My hands trembled as I stared at the book, words staring back at me from the pages. I staggered back, my chest tight, lungs burning as if I had forgotten how to breathe. No matter how much air I pulled in, it was never enough.

“No… no, no, no,” I whispered, shaking my head, my voice cracking under the weight of it all. My hands clutched my skull, fingers threading through my hair as if holding my head together could keep my mind from splitting apart.

I needed this to stop. I needed answers, not riddles. But the book wasn’t listening.

The ink moved, reshaping itself, forming new words right before my eyes. The letters bled into the page, slow and deliberate, as though something—someone—was writing from the other side.

“There is no stopping. Only becoming.”

My pulse slammed in my ears. I swallowed hard, my throat dry.

“Becoming–”

–becoming, becoming, becoming.”

The book wrote within itself continuously.

“HOW?” HOW CAN I BECOME?” The words left my lips in screams of fright.

Suddenly the book began to flip through itself back to the earlier pages.

“Binds, doubled-soul and the Cursed Alpha.”

These words highlighted itself in black ink and spilled over the pages. It felt like I was hallucinating and the ink wanted me drowning in it.

I saw darkness now. I saw the reflection of myself, my hands bound in chains.

Binds–

I saw my father surrounded by a cult of hooded figures like the one I saw in the vision that called for the chase of my mother. It was a ritual, I saw them heat iron in furnace and burn it against his spine. I felt the pain…I felt the pain. I remembered the memory of when I was outside my body, when I touched the division fog in the vision, rot took place of my astral form, my body followed but it fought like there was life in it.

I remembered reading these lines;

“The Hrothgar ancestors had carried that power for generations, each one inheriting a unique gift. But the last of them—the one meant to bring the bloodline to its peak—was given something far greater. Immortality. Separation of forms. A supreme power. And something darker. A counterweight to his strength. A second self, lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be acknowledged. The greatest Alpha in his bloodline.

Something darker, a counterweight, a second self, lurking beneath the surface. Doubled soul. I was, am the doubled soul with–

–FATHER!” The words left my lips and I felt my brows crease.

–Doubled Soul–

I saw the fog division, I saw myself cast from the throne of command, no power to my name. The Prime and Grand Alpha, made rogue. The throne of my Luna was empty. The Fog Division drew farther.

–and the Cursed Alpha.”

The moment the words faded, an eerie silence settled over the room. My pulse hammered in my ears, my breath coming in short, uneven gasps. The pages were empty now, save for one final message.

"Seek the Fog of Division. Find your destiny. Your mate."

The words sank into me, heavy and unshakable, like they had been burned into my soul. I stared, trying to make sense of it, but before I could even think—

A sound cut through the silence. Sharp. Rising. Unnatural.

It wasn’t just something I heard; I felt it, clawing through my skull, running down my spine like icy fingers. The walls trembled. My vision blurred. A force—something unseen, something wrong—pressed down on me, squeezing the air from my lungs.

And then it hit.

A deafening, gut-wrenching boom.

The floor buckled beneath me, and I collapsed. My body jerked, my chest tightening as the air turned to ink, swallowing everything. Darkness pressed in from all sides, thick and suffocating.

I reached out, desperate to grab hold of something, but there was nothing. No ground beneath me. No light. No sound.

Just the unbearable weight of emptiness.

I gasped, but the breath never came. My mind blurred, my heartbeat slowed, and in that moment my head hit the ground—

I felt myself begin to fade.

"What do you mean?"

I flashed my eyes open and realized that as I fell, my essence crashed into another vision.

I was inside it, fully immersed, witnessing everything as if I had been there all along. The last thing I remembered was standing in that basement, reading the cursed text. Now, I was somewhere else.

The land stretched out before me, barren except for scattered weeds swaying in the cold wind. There was no clear path, no direction. Just vast emptiness. The night carried the distant hum of crickets, their chirps echoing from the unseen edges of this strange world.

I strained to focus, to make sense of where I was. Then, the sound of footsteps shattered the quiet.

A rhythmic slap, like leather hitting stone.

I turned.

My father.

He was running. Not just running—fleeing. His breath came in ragged gasps, his arms pumping as if he were outrunning something I couldn’t see.

My gaze followed his path, and there it was.

The fog.

The same eerie border I had read about, the one said to have been placed by the Moon Goddess herself. A wall of shifting smoke, curling and twisting as if whispering secrets to the wind.

My father’s panic seeped into me. Without thinking, I moved, my steps quickening as I trailed after him. The farther he ran, the more he slowed, his body weighed down by exhaustion or something heavier.

Then he stopped.

He wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t even looking ahead. His eyes, wide and frantic, were fixed on something behind me.

"You bastard," I muttered under my breath, but he didn’t react.

He stepped past me, his lips parting as he finally spoke.

"Something strange has occurred."

His voice was strained, barely above a whisper, yet it carried more weight than a scream.

I swallowed hard and forced myself to turn, following his gaze.

The air tightened around me, thick with something unseen. My fingers twitched, my senses sharpened.

Who—or what—was he speaking to?

"I was stopped by a strange division that separated this place from the rest of the world," my father said, his voice low, as if speaking too loudly would summon whatever he had encountered.

"What was it like?" the woman in the red cloak asked.

Her tone was calm, almost indifferent, but the way she stepped down from the rock where she had been standing suggested otherwise. The uneven ground shifted slightly beneath her boots as she moved closer, her hood casting a shadow over her face.

