Даниил Зверков – The Last Queen Of Noctyra: Awakening Of Aronella (страница 5)

She went toward it.

The breach in the wall was wider than it had looked from afar.

Once, the great gates of Blackspire had stood here—vast doors of black iron and stone that opened only for the lords of the great houses. She remembered the solemn groan of their hinges when she returned from long journeys. She remembered the guards kneeling. The scent of flowers cast in her path.

Now there was only a heap of stone overgrown with moss and wormwood.

She stepped onto the scree. Stones slid beneath her feet, tumbling downward with dust and grit. She had to brace herself against jagged walls to keep from falling. Her fingers slipped. Her nails scraped stone. She felt it, but there was no pain. Only cold.

Below, beneath the rubble, the remains of the gates were still visible—a rusted strip of iron, warped and broken, jutting from the stone like the rib of some dead beast.

She stepped over it and emerged outside.

The road that had once led from the gates down to the city could still be made out—a broad band of packed stone now almost swallowed by grass and saplings. Where columns of warriors had once marched, deer and hares now wandered. Where laughter and song had once rung, leaves now whispered.

She went down.

The city met her with silence.

The streets where thousands of vampires had once walked were overgrown with grass up to the knee. Houses had become ruins—the walls collapsed, the roofs fallen inward, roots thrusting from window frames as trees forced their way through the stone. Squares that had once teemed with life were choked with brush, and only the wind moved there, lifting dust and dry leaves.

She walked along the main avenue, the one that had once led from the gates to the heart of the city, and every step echoed through the emptiness.

To her left, in the shadow of a half-fallen wall, she saw bones.

Human.

Several skeletons lay scattered in disorder, as if a sudden death had taken them by surprise. Skulls stared sightlessly at the sky. Ribs jutted from the earth like sharpened stakes. Fingers still clutched the rotted hilts of swords.

Further on, beside a fountain, lay others.

Vampires.

She knew by the larger bones, the scraps of armor, the shape of the skulls. They lay together with the humans, as though death had made no distinction between victor and vanquished.

She stopped, looking over that field of death.

How many? Hundreds? Thousands?

She did not know. But she knew this: there had been a battle here. Brutal. Merciless. Final.

Her people had died here.

She knelt beside one of the vampire skeletons. The bones were old and fragile, crumbling beneath her touch. But on one of the vertebrae she noticed a familiar mark—a brand once burned into the flesh, now hanging from a rotted shred.

The sigil of House Tharoven.

She closed her eyes.

Velzen. Tarven. Elira. Illaris. Dozens of names, hundreds of faces, thousands of voices—gone into the earth, mixed with dust, vanished forever.

She rose.

The wind struck her face again, cold and strange. Somewhere far off, a crow called. Life was returning to this place—but not the life that had once been here.

She kept walking.

Across the square. Past the shattered fountain. Past statues lying in the dust. Past what had once been the center of the greatest civilization in the world.

At the end of the avenue, where the city gave way to the foothills, the forest began.

Dark. Dense. Alive.

She stepped beneath the canopy and felt the silence shift into something else—the rustle of leaves, birdsong, the distant tapping of a woodpecker. Beyond the walls of the citadel, the world had continued to live.

She stopped at the edge of the woods and looked back.

Blackspire rose above the trees—broken, dead, yet still majestic. It looked down at her through hollow windows, and in that gaze there was neither threat nor regret.

Only memory.

I will return, she said softly. When I know the truth—I will return.

The wind carried her words toward the mountains.

She turned and stepped into the forest.

The forest greeted her with scents—rotting leaves, wet bark, animal trails. Somewhere nearby, a stream murmured. Somewhere far off, an owl called.

The world was living its own life, unaware of her.

But within her, something else was alive.

Hunger.

It woke slowly, but with certainty. First as a faint weakness in her knees. Then as an aching pull beneath her ribs. Then as a coldness spreading through her veins.

She needed blood.

The forest breathed.

She could feel it in every cell of her wasted body—the rise and fall of some enormous beasts chest, the pulse of life in every leaf, every branch, every creature hidden in the dark.

Hunger ceased to be a mere sensation. It became part of her. The emptiness within her deepened, draining what strength remained, making her steps unsteady, her vision blur.

She braced herself against a tree and waited out the next wave of weakness. The bark was rough and cold, smelling of resin and time. She leaned her forehead against it, closing her eyes, trying to steady the trembling in her hands.

Somewhere near.

She heard it through the rush of her own blood, through the dull roar in her ears, through the growing void.

A heartbeat.

Warm. Fast. Alive.

She opened her eyes.

A stag stood twenty paces away, on a small clearing washed in pale moonlight. It was drinking from the stream—graceful, calm, unaware of danger. Its slender legs quivered faintly. Its ears twitched at the sounds of the forest. Its dark, wet eyes held the reflection of the stars.

She went still.

Something ancient woke within her—something that had existed long before she became a queen, long before she learned to speak or think.

The instinct of a hunter.

She crouched.

Her movements changed. Soundless. Fluid. Almost weightless. She slipped between the trees without touching the leaves, without making a sound. Her feet found their own path. Her body chose its own line of attack.

The stag lifted its head.

For a single instant, their eyes met. There was no fear in its gaze.

Only curiosity.

It did not know what she was.

She leapt.