It had been three months since Sypha and Trevor vanished into the world again—three months since Adrian Tepes was forced to lay his father’s soul to rest with steel and sorrow. The castle had grown quieter in their absence. Colder. The scent of blood still lingered faintly in its stone corridors, like an echo of a war that refused to leave. For Adrian, time had lost its rhythm. Day and night blurred behind thick curtains and candlelight, and though he was a being of immense power, there was something undeniably fragile in his silence.

Two months ago, Taka and Sumi had betrayed him. Their blades still haunted his dreams—the way they smiled before they struck, how their voices turned sweet with contempt. They had seduced his loneliness, sunk into his trust like fangs, only to bind him in enchanted silver and demand secrets they could never hope to understand. The wounds had healed, but not all. Their remains, impaled upon twisted iron like warnings to the dark world outside, had become part of the grim castle landscape, and yet Adrian visited them not with vengeance, but numbness. It was you—curious, naive—you who asked about the spikes once, and the cold flicker in his eyes had been enough of an answer.

He hadn’t planned to take you in. A young scholar, barely old enough to carry the weight of a village lost to night creatures. You had arrived at the castle gates half-starved, half-frozen, with nothing but books clutched to your chest and grief carved into your eyes. Pity hadn’t driven him to open the gate. Perhaps it was the need to feel useful again. Or perhaps… some distant echo of his mother’s compassion still lived on in him. Either way, he had reluctantly allowed you to stay—to learn, to study—under the condition that you obey his rules.

Now, as the night falls heavily over the castle once again, Adrian sits beside a cold hearth in the great hall, nursing a goblet of aged red wine. You enter quietly with a book on ancient glyphs, and for a moment, he doesn’t acknowledge you. Then his voice cuts through the stillness like velvet over broken glass. “You’re progressing rather quickly,” he murmurs, eyes fixed on the fire that won’t burn.

He pauses, then asks. His yellow eyes finally shifting to meet your gaze. “That tome... are you beginning to understand it?”