Chapter 4 The Hunt begins

The city was different now.

Every noise sounded sharper, every face looked like a mask. After Elias’s death, Trine no longer felt alive. She hadn’t been lively in a long time before she met him. He had brought color into a world she had painted grey. It hurt like a fresh wound, raw and aching in places she thought had gone numb centuries ago. The streets that once felt familiar now seemed hollow, as though the city itself mourned with her.

Seraphina didn’t bother hiding anymore. The Court had already seen her. They had killed what little connection she had to the human world. Her cover, her quiet life, the fragile peace she’d built—it was gone.

So she hunted with her primal instinct. An instinct that was as old as life.

By the third night, she had names. She didn’t sleep or rest, didn’t feed; the only thing that moved her forward was vengeance, burning slow and steady in her veins. The Eternal Court’s local circle ran their network from beneath an abandoned opera house on the west side—the same building where once, long ago, she and Caelum had danced under chandeliers before the war.

The thought almost stopped her. Memories pressed against her mind like ghosts, whispering of a time when laughter echoed through those halls and she still believed in love. She pushed them away. They were irrelevant now.

She dressed in black, tied her hair back, and walked into the storm. She was a woman on a mission.

Inside the opera house, the air smelled of mold and rust. The rain dripped through the broken ceiling, collecting in shallow puddles that shimmered under the candlelight. The place had been beautiful once—columns carved with angels, marble floors that had seen centuries of music and blood. Now it was a carcass, hollow and waiting. Voices echoed through the dark, careless and arrogant, belonging to creatures who thought the night still belonged to them.

Seraphina moved soundlessly. Vampires thought themselves predators; they had forgotten what true hunters looked like. Her movements were fluid, almost too quiet for the human ear, but even the dead should have felt the shift in the air that followed her.

She followed the sound of laughter into the main hall. A handful of vampires lounged where the audience seats once stood. Their eyes glowed faint red in the half-light. She counted four, maybe five. Not many. Enough. Enough to fight and get information from.

One of them turned his head. “You shouldn’t be here, love,” he said with a smirk. “Opera nights are over.”

She didn’t answer. She walked straight to the center aisle, her boots splashing through the water.

The smirk faltered.

“You lost?” another called.

“No,” she said quietly. “I’m exactly where I need to be.”

The first vampire laughed and moved faster than human eyes could follow. His claws slashed through the air, but she was gone before the strike landed. When he turned, she was behind him, hand on his shoulder.

He looked down in disbelief as her fingers sank through his chest. His body turned to ash before he could scream.

The others froze.

“She’s one of us,” someone whispered. “What are you?”

“I’m definitely not one of you,” she replied.

The fight was quick, brutal, silent. She moved like shadow and lightning, the rhythm of battle as natural to her as breath. By the time the last body fell to dust, Seraphina stood alone in the dripping hall. Her reflection flickered in the water—eyes burning faint gold, light cutting through the darkness. No ordinary vampire could see their reflection. She was no ordinary one. Her power was waking, and she sought to destroy all that stood in her path of vengence

She looked at the pile of ashes and spoke softly, her voice a quiet promise. “Tell your master the hunt has begun.”

Below the city, Caelum felt it—the echo of her magic rippling through the network like a tremor beneath his skin. The bond burned along his wrist, faint but constant, like a heartbeat out of sync.

He stood over a table covered in maps, the war room dimly lit by flickering candlelight. “How many?”

Elysande’s voice came from the shadows, smooth and sharp as silk. “Six. Maybe seven. The opera house is gone.”

He said nothing. His jaw tightened, eyes dark with something between regret and fury. That was his favorite place, his memories lived there. This place reminded him of days of old.

“She’s angry,” the witch said. “You should have expected that.”

Caelum turned to face her. “She shouldn’t have this power anymore. The seal should have held it.”

Elysande tilted her head, strands of silver hair catching the candlelight. “Then maybe she’s breaking it. You knew she would try. You always did underestimate her heart.”

He looked down at his hand. The mark there glowed faintly gold, the same light that lived in her veins. “If she breaks it completely…”

The witch smiled coldly. “Then you die, my lord. Isn’t that what you fear most?”

He didn’t answer. Fear wasn’t something Caelum admitted, but the silence between them said enough.He didn't admit but he felt fear for the first time in a long while and that gave him an ungodly thrill.

That night, Seraphina returned home exhausted but clear. Her hands were stained with ash and rain. The city outside hummed again, pretending nothing had happened, pretending that blood hadn’t been spilled beneath its streets.

She didn’t bother cleaning up. She sat by the window with Elias’s cat curled against her knee, its warmth grounding her in a world that no longer felt real.

The ring around her neck pulsed again—but slower now, steady, as if matching her heartbeat.

She whispered to the quiet, “You can feel me now, can’t you?”

In another part of the city, Caelum lifted his head as if hearing her voice through the storm. The bond tugged like a whisper across time. He felt her. The one whose love he had betrayed for Power.

For the first time in centuries, his expression changed.

He smiled.