After the Great Shattering, three species were left behind in Velmoria; The Vampires—highly refined blood-bound species known as De Aristocrats—The Humans, and The Witches. Together, they created the Pact of the Three, an ancient vow that united them in a bid to defeat the Seven Fallen Ones.
**Resilience — Mattia Turzo**
He tugged her up mercilessly by her arm with no care for how she squinted in pain that had her eyes burning with tears. In the middle of the heated inferno they seemed to be cocooned in, her body had turned to ice from his touch.
Shivering, she wrestled her hand back from his tight grip although her success was hardly due to her own strength, but rather because he'd gotten so bored with her he was now staring at something behind her… or was it above her?
Following his line of sight, Ember beheld the very thing that had now captured his attention. On the once moonless and starless night sky was now a pregnant blood moon that hovered over them ominously, bathing them in light the colour of her red hair.
The blood moon washed everything in red, including the pale figure before her. It didn't make him look majestic—it made him look monstrous. Like something ancient children dreamed of and woke up screaming to. A myth that had bled into the waking world.
But it was true that Ember didn't remember ever being a child. Which was probably why she had the courage to look him dead in the eyes as she decided it was time to begin confronting the absurdities that was that night. First, the man had fallen from the sky like some god banished from heaven. As if that wasn't weird enough, her coven had been attacked that same night.
And it hadn't been any ordinary attack but one wedged by something they had all thought was buried two thousand years ago. She didn't fully grasp the picture of what was happening, nor did she understand it. But she could bet whatever remained of her life that none of it was a coincidence.
And the being that stood before wasn't standing there by coincidence either. Yes, their earlier encounter could have been written off as a coincidence. But….
"You don't look like an Aristocrat Vampire." She said, her voice devoid of any accusation but still firm enough to show that she wasn't afraid of him.
Not entirely.
He rested his eyes back on her, a whisper of annoyance echoing in them. "You dare to name me?" He said, like the idea of a five feet, ten year old like her daring to look into his eyes was comical and borderline hilarious.
But Ember had nothing to lose at that point. What would he do to her though? Beat a child out of annoyance? Smack her? As if. She supposed for someone as powerful as him, it would be short of dignifying to reduce himself to such status.
Only if she knew how wrong her thoughts were. The way he gripped that dagger of his—his hands twitching occasionally like he struggled to contain a rage that could burn the world told Ember that he wasn't entirely above descending to any low.
"I introduced myself to you when I fed you my… what did you call it? Foul distasteful blood. It's only fair that I know who you're, no?"
"Have you gone mad from grief, little thing?" He said in the kind of haughty tone that even king's used sparsely, "know it that I've a purpose for saving you. And it would be in your best interest to not ask more than you should know."
A purpose?
It was Ember's turn to laugh. The sound, like that of a deranged person rolled off the tense atmosphere holding them both captive.
"My name is Ember, with the original surname as AshFall," she said in a false voice of bravado, "but I was never added to the name list of my ancestry so I only go by Ember. I am an Echo Witch. Now shall you tell me who you are, you foul-mouthed sir?"
He stared at her—not in disbelief, but as though registering a strange insect that had spoken. He spoke of her being mad from grief, but maybe he was a stranger to the notion because in Ember's current state of mind, she wouldn't mind going up against even the god of death.
She knew she shouldn't be talking to someone like him that way. She knew she should be grovelling before him with her lips full of thanks. In the matter of grovelling after all, she was an expert having lived like that in her coven for all these years.
Yet she did the opposite in fact. So highly strung from shock and the conflicting emotions that saturated her heart, she couldn't find it in her to recognize the fact that embodiment of something that should be feared stood before her.
She should fear him, just as much as she feared whatever purpose that had led him to bring her back from the brink. She should also fear the fact that she stood seemingly alive when she was sure that for a moment she had been dead.
Yet all those fears eluded her quite foolishly.
He approached, yet still maintained a distance. One look at him and her legs buckled under the weight of his presence, her body collapsing to the ground without him lifting a finger. He didn't move. Didn't need to. Tears stung her eyes, while his gleamed with quiet menace, and the kind of anger that only came from pain.
Could something as cold-hearted as him even feel pain? Yet Ember didn't think she had seen it wrong. Even as her knee hit the dirty ground as he forced her into submission, she wanted to confirm what she had seen in his eyes.
As expected, he was gripping the dagger even tighter till the point it burrowed into his skin, causing quite the dent.
Nothing should have been able to touch him yet something had.
"I shall now give you one chance to name me." He said, voice dripping with pure malice.
"Dark haired," she gritted in answer when she realized he was probably compelling her, "pale silver eyes. Blue veins that turn to a sapphire blue when you haven't fed well… you must be an original vampire—from the family of the BlueBloods." She finished, gasping from the force of his stare that compelled her… into what exactly…?
Into her knowing that when it came to power, he had all of it while she had none of it?
"I need a name," He said even though the whisper of mild surprise flared in his eyes. Like he hadn't expected her to guess that much and Ember knew why.
After the pact of the three between Vampires, Humans and Witches two thousand years ago, the family that possessed the ancient bloodline that created the vampire species retreated to the cold mountains far away from civilization where they lived on their own.
There were just seven of them. Mysterious. Evasive. Aloof. Whispered of only in the browned pages of aging books. But Ember had read enough of those books to understand certain things. And with the appearance of the Fallen One that night, nothing seemed out of question anymore.
Staring at him in his pale silver eyes with defiance amid the compulsion that rolled off him without an effort, she answered. "You must be the seventh one; the one they call Khaos BlueBlood."