"It was colossal."

My father barely got the words out. He tilted his head back, searching the sky as if hoping it would offer him an explanation. But there was nothing there.

I followed his gaze.

No stars. No moon. Just an endless void of dark blue stretching in every direction, swallowing all light and hope.

A cold unease settled in my gut. This place felt unnatural, untouched by time or reality.

Still, I listened.

I had to.

I needed to understand what was happening, what this place was, and—most of all—who this woman was.

"For the first time in all my life, I was forced to fear.--

--This very strange fog was backed up by the moon. It stretched so high up to the sky and as I could see, it reached the layer above the clouds."

Hrothgar, my father's chest sank in. I saw the trails of fear and terror on his face.

"What else did you observe?"

Asked the cloaked lady. She tilted her face ever so slightly as I saw the colour which her skin was.

My eyes were caught by the voice of my father who spoke on, replying to the question asked by the mystery woman.

"It grasped the air and took away life towards where it reached. The air within suddenly got corrupt, poisonous, worse than cyanide. Below the night it looked fumy and it enclosed all forms of life in the skies and as well the plants on its sides." "It did this to my hand."

He showed the burn caused by the fog.

"The moon goddess is protecting the child," the woman murmured, turning slightly as if the thought alone carried weight.

Then, almost as an afterthought, she asked, "But for what reason?"

Her voice held a sharp edge now, curiosity laced with something else—something darker.

My father took a step closer, his jaw tight. "What do we do now?" His tone was low, urgent. "You said if that child was born, he could mean the end of us."

A heavy silence fell between them.

Then, from the shadow of her hood, I caught it—a smirk. Small, almost imperceptible, but it was there.

"Your work here is done," she said. "I'll handle this myself."

With an effortless grace, she reached up and pulled back her hood. The deep ox-red fabric fell away, revealing a face that belonged nowhere near the fringes of humanity. Her eyes gleamed with something beyond power—beyond control.

She stepped toward my father with an unsettling boldness, unfazed by the presence of an Alpha. He was a force to be reckoned with, yet she showed no hesitation, no fear.

Something about her was wrong.

And yet, I couldn’t look away.

"I have a plan which you are by no means meant to counter."

My first glance at her told me everything I needed to know.

She was something else—something unnatural.

"I was told that every Prime Alpha has a unique ability to separate their spirit from their body," she said, her voice low and sultry, laced with an accent that made her words linger in the air.

But before I could process what she meant, her tone shifted in an instant.

"Do me a favor and stand still!"

The sudden command was sharp, cutting through the moment like a blade—just like the one she pulled from her garment.

Before I could react, before I could even begin to register what was happening, she slit my father's throat.

I staggered back, my breath caught in my chest. The sheer violence of it sent a jolt through me.

Blinking rapidly, I half-expected to feel his blood splatter onto my skin. But I wasn’t really there. I was only watching. Helpless.

She began muttering words—foreign, guttural, powerful.

And then, my eyes were drawn to it.

A flare of orange light burst into existence, forcing me to shield my gaze.

A sigil.

It hovered in the air, a perfect circle burning bright, pulsing like a heartbeat. The inner design twisted and curved, splitting the space within. One half was filled with color. The other was a void.

She stood motionless, undisturbed by the brilliance of the light.

Her right hand stretched toward the sigil, fingers curling slightly as if commanding the very air.

Then I saw him.

My father.

He clawed at his throat, blood pouring over his hands, his body trembling as he struggled against the inevitable.

But it didn’t stop there.

His feet lifted off the ground.

Slowly, impossibly, he began to rise.

The words found itself to my lips;

“Witchcraft.” I uttered in marvel. My kind, witches. The last of the trinity can only be…no! I refused to believe it. Vampires.

She lifted my father effortlessly, her left hand raising him high while her right traced unseen patterns in the air, manipulating the sigil with a precision that sent a chill down my spine.

The mark she carved into existence wasn’t just any sigil. It was something far worse.

The Eternal Balance.

The seal of death and rebirth and Double-Soul.

My breath hitched as the realization clawed through me. This wasn’t an execution. This was a transformation.

A furnace roared to life beside her, its flames hungrily licking at the dark. From within, a glowing rod emerged, its tip marked with a searing symbol.

She took it. And without hesitation, she pressed it against my father’s spine.

The sound of burning flesh filled the silence. The scent of charred skin followed.

His body twitched, but she held him firm, turning him toward the mist-shrouded border, the barrier no one had ever crossed and lived.

And then, she let him hang.

Her fingers curled, hands clawed as if tearing through something unseen, and I saw it—his form splitting.

Reality wavered.

Hrothgar's body flickered like a flame in the wind, his soul peeling away from his flesh, tearing free in a violent, gasping release.

She never stopped whispering, her voice a constant thread of something dark and ancient, until finally—

It was done.

She exhaled sharply, her shoulders rising before settling.

The body—lifeless now—dropped like dead weight to the ground.

And I?

I only watched.

No grief. No rage. No loss.

Only the weight of what I had just witnessed, the gravity of what she had truly done.

She hadn't killed him out of revenge.

She hadn't done this to just destroy me.

Her intentions didn't laugh with my father's.

She wanted something more.

As my father's name faded from my thoughts, another took its place with the presence of a vision that fazed before my eyes. It drew me back to the basement and to the page where I saw the name that was and is to maul me; MORVENA.

She wanted Morvena.