanic stone wall. The impact fractured the rock into a web of deep fissures.
“Utter one more word about my bloodline, and I will rip your head from your shoulders right now!” Ignis bellowed into the undead woman’s face, the blistering heat radiating off her scales scorching the silk of Carmilla’s collar. “You have no idea who you're dealing with!”
Carmilla didn't struggle. She merely smiled—a frail, mocking curve of her lips—as a thread of dark blood leaked from the corner of her mouth and her nails dug into the dragoness’s wrist.
“Kill me, then...” the vampire whispered, her tone unnervingly calm. “Kill me and rot down here forever, brooding over your stolen hoard. But I will never... never open my gates to anyone.”
They were a second away from annihilating each other. Centuries-old rancor, fueled by the sheer terror of exposing raw wounds, threatened to ignite a bloodbath that would reset the loop once more.
I stepped between them. I didn't reach for brute force; I called upon my Kitsune nature.
I unleashed my Fox Charm, flooding the conduit of spiritual fire that linked my core to theirs. My three silver tails unfurled with a resonant hiss, enveloping both of them in a warm, incandescent mist of white, scarlet, and gold radiance.
Slipping into the narrow space between their rigid bodies, I rested my left hand against Ignis’s armored sternum and pressed my right palm to Carmilla’s icy cheek.
“Enough,” I said. My voice was quiet, yet weighed with an ancient, commanding resonance that froze them both in place.
I locked eyes with the dragoness.
“Let her go, Ignis. You know as well as I do that cowardice isn't what dragged you down here. And when the time comes to step into your memories, I won't be looking for a broken beast; I'll be looking for the queen who is going to burn the cathedral to ashes with me.”
Ignis exhaled a ragged breath, the embers along her horns flickering before subsiding into dull coals. She released Carmilla’s throat with reluctant force and stepped back, crossing her arms and turning her scowl toward the cavern's shadows, pacing like a caged predator.
I turned to Carmilla.
The Progenitor slid down the cracked basalt, sinking to her knees. Her breath came in shallow rasps, her eyes welling with a volatile blend of terror and possessive devotion that twisted my chest.
I knelt before her on the frozen rock. Taking both of her gloved hands between my porcelain claws, I gently stroked the cold skin of the woman who had slain me so ruthlessly in the earliest loops.
“I’m not here to judge you, Carmilla,” I whispered, leaning in until our brows touched. “I’m not hunting for an excuse to pity you. I want to take the venom rotting inside you and drink it down together. Because if I can't learn to bear your agony, I have no right to ask you to bear mine when we finally stand before Lucas and Elena.”
Carmilla squeezed her eyes shut.
Two heavy tears of crimson blood slipped past her lashes, trailing down her marble cheeks like liquid rubies.
“It's a wretched place, Elina...” Her voice broke into a raw, hollow sob. “There is no glory waiting there. No Queen of the Night. Only a foolish girl... sold out by her own bloodline to the hounds of Althea for a handful of silver coins.”
“Then show me,” I murmured, leaning closer to flick the tip of my tongue across the tear on her cheek, tasting the bitter, metallic chill of her grief. “Let me burn the ones who sold you.”
Carmilla lifted her head slowly. Her eyes searched mine with a desperate, feverish hunger. Trembling fingers tangled into the hair at the nape of my neck, hauling me forward into a wild, breathless kiss—salty with blood, frantic and unhinged, as though she were trying to drown in my warmth before the past could swallow her whole.
Gods, I loved the taste of those lips.
Carmilla pushed herself up, leaning on my arm for support, and we walked side by side toward the starstone wheel of the Seal of the Abyss.
The moment we halted before it, the cracked mirror began to churn, its surface spinning into a vortex of pale azure light. The glyphs of the second shackle hummed with ravenous anticipation.
“Place your palm against my left temple,” Carmilla instructed, her voice steadying even as her fingers quivered against my waist. “I will press mine to the mirror. The moment the link catches, your consciousness will be drawn into my psychic current. Do not attempt to alter the past; those events are carved in stone. Your only objective is to locate the Core of Betrayal and sever the arcane bindings the priests carved into my soul.”
