Chapter 43: The Forgotten Girl
Mini Arc: Gasper's Rescue
The forest outside the Vampire's Old Keep was hushed. Moonlight filtered through the skeletal branches, and the mist still lingered like breath held too long.
Inside the temporary safe zone—a layered warded camp protected by concealment spells and defensive glyphs—Volundr stood silent beside a mana map glowing faintly atop a stone table.
His mind, however, was still back in that estate, in the darkness beneath the Tepes manor.
Behind him, Seraphina entered quietly, her expression grim.
"Volundr. We missed something."
He turned. "Go on."
Seraphina held out a smaller data crystal, flickering with reddish light.
"During the exfiltration, while my scan magic was tracing the energy lines below the estate, I found something… different. Not Gasper's magic. Not even vampiric in nature. Something ancient, powerful—and fractured."
She placed it into the table's socket. A three-dimensional layout of the Tepes estate expanded above them. Beneath the sub-level where Gasper had been held, a second signal pulsed, weak but rhythmic.
Volundr's gaze sharpened.
"A Sacred Gear?"
Seraphina nodded. "Dormant, but active enough to leave a signature. I cross-referenced the energy pattern with Azazel's files and Sona Shitori's research. It's unique. It's not just a Sacred Gear—it's likely Holy Grail-class."
Silence fell in the room.
Volundr inhaled. "Valerie Tepes."
Debate at Midnight
The team gathered around, battle-worn and wary.
"Another infiltration?" Darius frowned. "That place is in chaos. Reinforcements are flooding the area. It's suicide."
"We barely got out with Gasper," Lilith added. "The tunnel collapsed. And Valerie's deeper than that."
"I know," Volundr said softly. "That's why I'm going alone."
The team erupted in protest, but he held up a hand.
"She's alive. Barely. She was close to Gasper. They kept her hidden, even from most of their own. If we leave her… she won't last another week under that strain."
He looked them each in the eye. Calm, steady. Unshakable.
"If she dies down there, I'll never forgive myself."
No one argued again.
A Ghost in the Halls
Nightfall cloaked the Tepes estate in thick shadow. The defenses were spread thin—focused outward, expecting raiding parties or retaliatory strikes. No one expected someone to return.
Volundr emerged from a stealth gate just outside the old cathedral ruin bordering the estate. His cloak shimmered faintly with stealth enchantments. His magic was masked, his steps silent.
Every lock, every barrier he met—he unraveled.
From his previous life, Volundr remembered breaking into worse. As a former strategist, he knew that to open locks was less about strength—and more about sequence and pressure.
The seals here were vampire-ancient, laced with blood magic and hereditary wards. He didn't break them. He unwrote them, manipulating their core meanings with counter-runes, scripting inverse matrices mid-air with whisper-fast hand signs.
Through cryptic chambers and whispering stone halls, he descended—until the air itself tasted cold and dry like tomb dust.
The Forgotten Girl
He found her in a crystalline chamber, hidden behind a false wall and sealed by layered enchantments. The room glowed with a sickly violet light, generated by crystals channeling corrupted life energy.
She lay on a marble slab, arms and legs bound by magical restraints woven into silken threads of shadow. Her skin was pale, almost translucent. Her golden-blonde hair spilled across the bed like a fallen crown.
Valerie Tepes.
She looked… weightless. Not dead, but not entirely alive either. Her soul danced somewhere between.
Volundr approached carefully. His footsteps echoed with reverence, not caution.
He knelt beside her, and for the first time, saw the Sacred Gear. A luminous shard glimmered just beneath the skin over her heart—twisting and pulsing with dual energy. Light and darkness spiraled together. Holy and cursed.
Her aura flickered—like a candle between breaths. It twisted violently as he reached out. Shadows recoiled. Light surged. Reality bent for a heartbeat.
Then… stillness.
He touched her hand.
Her eyes fluttered open—barely. Crimson irises met his golden ones.
"…Are you the one…" she murmured, her voice a barely audible whisper, dreamlike and broken. "…from the dream…?"
Volundr froze.
"What dream?"
But her eyes began to drift shut again. He tightened his grip on her hand gently, channeling calming energy into her body, trying to stabilize the conflicting magic.
"I'm real. I'm here now. Valerie… I won't leave you."
Her lips parted slightly. A faint smile? A flicker of warmth? It was hard to tell. But her hand didn't let go.
"Hang on," he whispered. "Your world's about to change."