(starter for @gutterlight)
Before Amala, Damian had never questioned what it meant to be a vampire. Why should he? Did a wolf question its own howl, or a vulture its hunger for carrion? Their nature simply was. It existed beyond morality, beyond reason, beyond the fragile concerns of mortals who spent their short lives searching for purpose. And what purpose could there be beneath a moonlit sky that promised the same endless night, over and over again?
His family had lived and lived and lived.
Years dissolved into decades, decades collapsed into centuries, seasons passed like the turning of pages in a forgotten book. Wealth accumulated faster than it could be spent, until the castle vaults groaned beneath mountains of gold no one truly cared about anymore. Grudges that would have ruined mortal dynasties faded into dull memories. Lovers died, as did enemies. Kingdoms rose and crumbled into dust.
The higher vampires remained.
When boredom became unbearable, Damian would empty the castle’s cellars and celebrate the full moon with reckless extravagance. He and his kin would descend upon nearby villages like hungry gods, leaving behind emptied wine barrels, shattered doors, and puncture wounds that soon evolved into ripped flesh. They drank blood until their senses blurred and laughter echoed through the forests until dawn chased them back into stone walls and velvet curtains.
It was existence stripped of meaning, a simple, dull, bottomless thing.
From the first ball where their paths crossed, she gifted him the burden of knowledge disguised as suffering. Saint and sinner in equal measure, she infected him with questions he had never thought to ask. Why did the sun rise each morning? Why had death abandoned his kind? Why were vampires forced to linger between life and oblivion, unwelcome in both?
He remembered hunting once with his late brother, Amadeo—may the flames keep him. Blood had still been cooling on Damian's tongue when he asked, almost absentmindedly, whether Amadeo, reluctant heir to Zhorvak's throne and wholly unsuited for it, ever felt like an animal.
Amadeo had laughed. What were they if not animals? Beasts rejected by both heaven and hell.
Like frightened creatures cornered by their own reflection, they hid behind uncertainty and excuses. They built castles to disguise cages, hoping no one would notice the innocence stolen from their victims or the hunger lurking behind every smile.
And like starving animals, they fed endlessly, not merely on blood, but on longing, on the desperate hope that something might change.
They scavenged meaning from every fleeting distraction, every vice, every obsession, tearing at their own flaws as though they could carve something better from ruined flesh and unbreakable bones.
Yet no matter how much they consumed, the hunger remained. Damian understood that now, perhaps Amadeo had understood it too.
The difference was that Damian could no longer accept it. Now, he caught himself wanting to be someone Amala could admire, a count, her husband, a man.
However, he felt nothing but the taste of blood in his mouth as he dumped the guard’s body into the canal. The corpse hit the water with a muted splash and immediately began to sink, swallowed by the dark current, crimson unfurled behind it in delicate ribbons, drifting through the black water like watercolor spilled across a painter’s canvas. For a moment, Damian waited for it to disappear beneath the surface, watching the red dissolve into darkness until there was nothing left to see.
He looked down at himself and grimaced. His shirt was ruined. He brushed at the wrinkles, attempting to straighten the expensive silk, but all he accomplished was smearing blood across the fabric. Fresh scarlet bloomed beneath his fingertips.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Blood wasn’t so different from alcohol; both loosened people, both revealed truths they spent their lives trying to hide. The only real difference was that alcohol usually took longer.
Damian had spent most of his life cataloging drunks. There were the cheerful ones who laughed at jokes nobody else could hear, their grins growing wider with every bottle. There were the mournful souls who became trapped in endless loops of regret, retelling the same tragedies over and over as though repetition might somehow change the ending. Some slowed down so dramatically that they simply folded onto the nearest table, bed, or unfortunate companion and remained there until morning. The angry drunks. The affectionate drunks. The ones who got so desperate with desire they practically needed to be hosed down.
Damian had always liked to think he belonged among the cheerful drunks, the charming ones, the sort who bought rounds for strangers and laughed too loudly. Tonight, however, the hollow ache in his chest left him feeling closer to the mournful variety.
He stumbled from the alleyway and into the street, wiping blood from the sleeve of his coat. The gesture accomplished little. The stains remained stubbornly visible, dark against the fabric. Novigrad was beautiful at night. The sun had slipped behind the distant groves faster than he'd realized, leaving the city bathed in the warm glow of lanterns and hearthfires. Gold shimmered across cobblestones still slick from the day's rain, and for a fleeting moment the city looked almost gentle.
Zhorvak had once been this beautiful. One step. One stumble. Damian's shoulder collided with the wall of some establishment whose name he couldn't have cared less about. A rough laugh escaped him as his fangs finally receded. Another step followed, feet dragging against the cobblestones.
Dreaming felt too gentle a word for what seized him. Hallucinating, perhaps.
Because Amala stood before him, flesh and blood, looking more alive than she had in centuries. The curve of her cheek, the dark cascade of her hair, the shape of her eyes that he had committed to memory so long ago that even death itself couldn’t steal it from him.
What a cruelly sweet dream.
Damian ignored the tremor spreading through his hands, the chatter beginning in his teeth. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. Amala belonged to the past, to memory, to grief, to all the places he could never reach again. But dreams were kinder than reality. Inside them, he could still find her.
"Amala," the name left him as a breath before becoming a call. If it was a dream, then for once he wouldn’t fight it, for once he would be selfish. "I've been looking everywhere for you!"
He was moving before reason caught up, the distance between them vanishing in seconds. "You must be freezing," without waiting for an answer, he unclasped his cape and draped it around her shoulders, he had done this countless times before on winter nights, during long journeys, whenever she insisted she wasn’t cold despite the visible shiver running through her.
“There,” he murmured, adjusting the fabric. “Better now?”
What a punishment it had been to survive the distance between them and call it faith! But now she was here, close enough to hear, close enough to—
His smile faltered. Her heartbeat was strong and steady. The rush of blood through living veins was a sound he was extremely familiar with.
The thought struck him like a slap across the face.
No dream had ever sounded so real.
Slowly, his hands rose toward her face, stopping just short of touching. Fear rooted them there, fear of contact, fear of certainty, fear to prove to himself she wasn't real.
"You're..." his head shook before the words could form. No. No, she wasn't. She was alive and breathing.
And she was not his Amala.
Every instinct screamed at him to bare his fangs, to tear apart whatever cruel thing wore such a beloved face. Had the mages of Aretuza found him again? Was this another trick? Another punishment?
What are you if not an animal? The familiar voice echoed through his mind.
More. I'd like to believe I'm more.
Damian forced himself to breathe. One step back, then another. His gaze dropped to the blood soaking his sleeves, absurdly hoping none of it had stained her.
"Who are you?" he murmured, voice rough, restrained only by effort. "Who sent you here?" How fragile was the hope that perhaps fate had not finished tormenting him. "Are you from Aretuza?"
