Chapter 11 Nightmare in the Crypts
Sleep was a luxury Lyrathia neither needed nor indulged in.
Her kind drifted in brief trances, brief silences of the mind to replenish the power running through their veins. Vampires did not dream. They did not slip into hallucinations of memory or imagination. Their minds remained cold, quiet, perfectly controlled.
So when Lyrathia’s consciousness plunged into darkness, she knew instantly—this was wrong.
The floor beneath her feet was stone, cold and ancient. She recognized it by touch alone. The Crypts of the First Bloodline… the resting place of the monarchs who came before her. She had stood here countless times in ceremony. But never in sleep. Never in dreams.
She lifted her head.
Torches guttered along the walls, sputtering as though they struggled to stay alive. The air was rich with the metallic scent of old magic, of dried blood sealed into the mortar. And there, looming at the center, stood the alabaster statues of the ancient queens—every one carved with brutal precision.
All of them watched her.
Their stone eyes were hollow, yet in the dream they felt disturbingly alive, following her as she moved. Their stone mouths twisted as if whispering warnings.
Why are you here?
Why now?
Lyrathia turned slowly.
The crypt was empty.
No… not empty.
A faint drip echoed from deeper within.
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
The sound was wrong.
Too fresh.
Too alive.
Her body moved before thought, guided by instinct rather than logic. She stepped deeper into the shadows, cloak brushing the floor in a whisper of silk and death.
A figure came into view.
At first just a shape on the ground.
Then detail.
Dark hair matted with dirt.
A torn shirt, burned at the seams where silver had touched.
Hands limp at his sides, manacles broken but still attached.
Kael.
He lay on his back, breath shallow, chest rising only enough to prove he still clung to life. Blood—vivid, bright, impossible—pooled beneath him, threading between the runes carved into the crypt floor.
“Kael.”
Her voice cracked.
Actually cracked.
She dropped to her knees beside him, hands trembling before she even touched him. Her fingertips hovered above his chest, terrified of what she might feel.
Terrified she might feel anything.
“Look at me,” she commanded—softly, desperately.
His eyelids fluttered.
Those dark eyes found hers, not defiant now, but glassy with pain.
“You… came…” he rasped.
She cupped his face.
And warmth flooded her again—warmth so intense, so consuming, she gasped aloud. Her curse strained, buckled, cracked. She felt fear. Real fear. Terror slicing through her like a blade.
“No,” she whispered. “This is not real.”
Kael’s hand lifted weakly—trembling, unsteady. He touched her cheek. Her breath faltered. Her vision blurred.
“Don’t leave…” he whispered, blood at the corner of his mouth. “Not yet…”
Emotion seized her throat, choking her.
“You are not dying,” she said. “You are not allowed to die.”
He smiled faintly.
A soft, broken thing.
“Too late.”
“No!” Her voice rang through the crypt, raw and unfamiliar. “You will not—”
He exhaled—a long, final breath that emptied the world around her.
His eyes lost their light.
His hand fell from her face.
And the warmth—
the cursed, terrifying warmth he awakened—
snapped like a dying ember.
“Kael?”
No answer.
“Kael.”
Her voice broke.
She gathered him into her arms, pulling his limp body against her chest, fingers digging into his back as if she could anchor him to existence.
The crypt around her groaned.
The statues cracked.
Stone wept blood.
Magic strained around her in a violent surge—her own and something older, deeper, echoing from the ancient bloodline.
The ancestral voices rose in a chorus of jagged whispers:
The Queen’s heart shall wake.
And with awakening… destruction.
Love is the death of the throne.
“Enough!” she screamed, her voice a raw snarl of grief. “Enough!”
Her fury shook the ground.
Her sorrow split the air.
Her curse splintered.
A heartbeat—
one impossible, agonizing heartbeat—
thundered in her chest.
Her own heartbeat.
The crypt trembled harder, reacting to the rebirth of something that should never rise again. Light flared at her feet, crawling up the walls like fire.
Her hand cupped Kael’s jaw—
And her heart stopped.
Not literally.
But with horror.
Because the face in her arms was not Kael anymore.
It was a corpse.
Grey, eyeless, hollow.
Rotten flesh peeling away to reveal bone beneath.
Something that had never been alive.
Lyrathia’s snarl broke the air as she shoved the husk away from her, scrambling backward until her spine hit a statue.
The corpse sat up.
Its mouth stretched into a too-wide grin.
“Found you, Queen.”
Its voice was layered—Kael’s tone overlaid with a deeper, ancient one.
“Found you again.”
It lunged.
Claws extended.
Torches exploded.
And Lyrathia screamed—
Lyrathia jolted upright with a violent gasp.
Her room was intact.
Her bed untouched.
Her body cold, skin slick with a sweat she hadn’t produced since she was mortal.
Her hand pressed to her chest.
Her fingers trembled.
No heartbeat now.
Of course not.
But the memory of one echoed in her bones like an aftershock.
A dream.
An impossible dream.
She dragged in a breath—unsteady, fractured.
Her first dream in eight centuries.
And it had been about him.
Kael.
She rose from the bed in a blur, stalking across the room with agitation that bordered on frenzy. She grabbed the edge of a marble table, crushing the stone beneath her tightening grip.
“What is happening to me?” she hissed.
No answer came.
Just the echo of the corpse’s grin.
Just the echo of Kael dying in her arms.
Just the echo of the words:
Found you again.
Her eyes snapped open wider.
The figure.
The force watching from the shadows.
The intruder in the upper cells.
Someone had invaded her dreams.
Someone powerful enough to infiltrate her mind—cursed mind—through a crack her awakening emotions had created.
Someone wanted Kael dead.
Or worse—wanted Kael to kill her.
And the worst realization hit her—
Kael’s presence in her dream had hurt her.
Emotion had hurt her.
The curse wasn’t protecting her anymore.
It was crumbling.
And someone was exploiting it.
Lyrathia’s rage rose, cold and sharp, pushing back the shame of her fear.
She summoned her cloak, fastening it with trembling fingers.
Whoever dared invade her mind—
Whoever wanted her dethroned—
Whoever threatened Kael—
They had made a grave mistake.
Tonight, the Queen of Silence would hunt.