The war room pulsed with energy—arcane maps glowing with residual magic, relics hovering just inches above the ancient stone table, and voices murmuring like wind between cracked glass. Raven stood at the center, his arms crossed, eyes fixed on nothing and everything all at once.
He hadn't slept in days.
Not because of the strategy meetings. Not because of the scouts bringing news of breaches near the edge of the vampire realm. Not even because of the fragile alliance they'd forged with the witches.
It was the silence in his mind.
There used to be… something. Someone.
And it was gone.
He couldn't name it, but the emptiness it left behind felt raw—like flesh scraped off bone. Every time he closed his eyes, he expected warmth. A voice. A light. But all he found was frost and confusion.
"Commander," Alaric called from the corner of the room. "The witches have finalized the glyph placements. They await your approval."
Raven blinked, coming back to the present. "Good. Tell them I'll inspect it at nightfall."
Alaric paused. "There's more. The Seeress of Ash sent a message."
Raven turned. "And?"
"She says the final battle won't be won by power… but by memory."
A chill crept down Raven's spine. "That's cryptic. Even for her."
But the words struck a nerve. Not in logic—but in the marrow of him.
He dismissed Alaric with a nod, and the room slowly emptied, leaving him alone again with the flickering magic maps and his own discontent. He stared at the largest map—an outline of the Veil's collapse points, where realms had begun to leak into each other. Chaos burned along every line. The witch realm had already lost two cities to the fog. Vampires were barely holding their borders. The human lands had started recording "dream plagues"—illusions that bled into waking life.
And still, something tugged at him.
A memory that refused to surface. A name his mouth couldn't form.
He touched the obsidian ring on his finger. No use. It meant nothing anymore. Just a shard of power with no story attached.
He slammed his fist into the table, sending two hovering relics crashing down. One hissed with ancient heat. The other screamed.
"I'm not broken," he muttered to the room. "I'm not."
But the bond—whatever it was—had been torn out of him so cleanly, it was like it never existed.
He should feel free. Unchained.
Then why did his heart burn every time the wind shifted east?
---
That night, Raven flew across the boundary toward the witches' glyph camp. The sky was fractured—stars bending unnaturally, colors bleeding from constellations. Magic was thinning, but stronger in other places, pooling where it shouldn't.
When he landed, the lead witch bowed, her silver braid sweeping the ash-stained floor.
"We weren't sure you'd come personally," she said.
"I need to see it myself," he replied. "We're too close to make errors now."
The glyph field was vast—hundreds of sigils etched into dirt, bone, and crystal. They pulsed faintly under moonlight, whispering to the energy around them.
Raven walked between the lines slowly, trying to feel what the witches felt. But instead of power, all he sensed was that damn void. That ache in his ribs. The whisper of fingers once laced in his.
He stopped before a particular glyph—one shaped like a rose burned at the edges. His breath hitched.
"Who designed this one?" he asked.
The witch behind him hesitated. "No one remembers. It appeared the night the Veil cracked. We assumed it was your doing."
He stared longer. That glyph wasn't his magic. It wasn't even vampiric.
It was… familiar.
But only in the way you remember dreams.
He knelt, tracing the edges with gloved fingers. When his skin grazed the center, the world shifted.
He saw blue light, a girl screaming in the dark, a hand reaching through shadows to hold his, a promise whispered into wind—
Then it was gone.
He staggered back. The witch reached for him, concerned.
"I'm fine," he said through clenched teeth. "Just a memory echo."
But inside, everything was shaking.
He had known someone.
And she was gone.
Not dead.
Erased.
He rose to his feet and faced the glyphs again, breath shallow.
The war was bigger than him. He knew that. They had a plan—a good one. But he would be lying if he said victory was his goal now.
He needed to find the missing piece.
He needed to remember her.
Not just to win.
To survive.
Because whatever part of his soul had been ripped away… it was bleeding still.
And somewhere, deep in the roots of the Veil, someone had made him forget her on purpose.
Raven's eyes blazed. "Change of plans," he muttered.
The witch looked up. "Commander?"
"We finish the glyphs. Strengthen the wards. Prepare the front line."
"And you?"
He looked at the rose glyph one more time.
"I'm going into the Rift."