Rapha
There’s always been a thread between Drusilla and me. Invisible. Indestructible. Even during the centuries she was lost to me, it tugged at something primal, something ancient and sacred in my chest. A bond deeper than blood and older than death.
Tonight, that thread tightens.
It pulls hard and sudden, sharp as a blade to the sternum, resonating with fear. Not mine. Hers.
A flash of icy panic drenches me, consumes me. I stagger, my hand falling away from the soul I was about to trade. My breath lodges in my throat. My claws flex involuntarily.
Drusilla.
She’s not afraid. She’s terrified. It pours through the bond like a scream with no sound.
Panic surges in my blood like wildfire as I push away from the stall, sending the goblin vendor tumbling. I shove past wraiths, witches, and a startled kelpie wrangler. The Veiled Market erupts in curses and glowing sigils behind me, but I don’t stop.
I lock onto that thread, the beat ofher terror, and follow it like a trail of blood.
It leads me to the edge of Screaming Woods, but this place no longer resembles the rest of the magical town.
Black trees claw the sky, rising before me like a warning.
The wind howls like a dirge. Dead branches crunch beneath my boots.
Charred roots wrap around the stones. Nothing grows here. No bird sings. The air tastes of ruin.
What fuck has happened here? The question hangs unanswered because I don't stop. I can’t.
I don’t feel the cold or the rot.
I feel her .
She’s not far.
I move faster, talons extended, teeth bared—not for intimidation, but because my body doesn’t know how to be anything but ready . Ready to kill. Ready to die. Ready to tear through anything that stands between me and the woman screaming through the bond.
A thin shimmer of old magic slashes across my vision like a veil half-lifted.
I step through it and stumble into what might have once been sacred ground.
What’s left is a ruin. The bones of a temple.
Cracked columns half-swallowed by the earth.
Vines strangling archways. Statues with faces worn smooth by time and fury.
But power still vibrates within. Twisting. Brewing. Humming like a live wire stretched too tight.
Drusilla is here, bound at the center of a ritual circle. Silver cords bite into her wrists, and her head is slumped forward, her ebony hair a dark curtain hiding her face.
And standing beyond the chalked runes isCassian.
The man who gave her life.
The man who stole it.
The man I killed once physically and a hundred thousand ways in my imagination.
Pale light pulses around him. Not firelight. Not spelllight.
Bloodlight. Thick and alive. A signature of a corrupted ritual. The kind that consumes, not empowers. The kind meant to kill the soul before the body.
His armor is tarnished and cracked, weeping shadows. His face is a cruel mask of triumph, but his eyes gleam with something deeper than madness.
Conviction.
He lifts a blade etched with blood runes. It hums with sacrificial energy.
“You’re just in time,” he says, voice full of glee. “You can watch her soul burn.”
“Step away from her,” I snarl, moving forward.
“Once, I was a general. A man of God. Ruler of an Empire. I raised her to continue that line.” He turns his eyes on me, hollow with fury.
“And then you infected her. You stole her from me. Tainted her. She became something unclean. Something lesser. I wept for her soul. I spent centuries in Purgatory, and I felt the ripple, heard the whispers when she was brought back. And then Lucifer offered me the chance to finish what I had begun. To cleanse what remained.”
“No, Lucifer brought you back to level the playing field. He was bored and thought it would amuse him,” I spit, circling the runes. “You’re just another piece on his board, Cassian.”
Cassian's mouth curls into a cruel smile. “Perhaps. But tonight, I carve away the rot.”
His eyes flash toward Drusilla, still bound in silver cords, her head bowed, her body trembling against the bloodlight pressing in on her.
“She was meant to carry my legacy. The Church. The Empire. Order. ” His voice rises, reverent and wrathful. “And instead, she defied me. Embraced darkness. Gave herself to you. ”
I take a step closer, careful not to breach the edge of the circle. Blood magic like this can explode with the wrong pressure. “You didn’t want a daughter,” I say coldly. “You wanted a puppet. Someone to inherit your power without questioning your rules.”
Cassian’s voice turns venomous. “She was mine. My creation. My heir. Until you twisted her.”
“No,” I growl, voice low. “She was never yours. You controlled her, beat her, but in the end, she chose herself.”
Cassian lifts the blade higher. “Then she dies by her own choice,” he says almost peacefully. “Burned clean. Forgotten. And I will save her soul by destroying it.”
The words are so twisted with self-righteousness that they almost sound merciful. Almost.
“You’re not saving anything,” I snarl. “You’re just trying to erase the part of her you couldn’t control.”
A flicker of something crosses his face—rage, maybe. Or the shame of a man who’s gone too far to recognize himself.
I take another step, claws bared. “You don’t cleanse things by burning them alive.”
“You do,” he says flatly, “when they’re already damned.”
He looks at Drusilla like a relic left to rot. Not a daughter. A failure. A mark he’s desperate to erase.
“I will burn her soul until there is nothing left,” he snarls. “No ghost. No whisper. Nothing for you to cling to. I will salt the earth where she once stood. I will make her never have been. ” The sword pulses red in his hands. “And when she’s gone, my legacy will be pure again.”
“No!” I lunge at him as he swings the sword toward Drusilla.
I don’t even see it coming. Cassian turns at the last second and drives his sword through my chest. The blood runes etched into the steel do their job as the blade carves straight through my ribs.
One second, I’m moving, talons ready to rip him to shreds, and the next, fire lances through my chest, hot and final.
I hit the ground hard. Cold stone. Cold blood. Mine. I can’t move. My limbs are ice. My vision swims.
Drusilla’s scream reaches me from a distance, like she’s calling to me through water or from another world.
