The silence after a scream was always worse than the sound itself. It lingered like a wound — raw, echoing, refusing to close.
Amelia stood alone at the edge of the sealed gate, her breath painting faint clouds into the frozen air. The glyphs carved across the obsidian arch pulsed faintly beneath the frost, their rhythm mimicking a heartbeat not her own. She pressed her palm to the ice. It was warm.
Not welcoming. Watching.
"He took him."
The message carved beside her seared into her chest harder than the mark on her wrist. Lucien was gone. She didn't know where — only that Malrik had ripped him away the moment she unleashed whatever part of herself had broken the veil between past and now. She didn't even remember what had happened fully, only the blinding light and the feeling of herself being split into fire and frost.
She should have burned out.
But she hadn't.
And now she owed Lucien everything.
Pushing away from the wall, she moved deeper into the hollowed underpass where the light of the glyphs barely reached. The stone here bled into ancient roots, like veins trailing upward through the world. She followed them. Her boots cracked over layers of brittle ice and bone dust. The air felt thinner than before, full of secrets she hadn't yet paid for.
The corridor narrowed.
She passed a broken mirror nailed to the ice — a relic from another century — and caught her own reflection.
Except… it wasn't her.
The woman in the glass was older. Wiser. Cold. A crown of black snow rested atop her head, and her eyes glowed violet-blue like thunder beneath winter skies. Behind her stood shadows.
One of them looked like Lucien.
Amelia froze.
The vision blinked.
The mirror shattered on its own.
She backed away, heart hammering, and kept walking.
After what felt like hours in half-darkness, she came upon a massive chamber, spherical and vast, with a ceiling lost to mist. A circle of crystalline monoliths stood in the center, each humming with forgotten energy. Floating above them was a map—a live map—etched in frost and starlight. It pulsed with shifting lights like constellations in motion.
She recognized the central symbol: the Vale.
The living territory of the vampire courts. But around it, new points blinked into existence—one to the north, one buried deep in the southeast, and a third far beyond the known reaches, near what had once been the Sea of Shattered Moons.
Then something shifted in the chamber.
A whisper.
She turned fast, expecting shadows—but instead, a figure emerged from behind one of the monoliths.
Casien.
Bleeding. Pale. Breathing hard.
"You're alive," she said, half in disbelief.
"Barely," he rasped, holding his side. "The gate didn't like what you did."
"Where's Lucien?"
Casien's face darkened. "Gone. Taken. Wherever Malrik has built his new sanctum, it's not of this world."
"You mean another plane?"
He nodded. "Something between. A hollow thread stitched through the frost—what the old ones called the Veil. He's bent it, reshaped it into a prison you can't see unless you're marked."
"I am marked."
He glanced at her wrist, then back into her eyes. "Then maybe you're the only one who can reach him."
She didn't hesitate. "How?"
Casien moved toward the map. With a flick of his bloodstained hand, the stars shifted again. One of the lights — the one farthest east — flared brighter.
"That's where the veil is thinnest. The Hollow Expanse. Once ruled by the Revenants before they vanished."
"And the other lights?"
"Cradles," he said simply. "Spots Malrik has already corrupted. The more he infects the land, the more doors he opens."
"So I close them," Amelia said.
"You seal them," Casien corrected. "But each seal costs something."
Her mouth tightened. "What do you mean?"
Casien looked away. "Each door is tethered to part of you. You are both the gate and the key. Closing one will weaken you. Closing all might kill you."
She stepped forward. "But it will trap Malrik?"
He hesitated, then gave a single nod. "Yes. For a time."
She met his gaze. "That's enough."
Two nights later, Amelia stood alone on the edge of the Hollow Expanse.
The snow here was not white. It was gray, soot-streaked, dotted with the husks of long-dead trees. Wind did not blow. Instead, the air hung in stillness, like the breath of something that hadn't yet exhaled. The frost beneath her boots was black-glass smooth, reflecting stars she knew weren't in the sky.
Casien hadn't come. He said she had to enter alone.
She stepped across the first circle of stones — black obelisks half-buried in ash — and the world tilted.
The stars shifted.
And her mark flared.
Pain lanced up her arm as the frost cracked beneath her, splitting like a mouth opening in the earth. She stumbled forward and fell—not down, but inward.
Into the Veil.
There was no light in the Veil.
Only colorless space — a sensation of falling through memory, through self. She saw Lucien's smile, his bloodied hands, the way his eyes softened only when she touched his face. She felt the scream he must have given when Malrik dragged him away.
