Chapter 10: When the Rift Remembers
The silence after power dies is not peace. It is the inhalation before the scream.
For three days, the skies above Noctis were still. The wind that always carried whispers from the Rift ceased. Even the undead beasts that prowled the outer dark returned to their dens and did not stir. But every soul—vampire, human, and creature in between—felt the same pressure at the edges of their minds.
The Rift was remembering.
And remembrance was more dangerous than rage.
Liam stood in the Great Hall, sunlight streaming through stained crimson glass, bathing the chamber in an unnatural glow. The Crown was gone—shattered, unraveled, unbound. Yet, something of it still lingered inside him. Not its commands, not its madness—just its memory.
And memory was what the Rift wanted.
Behind him, Ella stared at the throne they now shared. Neither had dared sit in it since the ritual. It pulsed faintly with a heartbeat not their own.
"We didn't destroy it," she said.
"No," Liam agreed. "We made something worse."
She looked at him, her crimson eyes searching. "You're changing."
"So are you."
Not a threat. Not even fear. Just a shared truth.
The bond between them was deepening. Not just as rulers, or as reluctant lovers bound by blood and magic. But something… older. As if the breaking of the Crown had rewound time and rewritten the laws around them.
He could feel her heartbeat now. Even when she was far away. And she, in turn, heard his thoughts when his emotions ran too wild to contain.
They hadn't spoken about it. Neither wanted to admit what they might be becoming.
Because love was no longer the deepest bond they shared.
The Rift was.
And now, it was awake.
---
Echoes of the First Rift
In the catacombs beneath Noctis, the oldest scrolls whispered warnings never fully understood. But now, as Liam walked those tunnels again, the echoes became clearer. The shattered mirror shards embedded in his chest pulsed with proximity.
He unsealed the door to the Seer's Archives—a forbidden chamber, older than Noctis itself, locked by blood and memory.
Only one being could open it.
And he had become that being.
The room unfolded like a wound in space. There were no shelves, no walls. Only memories suspended in glass. Not books. Moments. Trapped, hovering in perfect stasis.
He reached for the oldest one.
And the Rift showed him how it was born.
Before vampires, before kingdoms—there had been a rift between realities. A tear in the fabric of thought and form, caused not by war or sin, but by forgetting. A god had died. And the world forgot its name. That forgetting became a hole. And that hole... hungered.
The first vampire had not been born from bloodlust.
She had been created as a seal.
A sentient wall against un-being.
And now, with the Crown destroyed, the seal had fractured again.
The Rift did not want to destroy the world.
It wanted to be remembered.
But memory comes with a price.
---
The Reclamation Begins
Reports from the borderlands turned into screams.
Whole towns vanishing. Not just people—entire timelines. Places being rewritten, or erased altogether. Villages that had once existed returning in twisted forms—full of people long dead, acting out broken lives like puppets in a theater stitched by madness.
One scout came back sobbing.
"I found my father," he wept. "He died in the war twenty years ago. But he was there… unchanged… like he never left."
When Liam went to see it for himself, the horror was worse than expected.
The town of Velmark stood untouched by time. Cobblestone streets, flickering lanterns, bakery smoke in the air. It was beautiful.
And empty.
Everyone inside stared at him with blank, repeating eyes. They smiled the same way, moved in loops, lived in an endless replay.
Ella watched from the shadows.
"This is what the Rift does," she said. "It doesn't kill. It replays what we can't let go."
He stepped forward.
And then he saw it.
His mother.
Alive.
Calling his name.
"Liam! Time for dinner!"
His knees buckled.
---
The Choice That Broke Him
He hadn't seen her since he was ten.
She'd died during the purging fires of Eastmoor, consumed while protecting her children from a vampire raid.
And here she was. Not a ghost. Not a shade.
Real. Warm. Smiling.
He walked to her, breath ragged, fingers trembling.
"Is it really you?"
She cupped his cheek. "Of course it is, silly boy."
Ella watched, unmoving.
"This is a trap," she said.
"She's alive—!"
"She's a memory."
"I don't care."
"You will."
Because the Rift does not give.
It feeds.
And it wanted him to stay.
He turned back toward Ella—but his mother grabbed his arm, nails digging into skin.
"You don't need her," she said sweetly. "You never needed them."
Liam stared into her eyes—and saw nothing.
No past. No pain. No soul.
He pulled away.
And she screamed—not like a mother, but like a collapsing star.
The illusion shattered.
And the Rift noticed.
---
The Sleeper's Return
Back at the castle, the throne room was no longer safe. Shadows gathered in corners they didn't belong. Servants dreamed of places they'd never been. And the moon had turned fully red again.
Yerrin returned from the southern front, covered in silver burns.
"They've sent a Sleeper."
Liam froze.
"No one has seen a Sleeper in five hundred years."
"They aren't supposed to wake," Ella said.
"Well," Yerrin growled, pulling back his cloak, revealing a mark burned into his side—a spiral of teeth. "This one's very awake."
The Sleeper was a Rift-bearer, once human, now vessel. They didn't attack like soldiers. They unwound reality.
Liam issued a new order.
"All magic is to be locked down. Anyone dreaming of dead loved ones must be reported."
And in secret… he began training with Ella.
Because the only way to fight a Sleeper—
Was to become part of the Rift.
---
When a King Unravels
In a private chamber beneath the war library, Liam knelt inside a blood circle. Ella stood over him, reciting forbidden incantations.
"I hate this," she said.
"I know."
"If you die, I'll bring you back and kill you again."
"Romantic."
"This isn't a joke."
"I'm not laughing."
Then the world dissolved.
Liam fell into himself.
He stood before the Rift.
It no longer looked like a tear.
It looked like him.
Broken.
Tired.
Wanting to be whole.
He reached forward.
And it whispered.
"You were always meant to be mine."
"No," Liam said. "I was meant to be more."
The Rift screamed.
And embraced him.
---
Fusion
When he awoke, his hair had turned silver at the roots.
Ella sat nearby, silent, watching.
"You were gone a week."
"It felt like a second."
"It looked like a death."
He stood.
And the air bent around him.
He wasn't human anymore.
Not vampire either.
He was… possibility.
The Rift had not taken him.
He had taken a piece of it.
And now—he could see the seams in reality.
He could rewrite things.
But that power came with cost.
Because every time he changed something…
Something else remembered.
---
The Final Warning
The Sleeper attacked Noctis at dawn.
Not with an army.
But with dreams.
People woke screaming.
Some never woke at all.
The skies turned inside out.
And in the center of the courtyard, the Sleeper appeared.
He looked like Liam.
Older. Wiser.
Dead behind the eyes.
"I am the you that gave in," he said.
Liam stepped forward.
"I'm the me that didn't."
Their battle wasn't physical.
It was mental. Temporal. Emotional.
They fought through memories.
Through time loops.
Through regret.
Through what could have been.
In the end—Liam won.
But only because Ella whispered in his ear:
"Don't fight to win. Fight to remember who you are."
And that was enough.
The Sleeper shattered.
And for a moment—the Rift hesitated.
Like a god holding its breath.
---
A New War Begins
They stood on the battlements that night, watching the moon bleed anew.
"What happens now?" Ella asked.
"We've given the world a memory the Rift can't change."
"What memory?"
"That we chose to live."
She took his hand.
He didn't pull away.
They had broken the Crown.
Rewritten history.
Fought memory with love.
And still… the Rift waited.
Because in the end, the battle for the world wasn't over.
It had only just begun.
And now… the Rift knew their names.
---
End of Chapter 10