The masked figure remained silent, as I felt its chilling gaze pinned on me. Behind him, a mist started to form unnaturally around the ruins of the battlefield.
Then at last, they spoke.
"You," the voice said, low and commanding. "Tell me your name."
Sylva's breath hitched. Zakir, still recovering from the battle, turned his head towards us, his expression full of suspicion.
I didn't answer. The weight of their words pressed down on me.
Should I try to deceive them? Or give the truth? Odds are, they witnessed most of the fight. They probably know the truth. If they meant to kill us, we'd be dead already. But is it safer to play dumb… against someone who can decide our fate with a mere flick of the wrist?
"You…Why are you asking me such a question?" I asked, my voice cracking in nervousness.
"To simply confirm what I heard," the masked figure replied, his tone unchanging.
I gulped. Whoever this was, they knew already. What use would there be to lie?
"Don't," Sylva whispered. "Did you already forget the weight of your name?"
I ignored Sylva, as she didn't realize the man in front of us was testing me.
Taking a deep breath, I replied.
"Vladros Nyxerion, that's my name."
I held my breath, as I had no idea how they would respond. For all I knew, that reply might have killed us all.
He took a step forward, and slowly, he took off his mask. For the first time, I saw them not as a threat, not as hostile. A wave of familiarity swept over me. One question kept gnawing at me from inside.
"Are you… Also from the house of Varkadios?"
He inclined his head. "You're quite smart, it seems. Yes. Of the House Varkadios, overseer of the second trial, that is who I am. Though… it seems the trials will have to end prematurely."
Sylva lowered her guard, confused but still alert. "Why didn't you say so earlier?"
"I wasn't sure of it before, until now." They replied.
Turning their gaze towards the beast, with a simple flick of the wrist, it became engulfed in flames. Nothing remained of it but blackened, scorched earth.
This man was strong. In his presence, we were like insects trying to measure the height of a mountain.
"That creature was never part of the trials. Consider yourselves lucky to be alive."
"Then why didn't anyone stop it?" Zakir spat. "We almost died—he did die," pointing at me.
"We didn't realize until too late," the figure said. "It wasn't just you guys. It killed many other groups before you went face to face with it."
I finally understood what was being told. How easily we progressed, how the silence of the mountains felt unnatural. I was ashamed to even think that it was all due to my ingenious plan. The trial seemed easy, not due to our strength. It was because we were walking through graveyards.
"Due to these… complications," the figure continued, the trials have been suspended for now.
"As for you three, you are to return to the Varkadios estate. Immediately."
Sylva stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "Because of his name?"
The figure's gaze returned to me. "Yes. In front of others. That is a grave violation. You know what that means."
I opened my mouth—but Sylva beat me to it. "He didn't know. None of us did."
"Didn't know? Is that supposed to be a joke?" the figure said. "The Law of Names is not dictated by knowledge. Only by blood. No vampire would ever forget their own rules."
That's right. No one except us knows that I lost almost all my memories.
Zakir stood now, steadying himself on his blade. "So what happens now? To us?"
The figure looked at him, and something in his posture shifted. "You are bound to him. That is the law."
Bound. The word echoed through the space between us. Sylva and Zakir had taken my name into themselves. They were no longer outsiders.
They were family.
"Then we face the same fate?" Sylva asked. Her voice was calm, but I knew her well enough to hear the edge of fury beneath.
The masked figure didn't answer. He merely turned, the chains on his cloak faintly clinking as he moved.
"You are to report to Lord Taron. He will decide."
He began to walk away.
"Wait," I called out. "There's more, isn't there?"
He paused. "What do you mean?"
"You're not telling us everything. You knew my name. You recognized it. What aren't you saying?"
A long silence followed. The figure did not turn around.
Then—softly—he said, "The Law of Names is absolute. To give your name is to sever the ties of your birthright. You are no longer a child of House Nyxerion."
Sylva took a sharp breath.
"You have decided on your new family," he continued. "Those who heard it. Those who bear it. That is the rule."
He looked back, mask catching the glow of the moonlight.
"You walk toward judgment, Vladros Nyxerion. And you bring your new family with you."
Then he vanished into the mist.
We stood in the silence left behind, and for the first time since I woke, I felt the weight of what I had done—not just the blood, or the pain, but the truth of it.
My legs buckled, and I sat heavily against a boulder charred black from the earlier fight. I couldn't seem to catch my breath.
"Vlad…" Sylva said quietly, coming to kneel in front of me. Her hand rested against my shoulder, light but steady. "You saved us."
"Please just call me Feng. Calling me by that name… It still feels foreign to me. Like it doesn't belong to me," I replied.
Zakir leaned against a nearby tree, wiping blood from his brow. He chuckled softly, though there was no joy in it. "Well, what's done is done. There's only one thing we can do, and that's to follow what that man told us to do."
"Zakir," Sylva muttered.
"No, I mean it," he said, and stepped closer. His gaze was serious now. "Look, you think any of this matters if you hadn't done what you did? That thing—whatever it was—would've ripped us to pieces. I was out of options. Sylva was bleeding out. You were dead."
He pointed at the scorched ground, black and cracked with lingering heat. "And then you weren't. You came back. You gave us your power…even though it nearly killed you, again."
I kept my eyes on the dirt, trying to will myself invisible. "But the cost—"
Sylva reached forward and took my hand.
Her grip was warm. Grounding. Human, in a way I hadn't realized I missed.
"You gave us your name," she said softly, her voice trembling—but not with fear. With care. "We didn't ask for it. But you still gave it. And that means something. Not just to vampire laws or blood contracts, but to us. To me."
She squeezed once. "You saved my life. Again. Don't you dare sit here and regret that."
I swallowed hard. My throat was tight. "But now you're bound to me. We're being sent to my family to face judgment, whatever that might be. For all we know, our deaths are simply being delayed. I don't know what they're like. What the rules actually mean."
Zakir huffed. "Oh, we're starting to get a pretty good idea, thanks."
Sylva smiled faintly. "Then we go together. We face it together. That's what family does, right?"
I flinched at the word. Family.
It felt... too heavy. Too real. But also too distant. Like trying to touch smoke.
"I didn't mean to make you family," I whispered.
"You didn't make us anything," Zakir said, walking over to sit beside me, dragging his sword behind him with a dull scrape. "You gave us something. That's different."
I looked up at them both, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I didn't see suspicion or pity.
I saw something else.
Loyalty.
"You're both insane," I muttered.
Sylva rolled her eyes. "And you're slow. Took you this long to notice?"
Zakir smirked. "Welcome to the club."
We sat there for a while, just breathing. Letting the moment stretch without filling it with worry. For now, it was enough to rest. To be alive. Whatever happens to us next, we'll cross that bridge when we reach it.