The cold had changed.
It no longer bit her skin; it sank deeper, curling through her veins like silver smoke. Amelia barely felt the snow beneath her boots as she crossed into the place where light no longer obeyed the rules of the world she knew. Trees stood twisted in frozen agony, their branches reaching out like skeletal fingers toward a sky that bled crimson.
She didn't remember how she'd gotten here. Not precisely. One moment, she had been chasing the pulse on her wrist — the soft throb that tethered her to Lucien — and the next, the world had… fractured.
She now walked through a land caught between breath and death.
The realm of the Hollow King.
The mark on her wrist burned steadily. It didn't hurt, exactly — not anymore. But it pulled at her, like a whisper brushing the back of her neck, luring her deeper. It was Lucien's pulse. His soul. Somewhere beyond this place, behind a veil made of shadow and bone, he was waiting.
Or dying.
She tried not to think about that.
Time flowed strangely here. The trees didn't cast shadows. There was no wind, but the air rippled with soundless pressure, like the world itself was exhaling around her. The sky overhead was more bruise than heaven — layered with dark purples and streaks of black, and at its center hung a massive, crimson moon.
It pulsed, just like her wrist.
The same rhythm.
A gate, she realized.
Not a symbol.
A warning.
She kept walking.
Each step forward made the path behind her fade. The forest unmade itself as she moved — no way back, only forward. And somewhere far ahead, through the blood-hazed distance, she began to see it.
A tower.
Massive. Ancient. Bone-white stone wrapped in black vines. It clawed its way out of the frostbitten earth, rising like a fang piercing the bleeding sky.
She didn't question it. Didn't need to.
Lucien was there.
He had to be.
But as she drew closer, something else stirred.
The air thickened, humming low in her ears. Her breath grew sharp. The cold began to speak.
You should not be here, it hissed.
You were made to melt, not endure.
She ignored it, clutching the pendant Lucien had given her weeks ago — a token once used by vampire nobles to mark their bond with a favored human. The chain was singed from the explosion at the chapel, but the pendant itself still gleamed faintly.
It felt heavier now. As if it held more than just memory.
As she crossed a blackened arch — bones embedded in the stone like warning sigils — the path before her split. One side led downward, into a cavern that pulsed with violet light. The other curled upward toward the tower's peak.
Logic said down.
But love told her up.
She followed her heart.
The climb was agonizing. Not from the physical strain — the frost seemed to carry her steps, lifting her just enough to move forward — but from the memories that began to rise as she ascended.
Not hers.
His.
A child in chains, dragged through snow by pale priests.
A first taste of blood, bitter and burning.
A woman — beautiful and cruel — whispering promises while breaking his bones.
Lucien.
His mind was bleeding into hers.
And she could feel his pain. His fury. His loneliness. Centuries of it.
She reached the first landing and collapsed to her knees, shaking.
"Lucien…" she whispered, clutching her head.
He heard her.
Through the crackling silence, a single word echoed back.
"Amelia."
It wasn't a whisper. It wasn't a cry.
It was a plea.
She pushed forward.
The tower narrowed as she ascended. The stairs grew more jagged, the walls bleeding cold. The higher she climbed, the less the world made sense. The angles were wrong. Gravity bent strangely. Sounds came from nowhere.
And through it all, the moon grew larger.
Not in the sky — inside her.
The blood moon was no longer an object. It was a presence.
A heart.
Beating with ancient hunger.
She reached the final landing and stepped into a circular chamber.
At its center, he hung suspended — bound not by chains, but by threads of shadow stretching from the walls, wrapped around his limbs and throat like cobwebs made of ink.
Lucien.
His shirt was torn, revealing pale skin veined with silver. His eyes were closed, brows furrowed in pain. His lips moved, but no sound escaped.
He looked both stronger… and broken.
"Lucien!" she cried, running to him.
But the moment she crossed the threshold, something struck her.
Not a hand. Not a weapon.
A memory.
Not hers.
His.
And it cut.
Fire. Screams. Blood. A battlefield of ice. The Winter Queen on her knees. Lucien, standing above her, his sword buried in her chest.
"You betrayed me," she whispered.
"I had to," he said.
Amelia blinked.
He wasn't speaking now — these were echoes. Visions. The truth rising from his soul.
And another voice joined them. Soft. Cruel.
"He is not yours. He never was. He belongs to me."
The chamber dimmed.
The shadows around Lucien pulsed, then peeled back, taking shape.
