—The Moirel Matriarch—
The sky above the Ashenwood Forest was overcast, choked with clouds thick as velvet. Magic hung in the air—old, territorial, and watching.
Maika tightened her cloak as she stepped between twisted trees veined with runes only visible to elite eyes. This was forbidden ground. Not by decree—but by fear. Most who entered the Moirel Territory never returned.
But Maika was not most.
Whispers of Dracon's legacy had led her here. Rumors of a clan of witches born from fire, grief, and shadow, descendants of a boy who buried his sorrow in silence—and became something terrifying.
She followed the trail of smoke rising from a hill cloaked in fog. At its crest stood a blackened manor—half swaying, half standing—wrapped in thorned ivy. No guards. No welcome. But she felt the watching eyes.
As Maika placed a foot on the first stone step, a gust of wind cut across the path, nearly knocking her back. Then a voice—hoarse, ancient, and powerful—echoed from the manor's interior:
> "You carry her scent… the blood-flame. Why do you knock at the house of those who would rather forget?"
Maika bowed her head slightly. "I seek answers. Not war."
The door creaked open. Magic shifted. A path was allowed.
Inside, candles burned with violet flames. Sigils lined the walls like scars. The air tasted of burnt rosemary and ashes. At the heart of the room, seated on a carved obsidian throne, was Matriarch Nerissa Moirel, said to be over three hundred years old—a relic of curses, silence, and flame.
Her eyes were clouded, but not blind. She saw through soul more than flesh.
"You're a Vampire… from the Royal Clan and a Witch from Carello-Descendants of Lucan and Lucille," Nerissa rasped. "And… the bearer of the black flame."
Maika stepped forward. "I'm looking for the descendants of Dracon. Your clan… carries his bloodline."
The dying candles in the Moirel manor flickered as if startled by a ghost. Maika sat cross-legged on the threadbare rug before Matriarch Nerissa Moirel, the oldest living member of a clan soaked in shadowed history.
"You seek the blood of Dracon," the old witch rasped, her cataract-veiled eyes boring into Maika's. "Then you must know the truth… not the tale the clans whisper in fear."
Nerissa raised her bony fingers, glowing faintly with ancestral magic. "Come, Maika of the black flame. Bear witness to the birth of our curse."
The candles died.
The room fell into shadow—
—and the vision began.
---
THE VISION—Centuries Ago
The night was drenched in fog. The tower of the Moirel Clan stood tall at the edge of the world—where the wildlands met the cliffs of the forbidden sea.
She was the Moirel Princess then—young, wise beyond her years, and beloved by her people. Her magic bloomed with violet and gold, a sign of a rare blood purity.
But on the first night of the blood moon, he appeared.
Dracon—cloaked in night, his skin like old marble, his eyes fathomless voids. He said nothing. He didn't need to. His magic whispered of pain and promise.
He enchanted her—not with a potion, nor with chains, but with something far darker: the voice of Lucille pulsing inside his blood.
The princess fell into his spell. She opened her gates. She invited him into her tower.
And he came back.
Only at night. Only to conceive.
They never touched in daylight. They never spoke of love.
But over the course of three blood moons, she bore him three children—a son with a tongue of fire, a daughter whose touch turned stone soft, and another whose eyes saw the future veiled in blood.
When the Moirel Elders learned the truth, they were horrified.
"A cursed man," they said. "Born of shadow and rage, son of the one who defied death."
The princess had defiled the clan's sacred purity. She had let in the black flame.
So they banished her.
Locked her in the farthest tower, deep in the cliffs, where the waves could sing her to death.
She stayed there—never seeing her children again—until the end of her days.
But the children… they were not cast out.
They were too powerful.
One by one, they became the future of the clan. They were renamed, reshaped, and hidden behind fabricated lineages. But the truth never left the walls.
> "We are the tower's bastards," Nerissa whispered in the present, her voice brittle with grief. "All of us. The Moirel bloodline is Dracon's legacy. And our flames—black, violet, or silver—are cursed to burn, never to warm."
---
Maika slowly opened her eyes. Her breath trembled.
"You kept this from the world."
"The world was not ready to know that Dracon did not die. He became lineage. He became rumor. And rumor… became us."
"Is any of his line still alive beyond your clan?"
Nerissa hesitated, then answered.
"One. A girl born under the eclipse. She vanished four years ago. We believe the Crimson Order took her."
Maika clenched her fists. "Name?"
> "Nyra Moirel. My blood. The last daughter of the tower."