This was progress, faint though it was, it stirred sothing quiet inside Ludwig a tension easing at last from the base of his neck. He let his shoulders fall slightly, allowing a long, careful breath to slip from between his teeth. "What do you rember?" he asked, voice low, coaxing. He angled his body toward her a little, not to impose, but to give her space to answer without feeling watched too directly.
Celine’s gaze drifted downward, her expression unreadable. One of her hands rose from her lap, floating gently upward, fingers unfurling as if responding to a mory rather than his voice. She flexed them once, and as the fingers curled, the nails elongated, not all at once, but in a slow, fluid motion that felt too smooth to belong to any natural being. The tips hardened and blackened into claws that glead faintly beneath the flickering firelight, like obsidian pulled from so ancient cavern. Her voice followed the motion, subdued but certain. "Vampires," she said, her tone like a whisper dredged up from deep beneath still waters. "My family was a noble vampire family. I rember that."
Her eyes closed as the mories sealed behind centuries of pain and agony began resurfacing.
Ludwig nodded with quiet affirmation, his eyes fixed on her. "Good," he said. The word wasn’t congratulatory, but grounding, ant less as approval and more as a tether for her fragile thread of returning mory.
She turned to face him fully now. The erald of her eyes caught the light, bright and clear at first, but within that clarity, sothing stirred. A ghost of red shimred near the pupils, barely perceptible yet undeniably present, like the first hint of blood seeping through silk. The firelight didn’t create it. It revealed it. Wrath, buried but never dormant, flickered to life in the hollow depths of her gaze.
Her voice retained its poise, but sothing heavier had settled behind it, an old gravity returning to her words. "What is this... Lufondal Empire you spoke of earlier?" she asked, the syllables crisp, tinged with a hint of detachnt that made Ludwig wonder how much she had already guessed.
He kept his tone neutral. "The Empire of Lufondal is the current ruling power. The dominant human kingdom."
Her brow dipped faintly. "When did the older empire fall?"
"Lufondal’s been standing for about two centuries," Ludwig said, his voice slow with caution. Then, after a small pause, he added with careful weight, "As for you... do you know how long you’ve been trapped in that place?"
There was a pause. Her lips parted, but no sound ca. Then she shook her head once, subtly. "No. But I can guess... two centuries? From your tone."
He looked at her more closely now, studying the line of her jaw, the set of her shoulders. There was sothing in the way she held herself that had changed since awakening. She didn’t appear confused or overwheld. Just... fragnted. As though pieces of her had returned, but weren’t yet seated in place.
"Seven hundred years," Ludwig said finally. The number hung in the air like a blade suspended over their heads, silent and rciless.
She blinked, the gesture slight. "I see," she said. Her voice didn’t tremble, but neither did it hold strength. She let the words fall from her lips without fighting them, yet the quiet that followed was loaded with implication.
A resignation, and acceptance. Quite tragic.
Several monts passed before she spoke again, more softly than before, and with sothing wounded beneath the words. "My father... should have co to my aid. He was the only one who knew where I was heading... it was the mission I was given."
Ludwig’s face betrayed him. A twitch pulled across his cheek, unbidden and impossible to mask in ti. She caught it instantly.
"You know sothing," she said, her voice sharpening, not yet angry, but focused.
Ludwig inclined his head, but not in affirmation. His tone remained level. "Your father passed away."
A faint crease ford between her brows. "Seven hundred years is not enough to kill a true vampire."
"Not by age," Ludwig agreed. "But on the day you vanished, sothing terrible happened within the House of Bastos."
From the inner lining of his coat, he drew a journal, worn leather bound tight with brittle seams, the corners curled with years of travel. He held it delicately in his hands, then began to explain. Not everything. Not all at once. But in careful fragnts, he relayed what he had translated, what was written, and what few truths he had managed to extract from between the lines of pain and obsession.
As he spoke, he watched her.