The Hollow King stepped into the light.
Not a man.
Not a monster.
Something in between — tall, robed in nothing but smoke and bone, with a crown of antlers dripping with frost.
He didn't smile. Didn't speak again.
He simply raised a hand — and the air between them cracked.
Amelia screamed as her mark flared with agony. Her knees buckled. She fell.
The Hollow King advanced, the air warping around him.
"Stop," a voice rasped.
Lucien.
He had lifted his head.
His eyes burned — silver threaded with white.
"You will not touch her."
The Hollow King paused.
Lucien's body trembled, but the shadows holding him began to splinter.
"You," the king said at last, voice hollow, "were my key. My heir. You drank her blood. You opened the gate."
"I chose her," Lucien snarled. "Not you. Never you."
"You chose weakness."
"No," Amelia whispered, rising to her feet. "He chose love."
And she stepped forward — into the center of the chamber — as her mark ignited.
Not blue.
Not silver.
But white flame.
The Hollow King reeled back.
"You cannot—!"
But he was too late.
Amelia reached Lucien — and touched his heart.
The world exploded.
The blast that erupted from their contact wasn't made of flame or ice, but something far older — a blinding pulse of ancestral frostlight, pure and searing, that peeled back the very stone of the tower. Vines recoiled and screamed like wounded serpents. The crimson haze overhead cracked like glass, revealing veins of white fire that raced across the dark sky.
The Hollow King staggered.
Not with fear — but surprise.
As if, for the first time in all his cursed eternity, something had occurred that he had not foreseen.
Amelia's fingers trembled where they pressed to Lucien's chest. His heart thundered under her palm. The shadow-webs that bound him snapped and fizzled to ash, torn apart by the light that now pulsed between them.
Lucien fell forward, collapsing into her arms.
He was heavier than he looked, and colder too — but the moment she held him, she knew the truth.
The change was already happening.
His skin bore faint glowing lines like frost fractures under glass. His eyes, though closed, flickered rapidly beneath their lids. His breath came in gasps — not from pain, but from the rush of energy coursing through him.
Amelia's mark burned in sync with his heart.
The gate between their souls had fully opened.
She looked up — and the Hollow King had vanished.
But the shadows hadn't.
They crawled along the walls now, forming faces, whispers, memories. Not just Lucien's — hers. Her father's voice. The look on her mother's face the night she died. The warmth of Lucien's lips the first time he kissed her, now twisted into mockery.
The tower itself was alive, feeding on her.
On them.
She braced Lucien against the wall and stood.
The pendant he'd given her, still around her neck, had changed. The glass had shattered, replaced with a delicate lattice of ice that pulsed like a second heartbeat.
She tore it free and held it aloft.
The shadows hissed and backed away.
"Your strength is not your own," the whispering walls said. "It was stolen. Borrowed. You are a thief of frost."
She took a step forward.
"No," she said, voice steady. "I am the heir of it."
The shadows shrieked and recoiled into the cracks of the tower. The chamber dimmed. The red light faded, replaced with a pale silver hue that radiated from her body outward.
Lucien stirred, groaning.
She knelt beside him.
His eyes opened — and this time, there was no trace of crimson.
Just silver threaded with white.
He looked… terrified.
"Amelia… what did you do?"
She smiled faintly. "I brought you back."
"You weren't supposed to come here."
"You think I'd leave you?"
He sat up slowly, wincing. His wounds were healing already, the frost in his veins knitting muscle and flesh faster than anything human. Faster than even vampire regeneration.
"You don't understand," he said. "The gate—it's inside you now. I can feel it. It's not just power… it's him."
The tower trembled, as if agreeing.
The floor cracked beneath them.
Far below, something groaned.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "We'll destroy it. Together."
Lucien's hand reached out, fingers brushing her cheek. "I was trying to protect you. From this."
"You did," she said. "You gave me time. But you can't carry this alone anymore."
He nodded slowly.
And then the tower roared.
Stone split. Shadows poured from the walls like liquid smoke, swirling into a monstrous shape that filled the chamber, mouth wide, screaming not sound but memory.
Their memories.
Amelia's first day at the orphanage.
Lucien's first kill.
The night they danced together under moonlight.
The night he almost drained her.
And through it all, a heartbeat.
Not Lucien's.
Not hers.
But the gate's.
The blood moon hung directly overhead now, visible through the broken ceiling — pulsing, open, bleeding strands of red lightning into the tower.
