"At the rise of the Crimson Eclipse, the Veil shall bleed.

  Born of darkness yet untouched by sin, the Immaculate shall rise.

  A Vampire neither of the past nor future, bound by blood, chosen by fate.

  And from the ashes of hunted kin, the Hunter shall be born.

  Two souls tethered by doom — one must fall for the other to live.

  Love them, and the world ends. Kill them, and the world survives.

  When the Red Moon ascends, the Immaculate shall choose: break the Veil, and unleash ruin — or seal it, and be lost to eternity.

  This is the will of the stars. This is the curse of the Veil."

  The words were older than any kingdom, older than the gods themselves.

  Carved in black obsidian, buried in catacombs no living soul dared to disturb.

  Forgotten — until now.

  ---

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  The sky bled.

  A wound torn open across the heavens, the Crimson Eclipse devoured the sun, swallowing light in gory mouthfuls.

  Day died gasping.

  Night was born writhing and blood-slicked.

  The Vampire Elders — monarchs of blood and bone, tyrants over centuries of silence — fell to their knees beneath the bleeding sky.

  For the first time in a thousand years, they remembered fear.

  Not fear of men.

  Not fear of death.

  But fear of prophecy.

  "Born of darkness yet untouched by sin..."

  The words murmured through their hollow hearts, a memory they could not kill.

  In the ruins of an abandoned cathedral, where ivy strangled crumbling stone and the wind keened like a mourning widow, something answered.

  A cradle of shattered glass and rotting silk.

  The stink of iron, wet earth, and something sweeter — something wrong.

  And then — a cry.

  Not the thin, soft wail of a human infant.

  No breath misted the cold air.

  No heart stuttered against fragile ribs.

  Yet life burned there.

  Wild. Terrible.

  He opened his eyes, and the light of the Crimson Eclipse burned in them.

  Not red. Not black. But a bleeding endless between.

  The Immaculate had risen.

  "A Vampire neither of the past nor future..."

  "Bound by blood..."

  "Chosen by fate..."

  The Veil between worlds — the brittle skin between life and death — shivered.

  ---

  At the same moment, across a land drowned in storm, a blade shattered against ancient stone.

  The last holy blade of the Hunters. Broken.

  In a village so forgotten even the rain pitied it, a woman screamed.

  The fire guttered.

  The midwife gasped.

  The earth itself seemed to hold its breath.

  And a girl opened her eyes.

  Silver flame blazed in them, savage and cold as the stars that no longer shone.

  The Endbringer.

  "And from the ashes of hunted kin, the Hunter shall be born..."

  No songs would be sung for her.

  No crown would weigh her brow.

  She was forged of ruin and rain, raised by grief, sharpened by the knowledge that one day —

  She must kill the boy she had not yet met.

  Or watch the world die.

  ---

  Fate stirred.

  Not as a king, sitting on a throne of bones.