Page 27

The world falls away, sensation stripped to its barest elements. Falling without moving, floating without rising.

Then solid ground materialises beneath our feet, and light blooms around us, a soft, silver radiance that filters from the walls.

We stand in a vast, circular chamber, its ceiling lost in shadows above, its walls adorned with intricate carvings. In the centre of the chamber stands a raised dais of black stone, empty but clearly designed to hold something of significance.

Isolde’s grip on my hand tightens. “It’s beautiful,” she whispers. “And familiar, somehow. Like I’ve been here before.”

“Perhaps in blood memory,” I suggest, recalling our earlier conversation. “Your ancestors may have known this place.”

She nods absently, her attention caught by the carvings on the walls. She approaches them, releasing my hand to trace the shifting patterns with her fingers. “These tell a story,” she says. “About the first Sanguinarchs. About the Blood Crown.”

I join her, examining the carvings. They depict scenes of transformation, of power, of beings transcending their original forms to become something greater. And throughout, a recurring motif: a female figure directing rivers of blood that coalesce into a crown.

“Damadere,” Isolde murmurs, her fingers lingering on one particular carving showing a female figure transformed, consuming everything around her. “The first to wear the crown.”

“Yes,” I confirm, studying the images. “And the price she paid for it.”

The carving shows Damadere’s transformation, her body suspended in a column of light, her form distorted, no longer fully humanoid. In subsequent panels, she stands amid destruction, other figures kneeling before her in subjugation or terror.

“She lost herself,” Isolde whispers, a shadow crossing her face. “The power consumed her morality.”

I turn to the dais, and she follows me to the raised stone, examining its smooth black surface. “There’s nothing here. No inscriptions, no mechanisms.”

“Perhaps it’s not what’s on it, but what’s placed upon it,” I theorise. “Or who stands upon it.”

She gives me a sceptical look but steps onto the dais. Nothing happens. “So much for that theory.”

“Wait,” I say, noticing something. “The blood. Your blood activated the entrance. Perhaps...”

Understanding dawns in her eyes. “More blood. Of course.”

Without hesitation, she reopens the wound on her wrist, allowing several drops of blood to fall onto the black stone. The effect is immediate and dramatic.

The blood sinks into the stone, absorbed, and the entire dais glows with silver light. The carvings on the walls brighten in response, the story they tell seeming to move, to animate.

“William,” Isolde breathes, her voice tight with a mixture of awe and alarm. “What’s happening?”

Before I can answer, the silver light from the dais rises, enveloping her in a column of radiance that pulses in time with her heartbeat. Her feet lift slightly from the stone, her body suspended in the light.

I step forward instinctively, reaching for her, but a barrier of energy repels me. “Isolde!” I call, fear for her overriding my fascination with the phenomenon.

“I’m okay,” she says, her voice strange, resonant. “It doesn’t hurt. It feels... it feels like coming home.”

The light intensifies, and I’m forced to shield my eyes. When it finally dims enough for me to look again, Isolde stands on the dais, changed.

The silver light has receded beneath her skin, but it’s brighter, more defined, tracing patterns across her body like luminous veins. Her eyes glow with the same silver radiance, and her presence has expanded somehow, her power a force in the air around her.

“Isolde?” I say cautiously.

She looks at her hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time. “I can feel it,” she whispers. “Everything. The blood in your veins. The power in the walls. The wards above us.” She raises her eyes to mine. “What happened to me?”

“The Sanctuary recognised you,” I say, understanding dawning. “It’s prepared you, aligned your energy for what’s coming. This is what you’ve been moving toward all along. Your true potential awakening.”

She steps down from the dais. When she reaches me, she places a hand on my chest, and I feel the power in her touch, deep and primal.

“Your heart,” she says, wonder in her voice. “I can feel every beat, every rush of blood. It’s intoxicating.”

The hunger in her eyes ignites something in me, a response that’s immediate and overwhelming. I pull her against me, claiming her mouth in a kiss that’s as much about power as it is about desire.

She responds, her hands tangling in my hair, her body pressing against mine.

“William,” she gasps when we break apart.

She nuzzles my neck, and I tilt my head, giving her access.

Her fangs pierce my neck with exquisite pain that transforms immediately to pleasure as she draws my blood into herself.

The connection between us intensifies, my consciousness expanding as her power flows into me through the exchange.

And suddenly, I’m not just in the Sanctuary with Isolde.

I’m somewhere else entirely, seeing through her bloodline memories, experiencing fragments of her lineage’s past.

A woman with Isolde’s eyes, standing before a circle of hooded figures. “The bargain is struck,” she says, her voice strong despite her fear. “My daughter for protection. But she goes to neither The Collectors nor Damadere.”

The scene shifts. The same woman, older now, arguing with a man I assume is Isolde’s father. “They found us,” he says, panic edging his voice. “We need to hide her completely.”

“No,” the woman insists. “The plan was isolation, not imprisonment.”

“It’s the only way,” the man argues. “Blackridge has secured a location. She’ll be safe there until she’s ready.”

