Chapter 87 | Clues | Ophelia
Ophelia arrived at the castle three days later.
She wore a dark gray traveling cloak, covered in dust and snowflakes. Her golden vertical pupils showed exhaustion—the kind that comes from long-term lack of sleep, with faint blue shadows under her eyelids like an unfinished watercolor painting. She carried a leather case carved with ancient runes—not decorations, but seals. Each rune gave off a faint silver glow, as if warning: this case is dangerous, don't open it carelessly.
"You're going to the northern border." Not a question. A statement, a confirmation, an understanding built on shared knowledge.
"How did you know?" Leah asked.
"Because I felt it too," Ophelia said, her voice lower than usual, like an underground river flowing from deep in the earth. "Fluctuations in the bloodline network. Not just the north—the entire network's edges are dying. Like a tree's roots rotting away."
She set the leather case on the table and undid the rune seals. The runes made soft hissing sounds when her fingers touched them, as if reluctantly loosening their grip. Inside the case was a stack of yellowed parchment. The oldest pieces had edges already turning to carbon, crumbling at the slightest touch like butterfly wings.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Research records on Progenitor relics," Ophelia said. "Three thousand years of everything written about the Progenitor bloodline. I spent fifty years collecting it. Fifty years—"
She paused.
"—the same as your reformists' entire history."
She took out the top page and spread it on the table. The parchment gave off an ancient smell—not mold, but something deeper, like the scent of time itself, like history breathing.
"The Progenitor bloodline you know about—" she said, "is just the tip of the iceberg."
Leah leaned in to look. I did too. The parchment showed a complex diagram—a bloodline network map, but different from the usual ones. Normal networks were flat, spreading out from center to edge like a wheel. But this one—
"It's three-dimensional," Leah said. Her silver-gray eyes flashed in the lamplight, like she'd discovered a new continent.
"Yes," Ophelia said. "The bloodline network doesn't just cover our world. It extends to—"
She pointed to the edge of the pattern, where a ring of blurry runes existed, like ancient writing worn away by time.
"—another world," she said, her voice very quiet, like telling a secret. "Where the Shadow Walkers come from."
I froze.
For three thousand years, I'd always thought Shadow Walkers were some kind of creature from the north. Wild, primitive, without civilization. But—
"They're not creatures," Ophelia said, as if reading my mind, her golden vertical pupils flashing. "They're—"
She paused. The candle flame flickered, casting dancing shadows on the wall.
"They're the other side of the network," she said. "Like two sides of a coin. Our world is the front, their world is the back. The bloodline network connects both worlds—"
"And Shadow Stones—" Leah cut in, "are things from the back side?"
"Are corrosives," Ophelia said. "They can cut off nodes on the front side, pulling energy to the back. Like—"
She searched for the right comparison.
"Like black holes," she said. "Swallowing everything, never full."
I looked at the diagram. Three-dimensional network, front and back, nodes vanishing—
"If the nodes keep disappearing—" I said.
"The network will collapse," Ophelia said, her voice calm as if talking about the weather. "Both worlds will collapse."
The room went silent. Even the crackling of the candle flame became clearly audible.
Leah's fingers unconsciously touched her moonstone necklace. Her silver-gray eyes stared at the diagram, pupils flashing with silver light—the Progenitor bloodline responding.
"Why the north?" she asked.
"Because—" Ophelia turned to the next page, the parchment making a soft crackling sound, "there's a node in the north, the network's core. Left over from the Progenitor era—"
She pointed to a spot on the diagram. That spot's location on the diagram—
matched exactly with the northern border's coordinates.
"—Progenitor ruins," she said. "The source of all bloodline energy."
I stared at that spot. Its position on the diagram—
matched exactly with the northern border's coordinates.
"Kael." Leah's voice was very soft, as if afraid to disturb something.
"Yeah?"
"We have to go," she said. "Not just to investigate. But to—"
She looked into my eyes. Her silver-gray pupils flashed with determined light.
"Protect the network," she said. "Protect—"
She paused.
"Protect our world," she said.
I looked at her. The moonstone necklace at her neck gave off a soft silver glow, like a small moon.
For three thousand years, my goals kept changing. Maintain order, protect the vampire race, continue the family line. But right now—
right now, my goal became simple.
Protect her.
Protect the world she lived in.