The Silver-Eyed Queen

Magnus dropped the journal, a ragged roar tearing from his chest, more beast than man, primal and volcanic. The pages hit the stone with a hollow slap, but their secrets had already burned through him. Blood soaked the floor, and the truth—Isabella's truth—coiled like a serpent around his spine. He doubled over, every breath choked by betrayal, by the slaughter of his people, by the woman who wore a mortal face but carried something far more ancient. The curse inside him erupted, no longer slumbering but starving, clawing up his throat like flame.

Let me out.

The voice wasn't his. It was darker. Wilder. Older. A sound born from his bloodline, from the first Varik who sold his soul to the moon.

His muscles convulsed, seizing violently. Bone grated against bone, the grinding deep and obscene. Veins blazed black beneath his skin, swollen with a magic too foul to name. His back arched, mouth open in a silent scream as pain surged into power, fusing him with the thing beneath his skin. His hands flexed—flesh tearing, nails darkening into jagged black talons. Fur bloomed like a disease, sweeping across his limbs as the beast rose, howling in triumph.

"Magnus!" Jakob's voice cracked through the madness, his sword raised but trembling. "Fight it! I know you're still in there—don't let her win, whatever the hell she is!"

He's weak. Kill him first.

"No!" Magnus snarled aloud, but the word came out twisted, wet with fury. His vision blurred, heat flooding his skull as his bones shattered, reformed, and broke again. He fell to one knee, then rose—taller, broader, monstrous. The man was gone. A werewolf, black as a moonless night, stood in his place, fangs gleaming, eyes lit like molten gold.

Jakob stumbled back, the sight unraveling him. "Please," he whispered. "Don't do this."

The beast twitched, claws digging grooves into the stone floor—but it didn't strike. Not yet.

Then it turned and leapt, crashing through the stained glass with a shriek of shattering color, landing in the courtyard below with a quake that shook the earth. Wind howled through the breach as firelight licked across the room, painting it in reds and hellish golds.

Outside, it was carnage.

The estate was dying.

Vampires—dozens, hundreds—moved through the halls like shadows unbound, skin like frozen silk, eyes burning with hunger. Their laughter wasn't laughter—it was a psychic scream that clawed the inside of the mind. Guards fell like leaves in winter, steel swords bouncing off skin that refused to bleed. The towers burned, stone groaning as it cracked under the heat. Servants fled, some already too late, their blood drawn in ribbons across the flagstones.

At the center of it all, standing still in the storm, was her.

Isabella.

Cloaked in black, her hair a tangle of night, her smile a cut made with care. Her eyes shifted—human one breath, luminous silver the next. Her beauty was a mirage. A trap. She walked forward as if she owned the flames. And perhaps she did.

"Come, Magnus," she murmured across the inferno, her voice barely more than a breath. "Let's see what kind of monster you truly are."

Her hand lifted, and the world shuddered. A pulse of power, not raw but ancient, rolled across the courtyard like thunder dragged beneath the earth. In her palm flickered something veiled, not fully visible—but it pulsed with darkness. Something not just powerful, but final. A piece of the Key of Destruction, or its reflection.

Magnus growled, the sound guttural and cracked like a fissure in the world. The vampire horde surged toward him with fangs bared, screams of hunger distorting the air. And he answered with violence.

He launched into them.

Claws ripped through ribcages. Fangs tore heads from shoulders. He was a maelstrom of fur and fury, a godless thing. One vampire dove at him, its laughter digging into his skull, but he caught it mid-air and slammed it into the stone, its body shattering like glass. Another lunged and he crushed it in his jaws, ichor drenching his fur, his growl vibrating through the corpses piling around him.

Every kill fed the beast. Every drop of blood made the voice stronger.

More. Tear them all apart. And then… her.

He fought for his people. For the dead. For the burned estate. But beneath that rage was something darker—his father's legacy, a howl calling from the edge of his mind.

Call the pack.

They're waiting.

Your birthright.

He could feel them, far beyond the forest, the remnants of the werewolf legions. Their minds brushed his like smoke—ready to come, to kill, to burn what was left. All it would take was one word. One surrender.

But he held it back.

He wasn't ready to become that.

Not yet.

High above, Jakob stood on the balcony, watching through the shattered window, face pale and broken. "Magnus…" he breathed. "You're not the man I knew."

Magnus didn't look up. He couldn't. If he did, he might lose what was left of himself.

Flames surged higher. Screams died into ash. Isabella stepped forward, untouched, her eyes glowing silver as she locked gazes with the beast. No fear. No hesitation.

Only hunger.

"I didn't come to destroy you," she said, her voice like wind through a grave. "I came to awaken you."

Magnus's snarl shook the courtyard. The last of the vampires still swirled around her, a protective dance of death, but even they hesitated now. He had killed too many. Bled too much. His fury was sacred. Unholy. The sky itself seemed to flinch.

He didn't speak. He couldn't.

But his message was clear.

He would not kneel.

Not to her.

Not to the curse.

Not yet.

And the moon watched in silence, silver light falling on two monsters—one born, one made—caught in the storm of fire and blood, with a kingdom's ruin between them and a darker war still to come.