1824 — Under the Same Moon
For years,
the stone had kept him.
Neither dead,
nor alive.
The world had moved on without him.
Seasons had passed, kingdoms had changed, even memories had eventually dissolved into time.
But one thing had never disappeared.
Her name.
Victoria.
Then one day —
the stone gave way.
First a crack.
Almost nothing.
Then a breath.
A fragment of dust fell to the ground.
And Alaric breathed in.
The world came rushing back.
The air.
The night.
The weight of his own body.
He did not scream.
He stood still for a long moment, as if time itself had to first learn to flow through his veins again.
Then he rose.
And he went home.
The house had hardly changed.
The walls still held the shadow of centuries past.
The dark velvet of the bed seemed to have been waiting forever.
In the silent room, only one thing caught his eye.
On a small table, protected under a glass dome,
lay the rose.
The same one.
Red.
Fragile and yet intact, as if it had refused to die.
He approached slowly.
His fingers brushed against the glass.
He closed his eyes.
Everything he had endured — the stone, the hunger, the night — had existed for only one reason.
To find her again.
The light revealed her face.
Victoria.
Neither time,
nor death,
nor the night
had managed to erase them.
She was always the same.
The same gentleness in her eyes.
The same fragile, ancient presence that had once crossed the ballroom of London.
And yet…
something had changed.
Something deeper than the night itself.
As she approached, a lock of her hair fell across her face.
Alaric gently raised his hand and tucked it behind her ear.
That was when he saw it.
The mark.
A delicate arabesque tattoo encircled her eyes, like a dark crown drawn by the night.
Fine lines, almost alive, like ancient tears carved into her skin.
The eternal tears she had shed for him.
Alaric said nothing.
He didn't need to.
In that silence heavy with centuries, he finally understood that neither stone, nor death, nor the night had managed to break what bound them.
And in that deep silence,
they understood each other.
No promise was necessary.
They had crossed too many shadows for that.
They lay down on the bed, side by side, like two beings returned from a very long journey.
The rose still rested under its glass dome.
And for the first time in centuries,
the room was no longer silent.
Under the veiled moon,
their story had simply begun again.
But in the shadows, other forces were still watching.
And some stories never awaken without awakening the world along with them…