And then she landed.
Softly.
The world around her was… wrong.
Not frozen, not burning — but hollow. Trees without roots. Rivers without water. Buildings shaped from glass and bone. And floating above them, like a second sky, was Malrik's sanctum — a twisted cathedral of frost hanging in midair, tethered to the ground by threads of ice.
It pulsed with his power.
And with Lucien's.
She could feel him.
Without pause, she began to climb.
The floating staircase didn't exist until she stepped forward — and then the frost itself wove steps from mist and memory. Her heartbeat matched the rhythm of her mark. Each step felt like it might vanish beneath her. But it didn't.
Because Lucien was calling her.
Not in words. In pull.
She reached the threshold of the cathedral and stepped inside.
There were no walls.
Only arches of bone and crystal. Every surface mirrored her face in distorted forms — laughing, sobbing, screaming. She moved past them, deeper, until she saw him.
Lucien.
Suspended in the center of a great frost altar, chains of ice wrapped around his limbs. His eyes were closed. His chest barely moved.
Amelia ran forward—but stopped.
Malrik stood beside him.
"You came," he said softly, without surprise.
She clenched her fists. "Let him go."
"I will," Malrik said. "When you take his place."
Amelia's breath caught. "My place?"
Malrik's eyes gleamed like shards of obsidian under the cathedral's cold light. "You are the heir to the frost's true power. The mark you bear is not just a curse — it is a legacy. One that must be reclaimed."
Her heart pounded, her mind racing. "I won't be your pawn."
He smiled, slow and dangerous, like ice cracking underfoot. "No one is a pawn in this game. We are all players. The question is—will you play to win or lose?"
Lucien's chest rose in a shallow breath, but he did not open his eyes. The ice chains around him pulsed faintly, synced to Amelia's mark.
Malrik stepped closer, voice dropping to a whisper. "You want to save him. But to do that, you must become what you fear. The frost queen. The hollow veil's true mistress."
Amelia's thoughts tumbled. What would that mean? She felt the mark burning brighter, a cold fire creeping beneath her skin. If she took Lucien's place, would she lose herself? Would she become the dangerous, cold being Malrik hinted at?
"No," she said firmly, stepping back. "There has to be another way."
Malrik's expression hardened, a flicker of something ancient and cruel in his eyes. "The way is the same as it has always been. Power demands sacrifice. Blood for blood, frost for frost."
Her mark flared violently. The chains binding Lucien cracked, a small fragment of ice falling away.
Malrik raised his hand, summoning the shards back with a wave. "Stop resisting, Amelia. It's only pain you prolong."
She felt the weight of centuries pressing down on her—the voices of those who came before, who had fallen to the frost's temptations. Her resolve wavered, but she clenched her teeth.
"I will find a way to save him without losing myself," she said, voice trembling but resolute.
Malrik laughed softly, the sound echoing through the hollow cathedral. "Brave words. We shall see if they hold."
Suddenly, the altar beneath Lucien cracked open, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside lay a delicate silver dagger, its blade etched with runes glowing faintly violet.
"That dagger," Casien had mentioned it once in passing, "is forged to sever the ties of the veil, but only at a cost."
Amelia reached for it instinctively. The moment her fingers brushed the hilt, a surge of energy coursed through her, sharp and intoxicating.
Malrik's eyes narrowed. "Use it wisely, or it will consume you both."
She withdrew the dagger, the runes pulsing in her palm like a heartbeat.
Lucien's eyes fluttered open. "Amelia?"
Tears blurred her vision. "I'm here. I'm coming for you."
He tried to speak again, but his voice was weak, lost beneath the heavy silence of the veil.
Amelia glanced back at Malrik. "I don't want to fight you."
"You don't have a choice," he said. "But you might choose your own end."
With that, he vanished — the frost cathedral dissolving into mist.
Alone, Amelia looked down at the dagger.
A single thought burned in her mind: To save Lucien, she must cross the boundary between light and shadow, between human and monster.
She took a deep breath and stepped forward.
Alone, Amelia looked down at the dagger.
A single thought burned in her mind: To save Lucien, she must cross the boundary between light and shadow, between human and monster.
She took a deep breath and stepped forward.
But before she could reach him, the air around her shimmered, warping like ice melting under fire.
A voice—soft, cold, and utterly familiar—whispered in her ear:
"You will never save him… because you're already lost."
The frost at her feet cracked open, and shadowy hands burst forth, grasping for her.
Her mark blazed fiercely, but the darkness pulled tighter.
The veil was closing.