Page 169 of Haunted Crowns
Miloseva sat in silence. Rurik said nothing. Avaristo stared into the clouds above. He believed he had escaped. He believed he had outlived gods.
Then the sky flinched. Silence followed, vast and unnatural. The wind ceased, and the storm bowed. A wound split the clouds as a single golden bolt descended, final and absolute. It did not strike. It erased.
The Skyrer became light, then ash, then nothing.
It was not vengeance, but divine correction—order restored. No survivors. No remains. Only a sky gone quiet, as if the divine had spoken, and been obeyed.
Far below, Eris stood beneath the torn sky, breath steady. She had not spoken, but the storm had listened. Her hand lowered slowly. Her eyes stayed open.
There was no triumph in her. Only the stillness of justice, at last fulfilled.
But as the wind settled and the earth exhaled, something ancient stirred. Something she had awoken.
“Some bloodlines pass down honor.
Some others pass down curse.”
—Kaelioth
Chapter 34
The Obsidian Order was collapsing, but neither man paused to savor the victory. For Stephan and Kareon, every strike carried a singular purpose: to finish the war and to return to her.
Stephan had kept his father’s vow. The Dragov line stood unbeaten. Now every strike, every breath, was a sprint toward the moment her hands would cradle his battle-worn face and remind him he was still a man, not just a weapon.
Kareon, born of chains and forged in fire, felt the weight of centuries lift with each kill. But now he moved faster to keep his promise, to return to her, to the eyes that made him more than a rebel and a beast.
Then the earth trembled. A soundless rupture split reality as the air thickened with something ancient and unseen. Victory curdled into dread. Across the battlefield, every warrior—Firstblood, Lycan, and mercenary—stood frozen. Between Dragov Castle and Mournshadow Lake, the world shifted. It felt wrong, heavy, and unnatural. The castle began to glow. It burned like a wound forced open, like a nightmare clawing its way back into the world.
Eris’s divine power had stirred more than the living. It had awakened something that should have remained buried. Something forbidden and monstrous.
The battlefield fell into silence.
Then, a Firstblood screamed, dropping his sword, clutching his chest. His horse shrieked and fled. Another fell without sound. A third stood mid-strike, his blade hovering, his blood turned to ice.
The Dragov blood had called to them. It did not summon as kin. It commanded as curse. Something older than memory whispered through their veins and held them in its grip.
Terror clamped around Stephan’s chest like a vice, each breath crushed beneath the weight of knowing. His grip tightened around Sanguine Oath, as if the steel alone could shield him from what had risen. The name slipped into his mind like poison.
Kriponius. The curse of his bloodline.
He knew what it meant. When Kriponius rose, he would hunt only one: Eris.
She had dreamed it—a voice calling her Seraphina, claiming her as its own. Now the nightmare was awake.
Stephan moved. There was no time to think. He had to reach Dragov Castle before Kriponius fed, before his strength returned in full. If the ancient king regained his power, not even Stephan, strongest of his generation, would be enough.
He had read the ancient texts. Kriponius was no mere vampire. He was a god of death. The Firstbloods of this age were weaker, civilized. They no longer hunted, no longer fed on the dying. But Kriponius had thrived on it. He had grown strongerwith every kill, every corpse, every drop consumed. And now he was stirring. There was no time for fear. Only for speed.
Across the field, the Lycans felt it too. The realization struck them moments later. Though they carried no Dragov blood, history bound them. The sensation crept through their senses, heavy, suffocating. Impossible to ignore.
Then memory surged. They remembered the whispered tales, the centuries of bloodshed and loss, the one who had hunted them without mercy. The killer of Seraphina, their beloved and sacred flame.
He had returned.
Triumphant howls fell into silence. Fangs, still wet from victory, turned trembling toward the glowing castle on the horizon.
And then, Stephan arrived.