The Hollow King didn't need to fight them.
He was awakening through them.
Lucien gritted his teeth and stood. "We have to seal it."
"How?"
"We kill me."
Her heart stopped.
"What?"
"I'm the link. The key. I drank your blood under the red moon. My body became the vessel. If I die—"
"No." Her voice shook. "Don't say that."
"If I die," he continued, ignoring the way her hands clutched his shirt, "the gate will close. The Hollow King can't anchor to this world without me."
"There has to be another way—"
"There isn't," he whispered. "You're not like me, Amelia. You can still go back. You can live."
She stared at him, horror rising.
Then — fury.
"No."
His eyes widened. "Amelia—"
She kissed him.
Not soft. Not sweet.
Desperate.
It wasn't a goodbye. It was a promise.
When she pulled away, her eyes glowed white.
"I didn't come all this way to lose you now."
He opened his mouth — but the floor cracked again.
A scream tore through the tower, and the blood moon pulsed so brightly it bathed them in crimson.
The gate was opening.
Amelia turned toward the light.
Lucien shouted her name, reaching for her — but she had already stepped forward.
And then…
She vanished.
It was not death that greeted her.
It was memory.
But not hers.
The space beyond the gate was not a room, not a world — not even a dream. It was origin. A place that existed between heartbeat and silence, where time hung like breath in cold air. The light was colorless. Shapes twisted in and out of focus — mountains that blinked, rivers made of glass, skies stitched together by frost and starlight.
Amelia floated. Or perhaps she walked. It didn't matter. The laws of movement didn't apply here.
And ahead of her, rising from the mist like an answer to an unspoken question, stood a throne made of bone and moonstone.
The Hollow King waited there.
But he didn't wear antlers now.
He wore a face.
Her face.
No — not exactly. Older. Sharper. Eyes made of mirror and night.
"You came willingly," he said, voice echoing like wind over ancient ice.
"I came for him," she answered.
He tilted his head, amused. "He is a consequence, not a cause."
"He's everything."
The king rose from the throne. His robes shifted like glacier dust, weightless and heavy at once.
"Do you know what you are, child?"
"I'm Amelia Vale."
"No," he said. "You are frost reborn. You are the blood moon's answer to the question of life. You are the gate — and you are the lock."
"I'm a girl," she said softly. "Who fell in love with a vampire."
His smile turned thin. "Then you are a fool."
"You've made that mistake too," she said. "Haven't you?"
The smile vanished.
And in its place, pain.
Real. Raw.
"I loved the Winter Queen," he said at last. "And she destroyed me. Betrayed me. Cast me into the veil and sealed the realm to preserve the humans she favored."
Amelia's breath caught. "She was… human?"
"Once," he whispered. "Then she touched the frost. As you did. As all the old blood must."
He moved forward, not walking — gliding — until he stood before her.
"You are her heir. Not just in power. In soul. In blood. That's why the gate opened. That's why he changed. You woke the frost in him."
Amelia trembled. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because the gate is not a door. It's a choice."
He raised a hand.
Behind him, a vision shimmered into view.
Lucien — crumpled on the tower floor, struggling to rise. Clutching her pendant.
"He's dying," the Hollow King said. "His body is rejecting the bond. He drank blood meant only for the chosen. If you do not return, he will perish. If you do… you will seal this place again."
"And you?"
"I will sleep."
"Until I fall in love again," she whispered.
He nodded. "Love is always the key. It's the curse we share."
She turned away from him — toward Lucien.
He was whispering her name. Again and again. As if it would call her home.
Her eyes burned.
"What do I have to do?" she asked.
"Bind the gate with your blood. Take back what he drank. Give it to the frost."
"Will it hurt?"
"Yes."
"Will he survive?"
"If you believe he should."
She closed her eyes.
And cut her palm with the memory of his kiss.
A blade of ice formed instantly, thin and sharp.
She held it to her wrist, where the bond-mark still glowed.
And she whispered his name.
Once.
Twice.
Then cut.
The mark bled white.
Light, not blood.
The gate shrieked — and began to close.
Back in the tower, Lucien felt the air shift.
His breath caught.
Pain seared through his chest — not from injury, but loss.
Amelia.
She was slipping away.
"No," he growled, crawling to his knees. "No, no—"
The pendant around his neck shattered.
A burst of light surged from it — and her voice whispered through it.
"I chose you."
He screamed.
The tower shook.