Another shift. A young Isolde, perhaps seven years old, watches from a window as Isaac plays outside. “Why can’t I go out, Mama?” she asks, pressing small hands against the glass.

“Because you’re special,” her mother answers, the words heavy with unspoken meaning. “Too special to risk.”

The visions fragment further, faster—glimpses of Isolde growing up in isolation, of her parents’ increasing fear, of her mother whispering secrets to her while she slept. Blood knowledge, passed down through generations, preparing her subconsciously for what was to come.

And beneath it all, a current of ancient power, a bloodline stretching back to the first Sanguinarchs, to the original Blood Crown ritual, to Damadere herself. Not a direct descendant, but a branch of the same powerful tree, cultivated carefully over centuries for this exact moment.

I return to myself with a grunt, still holding Isolde as she drinks from me, her mouth at my neck drawing the life force she needs. The revelations from her blood memories shake me, rearranging pieces of the puzzle I hadn’t even realised were misplaced.

Her parents didn’t plan to give her to The Collectors. They planned to give her to Blackridge as payment for protection from The Collectors. Protection while Isolde remained hidden, a secret weapon developing in darkness until she was ready.

Ready for what, I’m still not certain. But the blood memories suggest a plan generations in the making, a convergence of events orchestrated long before Isolde was born.

She pulls back from my neck, her lips stained crimson with my blood, her eyes glowing silver with power and arousal. “Did you see?” she whispers, aware somehow that I’ve seen what she did.

“Yes,” I confirm, my hands moving to frame her face. “Your parents made a deal. But not with The Collectors.”

“With Blackridge,” she gasps, her body pressing closer to mine, desire evident in every line of her body. “To protect me from The Collectors.”

“Yes,” I agree, feeling an answering hunger rising within me. “But there’s more to it. Something we’re still missing.”

“Later,” she demands, her fingers working at the buttons of my shirt. “Think later. Feel now.”

I obey, surrendering to the physical pleasure after the intense mental connection. The Sanctuary responds to our passion, the silver light in the walls pulsing brighter as I back her against them, lifting her easily as her legs wrap around my waist.

I unbutton her jeans, exposing her cunt to my touch. She’s already wet, ready for me, her body responding to the blood exchange with heightened arousal.

“Here?” she gasps as my fingers find her, teasing her slick entrance. “Now?”

“Here,” I confirm, thrusting two fingers inside her. “Now. The Sanctuary responds to power, to life force. What better way to claim it than this?”

She moans, her hips rocking against my hand, seeking more. “Fuck me, William.”

The crude demand sends a surge of lust through me. I capture her mouth again as she frees me, her cool fingers wrapping around my cock tightly.

I withdraw my fingers and enter her in a single smooth thrust that makes her cry out.

The sound echoes in the chamber, amplified by the Sanctuary’s strange acoustics.

Her legs tighten around my waist, pulling me deeper as I establish a rhythm that’s neither gentle nor brutal. It’s a claiming, a communion.

I drive into her harder, faster, spurred by the knowledge that she is truly unique, truly extraordinary. Her pussy clenches around me, her climax building rapidly.

“William,” she gasps, her fingers digging into my shoulders.

“Come on my cock, my queen. Show this place who you belong to,” I growl, feeling my orgasm approaching.

Her orgasm hits with a tidal wave of pleasure, her body arching against mine. She cries out my name as she drenches my cock with her juices. I come hard, emptying myself inside her with a roar that echoes through the Sanctuary.

For a moment, we’re suspended in that place beyond physical sensation, our consciousnesses merged through blood and power and pleasure. I see flickers of her thoughts, her feelings, her memories.

I hold her against me, unwilling to separate just yet.

But she wiggles against me, and I ease her down as her legs unwrap from my waist. “This is what you were meant for,” I say, the pieces fitting together at last. “Not to become like Damadere, consumed by power, but to transcend as Damadere couldn’t.

To achieve the transformation without the sacrifice. ”

“To replace her.”

We stare at each other for a long moment before I speak. “She won’t like that.”

“No shit,” she mutters, making me laugh.

“So not just The Collectors coming for you, us even, to rule them, but a god-like creature who probably wants you dead.”

“Great. I guess it’s time to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Tell that to CJ.”

“Leave him to me. He has to understand this is life or death.”

I nod. “But not just your life or death. All of us. We’re bound together in this, Isolde. Our fates are intertwined. In a dark and twisted way, we are all a part of this.”

“And that’s okay with you? You’ll try to get along with CJ?”

I ponder that for all of two seconds. This is bigger than me and him. “Yes. We have to be together, one unit working together.”

“You’ll make up then?” she says with a wicked smile.

I roll my eyes. “As you wish, my queen.”

She giggles when I take her hand and kiss her knuckles. “We should get out of here. I feel something coming. Something that doesn’t want us down here.”

“Blackridge?”

“Maybe. Maybe something worse.”

“I don’t think there are many things worse than Blackridge.”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”

Isolde drops her blood on the floor again, and then we find ourselves suddenly back in the Bell Tower.