Darkness creeps in.
Is this how it ends? Not in redemption. Not in rage. But infailure?
I palm the locket that still hangs around my neck. A symbol of our enduring love. I forgot for a little while, lured by the addiction of reaping souls for Lucifer. Ironic how everything is so incredibly clear when you’re on the brink of death.
“You thought your love would save you?” Cassian snarls, his eyes gleaming with madness as he looks at Drusilla. “But I will end you so thoroughly that no god, no demon, no curse will ever bring you back.”
He chants in a language so old, even time has forgotten it. Drusilla screams, and her body arches. Pain rips through her as the ritual pulls at her soul, trying to unmake her. On and on, her scream echoes through the night air, becoming hoarse and broken until it finally becomes a whimper and dies.
Her head hangs forward, her ebony hair concealing her features.
Silence reigns.
What’s left of my soul writhes in agony. I sense it. The absence of her heartbeat. Dying now seems like a blessing because I’ve lost her again. My Drusilla. My butterfly.
Then…something pulses. Something ancient. Familiar.
A shudder ripples through the temple.
Her stalled heart... starts again. I feel it.
A beat. Another. And another.
Drusilla lifts her head.
And smiles.
Her incisors elongate into fangs. Her eyes are alive, the pupils circled with gold.
The silver cords restraining her burn away like mist. Runes crack. The bloodlight magic recoils like a beast struck blind. Power roars outward—not Cassian’s, buthers.Raw, wild, and righteous.
Then, my beautiful, powerful butterfly breaks the circle.
The worldshifts . The temple trembles. And in a breathless blink, we’re not in Screaming Woods anymore. We’re somewhere older. Somewhere sacred.
I blink against the light, and the ruin around us begins to flicker. Columns become whole again. The scorched altar is now gleaming black marble. Torches flicker in sconces that haven't existed in centuries. Moonlight spills through a high, arched opening where no roof should be.
A tether between past and present has opened, woven from her soul and mine.
The cursed clearing in Screaming Woods is still here—burned stone, twisted trees, rot beneath our feet—but it'soverlaid with memory, with magic, with the ghost of the bond we forged all those centuries ago.
The temple as it once was, the night we planned to escape.
The place where Cassian killed her has become the place where she rises.
Cassian stumbles back. “No,” he breathes. “That’s not… What have you…What are you doing?”
Drusilla turns toward him, radiant and terrible. Her hair whips in the rising wind. Power rolls off her in waves. “Sorry to disappoint you, Father ,” she says, snarling the word, “but you didn’t destroy me.” Her eyes flick to mine. “You brought me home.”
And I suddenly understand.
Bloodlight magic. Cassian summoned bloodlight magic to power the ritual. But instead of unraveling her, the ritual has reignited the vampiric part of her that once tasted forever and wanted it. It knows her blood. It remembers the first bond she ever chose.
Cassian used it, thinking he could erase her soul, burn her from existence, and cleanse his legacy. But the magic was born here in this place of blood vows and eternal bonds.
The pain in my chest blurs as my eyes lock on her. My Drusilla.
But she’s not mine right now.
She’s herself. Glorious. Terrible. Eternal.
Drusilla steps forward, the ritual circle crumbling behind her. Cassian screams and lashes out with the blade, but she catches his arm mid-swing, her strength amplified . She breaks his arm with a crack that echoes through both centuries. His sword clangs to the ground as he falls to his knees.
Drusilla retrieves the sword, pressing the tip to his chest.
Cassian’s eyes spew hate as he looks up at his daughter.
Hers are molten with retribution.
“You built your legacy on blood and fear,” she says, her voice strong. “But I am not the reason for the end of your legacy. You are. And I’m the reckoning.”
Cassian flinches as she drives the blade forward... but the temple answers her before she can finish the job.
The runes at their feet ignite insearing gold. The altar beneath Cassian cracks wide open as wind shrieks through the ruin, stirring the ghostly veil of Roman grandeur. The past demands balance.
Cassian howls as the magic turns inward, dragging him down, down, into the altar stones, into the earth, into time . He reaches for Drusilla, but she doesn’t move. She simply watches as he’sswallowed whole, and nothing of him remains.
No blood. No ashes.
Only silence and peace.
Drusilla exhales shakily and turns to me. She falls to her knees beside me, hands already on my chest, trying to stem the flow of blood.
With a monumental effort, I raise a hand to cup her cheek. “So proud of you…my beautiful butterfly.”
“No,” she breathes. “No. Not again. Not like this.”
I’m slipping. My body is growing numb.
“I won’t lose you,” she says, shaking. “You hear me, Rapha?” She leans in, her forehead pressing against mine. “Don’t give up, Rapha. Love is more than a moment for us. It’s every moment. It’s centuries of faith and the belief that you and I are meant to be.”
Her words echo through me, but they’re distant like stars.
I want to answer her. Gods, I want to stay. But the pain is fading. And that’s the problem.
The burn in my chest dulls. My limbs feel heavy, untethered. Light dances at the corners of my vision, not golden or holy, but flat and grey, like the last edge of dusk before night devours the sky.
“You hear me, Rapha?” she whispers, voice cracking. “Don’t you leave me. Fight for us, my love.”
I try to smile. Try to speak. My mouth moves, but no sound comes. I want to tell her I choose her. I’ll always choose her. That I’d die for her a thousand times without hesitation.
But all I can do is curl my fingers around the locket I’m still holding and hope she sees everything I can’t say in my eyes.
“Rapha,” she begs, sobbing. “Please.”
The world slips, and our bond unspools into silence.