Frost exploded from his skin — not violent, but clean — forming a halo around him. His eyes went white. His heart stopped — and restarted with a new rhythm.
Not vampire.
Not human.
Something between.
A fusion.
A balance.
The blood moon above flickered… and dimmed.
Amelia reappeared in a flash of light — unconscious, falling.
He caught her.
The tower crumbled around them.
He held her close, heart thunderous.
She breathed — once — and opened her eyes.
"…Lucien?"
"I'm here," he whispered.
The blood moon cracked overhead.
And the tower — the entire realm — began to collapse.
He ran, holding her tight.
Behind them, the Hollow King's throne crumbled to dust.
The gate closed.
And the frost… was quiet.
Lucien didn't stop running.
The world behind him collapsed — not in fire, not in ice, but in silence. Walls of mist and memory fell inward, as if the realm had been a breath held too long and was now exhaled into nothingness. He felt Amelia's pulse — faint, but steady — against his chest. She had given everything to seal the gate, and what remained of her energy clung to him like threads of snow caught in a storm.
He leapt across a fissure in the tower floor, the stone disintegrating beneath his feet the moment they passed.
Ahead, a shimmer — a mirror of frost and moonlight.
The exit.
He didn't question it. Just ran.
The moment they crossed through, the world behind them vanished with a sound like a heartbeat turning to stone.
They landed hard in the center of the Vale estate's ruined great hall. The once-grand chandelier had long since fallen. Vines had eaten the marble floors. Outside, thunder growled — but it was real thunder this time, not the growl of an ancient gate.
Lucien collapsed beside her, breath ragged.
Amelia stirred.
He leaned over her, brushing hair from her face. Her skin was cold — not death-cold, but frost-kissed, as if some of the power she had channeled still lingered beneath her surface.
Then her eyes fluttered open.
And everything inside him eased.
"…You made it," she whispered.
He laughed — and it cracked with emotion. "You made it. You closed it. You saved us both."
She reached up weakly and touched his cheek. "You're different."
He nodded. "So are you."
He took her hand and placed it against his chest.
His heartbeat was no longer frantic.
It was calm. Controlled. A rhythm of twilight and frost.
"I'm not what I was," he said. "Not fully vampire anymore. But not human either."
Her voice was soft. "You're something new."
"So are you," he echoed.
She smiled faintly. "Did we win?"
He hesitated.
Then, slowly: "For now."
They lay there in silence for a moment, listening to the storm outside fade into rain.
When Amelia sat up, he helped her. She looked around at the ruined hall, the shattered remnants of her family's legacy. A sense of peace — strange but undeniable — settled over her.
The gate was closed.
The Hollow King was gone.
But even in that moment, something deep within her shifted.
A feeling.
A presence.
Faint… but watching.
She turned toward the broken mirror above the fireplace.
It was cracked, dusty, forgotten — yet her reflection shimmered oddly.
Not just hers.
Someone else's.
A woman.
Tall. Regal. Eyes pale as frost.
Amelia froze.
Lucien followed her gaze. "What is it?"
She didn't answer.
The figure in the mirror raised a hand — not a wave, but a beckoning gesture.
Amelia blinked.
The vision was gone.
Just her own reflection again.
But something had changed.
Her mark — the bond etched on her wrist — had not faded.
It had deepened.
Twisted.
Now, it looked almost like a sigil. A royal seal.
Lucien frowned. "That's not how it looked before."
"I know," she whispered. "I think… the gate didn't take all of it."
He stood, helping her to her feet. "Then we're not finished."
"No," she agreed. "But we're not alone anymore."
He brushed his lips against her temple. "We never were."
And just as she turned to face him fully — to ask what came next — the doors at the far end of the ruined hall slammed open.
Wind rushed in.
And with it, a figure in a hooded cloak, soaked in silver rain.
They stepped forward, silent as death, and lowered the hood.
A woman.
Not old, not young — timeless.
Her hair was white-gold, her skin nearly translucent. And her eyes…
Were the same as Amelia's.
But colder.
She looked at them both — and smiled.
"I've come for the heir," she said.
Lucien moved instinctively in front of Amelia.
The woman raised a hand, and frost spread across the stone beneath her feet.
"I'm not here to harm you," she said. "I'm here to prepare you."
"For what?" Amelia asked, voice tight
.
The woman's gaze turned north, past the mountains, past the veil.
"For the second gate," she said.
Then she vanished in a breath of ice.