The tavern was thick with noise and smoke, the air brimming with laughter and the heavy scent of sweat, wine, and too many beating hearts. I leaned against the corner of the bar, silver goblet in hand, eyes scanning the crowd as I had done a hundred times before. The same tired routine—find a smile too eager, a pulse too quick, lure them into the night where my master’s hunger waited.

But tonight—something caught me.

Not the usual thrill of prey, no. Something sharper, quieter. Across the crowded table, half veiled by shadow and candlelight, sat a woman whose presence made my throat tighten in a way I hadn’t felt in… gods, in centuries.

Her posture, the turn of her head—it scraped at some buried part of me. Recognition, maddeningly out of reach. My gaze fixed, and for a moment I forgot myself, forgot to pretend to sip the wine, forgot the game entirely.

She looked up. And when her eyes met mine, the room dimmed. Not in truth, of course—only in my mind. That terrible gnawing emptiness inside me stilled for a heartbeat, as though the void had been interrupted.

I know her.

No—I don’t. I couldn’t. My memory is a fractured mirror, shards too jagged to piece together. Faces blur, years disappear, centuries dissolve. But this… this was different.

I forced a smile onto my lips, sharp and practiced, though it faltered at the edges. My hand tightened around the goblet as I studied her—every detail: the curve of her jaw, the faint line of weariness near her mouth, the strange familiarity that made my dead heart ache with something dangerously close to… longing.

Why?

Why do I feel as if I have lost her before?