“And if I fail?” I asked, feeling the icy draft bleeding from the vortex.
Carmilla’s lips parted in a desolate smile.
“If your mind is lost within the labyrinth of my nightmares... your physical body will suffer irreversible brain death in under ten minutes. And you'll wake up once more in that subterranean pool, stripped of every memory of what you saw.”
A shiver raced down my spine. Loop #8 left zero room for error. If my mind collapsed inside the vampire’s past, the death counter would tick upward again, and every shred of progress I had forged with Ignis and the first seal would be wiped clean.
Behind us, Ignis planted her massive magma halberd into the basalt with a resounding thud.
“You have ten minutes,” the dragoness growled, deadly solemnity hardening her golden eyes. “If that door starts devouring your soul, vixen... I'll smash the stone to powder, even if it incinerates me alive. Don't you dare go dying inside this mummy's head.”
“I’ll be back,” I said, flashing her a sharp grin.
I turned back to Carmilla, raising my right hand to press my palm flat against her cold temple. My three silver tails ignited with pure spectral flame, harmonizing the frequency of my mana with the immortal pulse of her core.
Carmilla slammed her gloved hand onto the center of the shattered mirror.
WHIRRRR!
The cavern disintegrated in a deafening eruption of violet-blue light.
Gravity violently flipped. I felt my consciousness ripped from my Kitsune vessel like a barbed hook tearing through my throat. The sultry heat of the cave, the sulfuric tang of Ignis's aura, and the solid bite of basalt underfoot dissolved into a howling tempest of freezing mist and black wind.
When I opened my eyes, the vaulted stone ceiling of the abyss was gone.
Above me stretched a violent, blizzard-choked night.
Perched atop a jagged crag of black stone, a colossal gothic castle of needle-sharp spires and shattered stained glass cut an imposing silhouette against a bloated full moon: the Castle of Shattered Mirrors, the ancestral seat of Carmilla’s vampire clan before its downfall.
Yet the chill gnawing at my skin had nothing to do with the snow pelting my bare shoulders.
It came from the agonizing shrieks echoing across the fortress’s grand courtyard.
Guided by the thread of blood binding me to Carmilla, I plunged through the blizzard, slipping past the mangled iron gates to the edge of the inner grounds.
The sight before me made the blood run cold in my veins.
In the center of the courtyard, bound to four pillars of consecrated stone by thick chains of pure, blazing silver, was a young vampire. Her white maiden's dress was drenched in her own dark blood, and her wide eyes reflected pure, unadulterated panic as she stared at the figures surrounding her.
It was Carmilla. But not the cold, regal sovereign of the abyss. This was a young, shattered creature—stripped of her talons, emptied of her pride, weeping with the raw despair of a child left to die in the dark.
And standing before her, brandishing sanctified torches and phials of holy water, were not the knights of Althea.
Surrounding her were the twelve elders of her own clan. Men and women sharing her own bloodline, bowing with nauseating obsequiousness toward a man clad in radiant golden plate standing beside the altar—a high-ranking paladin bearing the crest of the seven-star phoenix upon his breastplate.
“Take her, Your Eminence,” the Clan Patriarch rasped—a white-haired vampire bowing his head in wretched subservience. “The purest Progenitor of our bloodline, offered in exchange for the absolution of our domain. Let her torment atone for our transgressions before the Holy See.”
“Father, please!” Carmilla’s scream tore through the howling storm, rattling the silver chains that seared her wrists to the bone. “Do not give me to them! I am your own flesh and blood! I AM YOUR DAUGHTER!”
The old vampire didn't spare her a single glance. He simply turned away and spat into the blood-stained snow at the paladin’s feet.
At that exact moment, a psychic shockwave detonated against my chest with the force of an iron sledgehammer.
Out in the physical world, beyond the threshold of memory, my physical Kitsune body collapsed to its knees before the Seal of the Abyss. Thick silver blood burst from my golden eyes and nostrils as my three tails thrashed in violent, agonizing spasms.
Behind me, Ignis lunged forward with an alarmed roar, claws outstretched, as the invisible ten-minute countdown began ticking away the first seconds toward brain death.
Failure was not an option.