Julian's POV:
The Clockwork Abbey loomed at the heart of New Avalon's oldest district, an architectural paradox, part cathedral, part machine. It stood like a relic caught between time and belief, forged in stained glass and iron teeth. Its spires stabbed the bloated, copper-toned sky, each tip crowned with rotating brass angels whose hollow sockets wept slick trails of oil that shimmered down the stone façades like blackened tears. The air outside was thick with the scent of burnt incense and scalded metal, cloying, sacred, and sharp enough to sting the throat.
Julian Vire stood at the threshold, the iron doors looming before him like the mouth of some ancient beast. He pressed a palm to their cold, pitted surface. With a groan that echoed through the stone corridors like the wail of something dying, the doors opened inward, and the abbey swallowed him whole.
Inside, time ticked with painful precision.
The interior was a monument to movement, pendulums swung in solemn arcs, casting long, skeletal shadows across the stone walls, like the blades of executioners slicing through smoke. The ceiling was a vast constellation of gears, endlessly churning in perfect harmony, each tooth locking into the next with a sound like a heartbeat carved from brass. The air thrummed with it, with purpose, with prophecy.
And in the center, unmoved by the mechanics of man or fate, sat Sister Veradine.
Her chair resembled a throne of secrets: fashioned from the same dark, lacquered wood as the confessionals that lined the walls like silent witnesses. Its arms were smoothed by centuries of desperate hands, worn down by guilt, shame, and longing. She was draped in robes the color of dried blood, the fabric pooling around her feet like congealed sorrow. A silver blindfold wrapped around her eyes, yet her sight reached deeper than flesh. Julian had met oracles before. He had never met one who could make him feel seen through.
"You're late," she said, her voice papery and dry, like brittle parchment disturbed in a crypt.
Julian didn't move closer. He didn't sit. "I wasn't aware we scheduled a meeting."
Her smile was not kind. It peeled slowly across her face, cracking the stillness like shattered lacquer. "The Blood-Saint's Choir does not extend invitations, Lord Vire. We arrive when the song demands a listener."
A pendulum swung low between them, slow and deliberate. Its polished brass face caught Julian's reflection—warped and elongated, as though the abbey itself was trying to pull him apart.
"I don't believe in prophecies," he said, voice low, the lie tasting sour on his tongue.
Veradine's head tilted toward him. Above them, the gears shifted with a shriek of effort, as if reacting to his doubt. Her hands, pale and veined like cracked porcelain, gripped the arms of her chair. "Then why," she whispered, "do you reek of fear?"
Julian's jaw tightened. The gears kept turning, but something inside him stalled. For all the hollow clatter and spectacle of this place, it was her quiet that unsettled him most.
The abbey was not merely alive. It was listening. Watching. Waiting.
And so was she.
***
The streets of New Avalon buzzed with a rhythm all their own. A pulse of neon veins and restless voices, humming like a symphony barely held together by chaos.
I slipped between bodies with practiced ease, the weight of my violin case pressing against my spine like a heartbeat I couldn't ignore. I'd waited for Julian to leave, waited for the moment the Spire's suffocating silence grew too loud, too sharp. Like the edge of a blade pressed to my throat. I needed noise. I needed motion. I needed the city.
New Avalon did not disappoint.
Vendors shouted over the growl of hover-cabs, hawking steaming meat skewers and chipped counterfeit tech. Their voices braided into the air like threadbare prayers. Somewhere to my left, a burst of laughter rang out—children sprinting past me, barefoot and wild, their joy as sharp and fleeting as broken glass. The alleyways breathed with grime and memory, and every flickering sign overhead cast the world in shades of artificial color.
And then I heard it.
A melody. Soft. Lingering. Threading through the static of the street like a whispered secret.
It was my song.
The one I played that night in the storm drain, fingers trembling from cold and rage. The one that made the Spire tremble like it had a soul. The one Julian said he dreamed about before he ever met me.
I froze. Then, without thinking, I followed.
The sound led me down a narrow side street where the city forgot to shine. Here, the lights flickered like dying stars, and the shadows pressed in close, as if listening. At the end of the alley, beneath the dull halo of a crooked streetlamp, stood a man with a violin.
No—a busker. Or something dressed like one.
He was long-limbed and lean, with a tattered coat that shimmered faintly, as if silver threads had been sewn between the seams. His violin was old, the wood dark with time and something else. Grief, maybe. His fingers moved like they were conjuring, not playing. The bow slashed the air, coaxing notes that shimmered and twisted like smoke in moonlight.
