Valea Umbrei was not a place. It was a wound.
The path into the valley dropped without warning, hidden by mist and thorn. As they descended, light changed. The sun dimmed, though it was midday. The trees thinned. The air grew heavy, charged with the metallic scent of storm and something older,something wrong.
Elara felt it immediately: pressure in her skull, a ringing in her ears like distant bells.
When the mist cleared, she saw the monastery.
It clung to the mountainside like a parasite, built of black stone that drank the light. No towers. No crosses. Just walls—endless, windowless walls. The monks called it the Monastery of St. Radu, but Elara saw no saints there.
Only tombs.
---
Inside, the air was colder than the outside wind. The halls were narrow, the ceilings high and arched. Candlelight flickered along stone corridors, but it was not warm. It danced as though trying to escape the walls.
They led her to a chamber deep underground, beneath vaulted ceilings carved with spiral sigils. There were no chairs, no beds, only a pedestal of bone-white marble at the center of the room.
Upon it lay something that pulsed.
Elara stepped closer.
It was a heart.
Massive. Still-beating. Suspended in a web of black veins that fed into the walls themselves.
"The Heartward Seal," Calderon said quietly behind her. "It's what keeps him bound."
His voice sounded in her head like a whisper"what keeps him bound"
She turned slowly. "Him?"
"You already know."
Her throat went dry. "Dracula."
Calderon gave no name. Only a look of grim confirmation.
Elara stared at the heart.
It beat slowly. Rhythmically. Each throb seemed to echo in her own chest.
"He's in there?" she asked.
"Not in body. In essence. What remains of him. What the Order sealed after the last eclipse."
Elara stepped back. "Why bring me here? What am I supposed to do?"
"You were born of the bloodline that made the Seal possible. Your ancestors gave everything to bind him. But the heart is failing. It has begun to thirst."
"For what?"
Calderon looked her in the eye.
"You."
---
Later, in her chamber, she sat staring at her hands. They shook without reason. Her skin itched. Her breath caught in fits, as if the air inside the monastery refused to be taken into her lungs.
She appears to be like someone who is seriously under pressure.
The door opened.
Calderon entered, slower than before.
"There is more," he said.
"I'm not surprised."
"You've begun to awaken memories. Pieces of a former life."
Elara turned. "The woman in the mirror?"
He nodded. "Her name was Izolda. A seer. A consort to the one we sealed."
Elara's jaw tightened. "You mean she loved him."
Calderon did not deny it. "She was the one who betrayed him. She allowed us to seal his essence. Her soul became the tether that binds the Seal."
Elara's voice dropped. "And you think I'm her reborn."
"No," he said. "I know you are."