You opened the Gate, Asher. That makes you the beginning... or the end." Blood pools beneath the moonlight. Asher Vale gasps awake, haunted by dreams that aren't his. Lirael Cauthon watches him from the shadows-torn between desire and dread-because if the prophecy is true, the boy she's falling for is the one destined to resurrect Tenebris... or burn with it. When Asher Vale uncovers a power sealed in blood and fire, he becomes the target of vampire elders, hunters, and ancient forces that remember who he truly is. Guided-and hunted-by Lirael Cauthon, a woman bound to his fate by secrets and scars, Asher must confront the ash-covered truth of a past he never lived... and a love that might be the world's last hope-or its final ruin.
Chapter 1 THE PALE CITY
They say the city sleeps. But it dreams of blood.
Rain tapped against the shattered stained glass like a patient knock, soft and persistent. Outside, Velgrave exhaled mist into the night-a city perpetually on the edge of rot and resurrection. Neon signs flickered over crumbling bricks. Alleyways pulsed with shadows that didn't belong to anything living.
Lirael D'Argent stood in the cathedral's broken archway, eyes fixed on the street three stories below. She didn't breathe. She hadn't in years-not because she couldn't, but because she didn't see the point anymore.
The scent of wet asphalt and rust curled up to meet her. She closed her eyes.
Still no blood in the air.
Good.
She turned from the open arch and walked back inside her sanctuary. The place had once been holy-a house of prayer and Latin hymns. Now, it was filled with relics of a different kind: stacks of vinyl records, oil paintings in warped gold frames, books bound in leather and dust. Candles flickered along the stone walls, their light warm but insufficient. Darkness always crept in around the edges here. She preferred it that way.
A record spun lazily on a brass turntable, murmuring something low and orchestral. Dead languages and violin strings. Lirael's fingers hovered above the needle, then let it be. Silence felt heavier lately. Sacred.
She poured herself a glass of thick, crimson liquid from a decanter. Not blood-not anymore. A synthetic substitute. Cold. Tasteless. Like everything else that had tried to replace what she had once been.
Then she felt it.
A shift.
Not a sound. Not a movement. Just... a wrongness. A wrinkle in the air.
She tilted her head toward the cathedral's open nave. Her pupils narrowed to slits. The candles didn't flicker. But something had entered.
I locked the door.
Soft footsteps echoed against marble-too soft for human ears. But not hers.
She stepped barefoot across the stone floor, the hem of her black slip trailing like smoke. Her voice was quiet, razor-edged.
"You're not supposed to be here."
A figure emerged from behind a crumbling pew, hands raised.
"I get that a lot."
He was tall, lean, soaked in rain. His hoodie clung to his frame, and his jaw was cut with sharp angles. He looked young, maybe twenty-two. But something about the way he carried himself felt older. Like he'd been running for a very long time.
His blood called to her.
Not just the scent-familiar and wrong-but the sound of it. She could hear it rushing through his veins, fast, irregular. Hybrid. She took a step forward. He didn't move.
"What are you?" she asked.
His eyes flicked up to meet hers. Grey, storm-dark, rimmed in exhaustion. And defiance.
"Asher Vane," he said. "I'm here because someone wants you dead."
She smiled faintly. "That's hardly new."
Asher reached into his coat slowly and pulled something out-a folded piece of parchment, damp from the rain. He held it toward her. She didn't take it.
"It's written in blood," he said. "Yours."
Now she moved.
In a blink, she was inches from him, her hand at his throat, pinning him to the nearest stone pillar. His breath hitched, but he didn't fight back. He just met her gaze, unflinching.
"Tell me who sent you," she whispered.
He swallowed hard. "I don't know. I found it in a tomb. Old. Sealed with your crest."
She stared at him for a beat longer, then finally released her grip. He collapsed forward, coughing once. She took the parchment and opened it with care.
Her name was scrawled in deep red ink-older than fresh blood, iron-thick. The message was brief.
"They are waking. The Accord is broken. The city will bleed."
Lirael's fingers curled around the page.
The Accord. That word hadn't passed through anyone's lips in centuries. Not in this city. Not in any.
"I need your help," Asher said behind her. "They think your blood can stop it."
"Stop what?"
He hesitated. Then:
"The Hollow Plague."
She froze.
The silence stretched. Even the record had gone still.
"You shouldn't be here," she said again, voice colder now. "Leave. Tonight."
"I can't," he said simply.
"And why not?"
He looked at her, rainwater still trailing down his neck, mixing with a bruise that was too purple, too deep. She hadn't noticed it before. It pulsed faintly.
"Because I'm already marked," he said. "And so are you."
Lirael turned to respond-but something stopped her. A scent on the wind. Wrong. Rotten. Not the boy.
Something else.
She moved before the sound reached her ears. Grabbed Asher by the collar and dragged him behind the stone altar just as glass shattered overhead. Something heavy landed in the cathedral's loft, sending centuries-old dust into the air.
A growl echoed through the chamber. Not animal. Not vampire.
Something in-between.
Lirael narrowed her eyes and stepped out slowly, shielding Asher behind her. The figure above crouched low, elongated limbs glistening in the candlelight. Its eyes glowed like old embers, veins black and twisting across its pale face.
It smiled. Its teeth were all wrong.
Lirael whispered, "You led them to me."
Asher, behind her, whispered back.
"No... I think they were already here."
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