Celine didn’t interrupt. Yet with every na he uttered, every rembered scene from a history she had never been allowed to mourn, her composure cracked further. Her spine straightened. Her hands dug into her knees. Her lips pressed tightly together, but the trembling breath between them betrayed her. The red in her eyes was no longer subtle now. It pulsed like the tide, each beat in rhythm with rising fury.
[Care to not entice the Wrath Core too much.]
Ludwig stopped. He let the last words linger, unfinished. The Core was responding, he could feel it in the air, like heat curling just under the skin of the world.
He looked at her, calmly but with a firm tone "If your rage grows too strong, the Wrath Core will consu you. You won’t be you anymore. You’ll beco a puppet, another Queen in the hands of the Wrathful Death. Try and calm it down, or you’ll lose yourself to it."
Celine exhaled sharply, her breath catching in her throat like a sob swallowed too quickly. Her head turned away from the fire, from Ludwig, as though trying to hide her face from both. When she finally spoke again, her voice was quieter, more resigned than before. "So even my emotions are imprisoned now..."
For a ti, she was still. But when she finally spoke, her voice had shifted again, no longer trembling. Cold. Analytical. "It was that werewolf, I suppose."
He nodded, watching her closely. "Yes. Van Dijk has been hunting him ever since. Seven hundred years."
Her expression darkened. She frowned, her eyes narrowing again, but not out of uncertainty. Out of disbelief. "That’s not possible. He shouldn’t be alive."
"What do you an?" Ludwig asked, sensing sothing deeper stirring in her tone.
"Van Dijk is human," she said. "His mother was human. He is my brother. I rember him the most, more than my other siblings, more than anyone, his mory is clear, his and his wife and daughter. He was closest to . I made those clothes." Her voice wavered with sothing close to reverence. "The ones you’re wearing now, I made them for him."
Ludwig’s breath caught. He hadn’t expected that.
"But he was human," she said again, as if trying to reconcile mory with present truth. "Did he... turn? Like you? Did he beco undead?"
"No," Ludwig said, shaking his head slowly. "He’s a True Vampire. Just like you."
She didn’t reply. Her body grew still, but Ludwig could see the flickers of thought racing through her eyes. The pieces were reassembling, slowly, painfully, and with each one, a new weight seed to settle onto her chest.
Then she looked up.
The awe in her voice was faint, but unmistakable. "Even after all this ti... soone from my blood still walks this world."
"How do you know all this? About , and my family, and my brother?" she asked.
"He is my teacher," Ludwig said as he pointed at Van Dijk’s journal, "Also, he is one of the few Eight Circle mages of the continent, and a Tower Master... most of it is here if you want to read it..."
"I don’t know what a tower master is, but it sounds important," she said.
Ludwig couldn’t explain many of the stuff that Celine had missed during her ti imprisoned, but with the Journal in her hands, she should probably be able to know more.
"However, I do know the power of an eight-circle mage... with that much power, how can our family’s killer still stay free and alive," she said as she stood up.
Ludwig did not speak.
And maybe it was the silence that triggered what ca next.
Her fingers clenched against her thighs. Her shoulders drew back. The crimson in her eyes surged, now glowing faintly around the edges. She didn’t cry out or scream. She simply stood. And in that motion alone, the fire in her veins seed to awaken fully.
The claws returned, longer now. Sharper. Her breath grew deeper, angrier. The firelight flickered strangely, as if recoiling from her aura.
"That much power..." she said, her voice almost shaking with the force of it. "And he still couldn’t kill a single flea riddled mutt? Oh brother, I have many, many things to tell you..."
Ludwig rose quickly, matching her height, his stance cautious. He saw where her gaze was going. Not at him. Not toward the trees.
But toward the campfire.
Toward the others.
A sick chill settled in his stomach.
’Oh no...’
[Warning. The Wrath Core is reacting heavily.]
Her next words ca as a whisper, but they weren’t human. There was sothing primal curled beneath them, sothing barely restrained.
"Laughable. I don’t even have a tenth of my strength. I need to feed..."
And her eyes, red as burning coals, turned fully toward the companions she barely knew, yet who had already begun to feel like sothing dangerously close to family.
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