I stopped dead, the breath knocked clean out of me.
He looked up.
And smiled.
Too wide. Too many teeth.
"Ah," he said, voice slick with amusement. "The maestro arrives."
A chill crawled up my spine. "How do you know that song?"
The busker didn't miss a beat. The bow kept moving. "Songs have memories," he said. "They know where they come from. And more importantly, where they belong."
My fingers inched toward my violin case, instinct flaring like an old wound.
He saw it. Of course he did.
"You've got talent," he said, eyes glittering beneath the streetlamp. "Real talent. The kind that doesn't belong locked up in some vampire's gilded cage."
That landed like a slap. "What's it to you?"
He stepped forward. Just a little. Just enough for me to catch the scent on his breath,burnt sugar and something darker underneath, like copper and smoke.
"The Underground Orchestra," he said, tapping his violin with one long finger, "is always looking for fresh blood. Pun very much intended." He winked, and the air seemed to ripple around him. "There's a gig tonight. Real stage. Real coin. Real freedom. You in?"
I hesitated.
Everything about him felt wrong. Too convenient. Too smooth. A song in the dark meant to lure.
And yet… the city hummed around me, full of dirty truths and dangerous chances.
Maybe this was just another verse waiting to be written.
Or maybe it was the beginning of something I couldn't unsing.
***
Julian's POV:
Julian returned to the Spire cloaked in a storm of black silk and colder fury. The wind trailed behind him like a hunted shadow, whispering warnings through the arches as if the ancient stones remembered how to fear.
Veradine's words clung to his mind like cobwebs spun by something older than dust.
"Blood sings to blood, saint to sinner."
"You cannot outrun what you've already set in motion."
He tried to shake them, but they tangled tighter with each step, weaving dread into the marrow of his bones.
The mansion greeted him with silence, vast, echoing silence that felt too deliberate. The chandeliers above swayed gently, though no draft stirred them. The scent of rosewood polish and old secrets lingered in the air, but beneath it pulsed something newer. Something alive.
The hum was faint at first, like a low tremor beneath the floorboards. Julian followed it through the halls with the precision of a predator on scent, his boots silent against the marble. It led him to the study.
And there—on the edge of the desk—rested Ari's violin.
It glowed.
Not with the soft, amber warmth of candlelight or the flicker of magic barely held in check. No. This glow was deeper, blood-deep, a vicious crimson that seemed to pulse in rhythm with a hidden heartbeat. The strings quivered without touch, exhaling a soundless vibration that made Julian's fangs ache and the hairs on his arms rise in warning.
He reached out.
The moment his fingers met the wood, agony knifed up his arm—white-hot, relentless. Smoke curled from his skin. The air filled with the acrid sting of burning flesh.
He tried to let go.
He couldn't.
The pain was not just physical—it was memory, grief, fury. It was Ari in song-form, screaming into the silence he had been forced to endure. The violin clung to Julian like a brand, searing through every barrier he'd spent centuries constructing.
Then—bang.
The door burst open, slamming against the wall like a pistol shot.
Ari stood in the threshold, chest heaving, his eyes wide with horror. Rain clung to his curls. His coat was soaked through.
"What the hell are you doing?" he barked.
Julian snarled, wrenching his hand away. The violin pulsed once, twice, then dimmed, the light retreating like a beast crawling back into its den. Blisters marred his palm, raw and glistening. He watched, jaw clenched, as the flesh stitched itself back together.
But the pain lingered. The song lingered.
"Where were you?" Julian's voice was low, feral.
Ari's jaw tightened. "Out."
Two strides carried Julian across the room, fury tightening his every motion. "You were told to stay here."
"I don't take orders."
Julian's hand shot out, gripping Ari's arm with bruising force. "You will not leave this house again."
Ari didn't flinch. His eyes, usually full of reluctant softness, flared with defiance. In one brutal motion, he drove his knee into Julian's stomach.
The vampire stumbled back, momentarily winded, the surprise more jarring than the pain.
Ari yanked free, his breath sharp in the stillness. "Try and stop me," he said, voice low and shaking—but unbroken.
The violin behind them flared again, the glow deepening to a violent red. It spilled across the walls, staining the bookshelves and windowpanes in crimson hues.
Far below, beneath the city's bones, something stirred.
Something ancient.
Something that had been waiting.