Requiem Act II: Azrael and Alexyus

The silence…my only companion during these years,along with the agonizing screams of my prisoners… and my enemies.

All these years…since Legion managed to seal me in this place,passed in the blink of an eye.

A blink drenched in blood,bitterness,and the ashes of memories I never dared to bury.

A year feels like an hour for an immortal like me.

An hour that holds no warmth.No change.No forgiveness.

I spent those hours—those centuries—obsessing over one single thing:

Humanity.

The murderers of Mark.

The ones who stole the only thing I ever loved.

They always feared me, even when I was a human.

And after that tragic even I gave them reason to fear me for real.

I hunted.

With elegance.

With cruelty.

With obsession.

With passion.

I wanted their extintion.

That's why I also gave them a worst fate: to become my servants.

Entire villages and cities disappeared under the shadow of my wings.

I drank, not for sustenance…but for vengeance.

I smiled while they screamed.

I laughed while they burned.

I thought I was healing something inside me.

But all I did was feed the abyss.

And then...They came.

Not the mortals.

Not the priests.

No. Nothing as simple.

The Gods.

They whispered in tongues only I could hear.

They cursed my name not with words,but with silence louder than any divine wrath.

And so... he was born.

The incarnation of the human's hatred for vampires.

Azrael.

A man shaped not by the world,but by judgment itself.

He didn't cry as a child.

He didn't dream.

He was forged, not conceived.

A perfect weapon.

A flawless executioner.

He wasn't born to kill vampires.

He was born to kill me.

The purest human on the face of earth.

He couldn't even use magic.

I remember the first time I heard his name.

A noble house had been erased.

Not slaughtered.

Erased.

Clean.

Precise.

Not a single drop of blood wasted.

One of my spies returned—what was left of her.And with her final breath, she said:

"He walks like a shadow…but fights like a god.His eyes don't see us.They judge us."

I laughed, at first.

A man?To kill me?

How naïve I was.

Then I saw him.

From the top of my tower.

He stood alone in the middle of a ruined courtyard,his blade still dripping with the blood of my kin.

I saw no hatred in his face.

No joy.

Only silence.

The same silence that filled my prison.The same silence I had once embraced.

Azrael…You were not a hunter.

You were a mirror.

You reminded me of what I had become.

Of what I had lost.Of the woman I once was.

I used to think I was invincible.A queen among monsters.The mother of death.

But when you looked at me from the shadows,I felt it.

Fear.

Not because you could kill me…but because you should.

Because in that moment…I realized I deserved it.

I deserved every scar.

Every night of agony.

Every scream echoing in this cursed castle.

Because for all the power I had...for all the blood I had spilled...

I never got him back.

Mark never returned.

Not even once, in a dream.

Not even in a whisper.

Sometimes I thought I felt his presence…a breeze down the corridor,a melody in the wind...

But it was just me.

Playing the notes of my own delusion.

I tried to forget.Believe me, I tried.

I begged the moon to take away my memories.I cursed my immortality.

But then…

Then he appeared.

Alexyus.

That boy…that monster…that reflection.

He walks like Mark.He doesn't smile like him.But when he looks at me…

I see him.

The same flame.The same softness—buried deep under a shell of violence and guilt.

But he is no Mark.He kills without hesitation.He has no music in his hands.No softness in his breath.

And yet...

Why do I care?

Why do I speak his namewhen no one's listening?

Why do I keep the pendant he droppedas if it were a piece of Mark's soul?

Am I that desperate?That lost?

Or is this…fate?

Did the Gods not send Azrael to punish me…but Alexyus…to redeem me?

I don't know anymore.

Time has eroded my clarity.Like rain against stone.All that remains are cracks.

But I still cling to something.

Hope?No.

I am not foolish.

It is not hope I hold.

It is need.

The need to see him one last time.To feel his touch.To hear him say my name.

Even if it's just an illusion.Even if it damns me forever.

I will endure it.

I will wait.

Because even in this tomb of marble and silence…I still love him.

And if loving him is my punishment...

Then so be it.