Lukyan watched her as they sat in silence on the edge of the crypt.
Larissa's fingers trembled in her lap, her eyes still locked on the strange mirror now sealed back in the ancient vault. He had seen fear in her before—but never like this. This was different. This was knowing.
"Whatever I saw in there," she whispered, "wasn't just a memory. It felt… like a warning."
Lukyan reached for her hand and, to his surprise, she let him take it.
"Larissa," he said slowly, "there's something you need to know. Something about your mother. Something I wasn't supposed to find out."
She turned her head toward him sharply. "You knew her?"
"No. But my father did."
They sat by the fire in his private study, the room dimly lit, shadows flickering across the shelves of worn medical journals and antique weapons. Lukyan poured a glass of dark liquor and handed it to her.
He didn't sit across the room like he usually did. This time, he sat beside her.
"When I was seventeen," he began, "I overheard a conversation between my father and the family's spiritual advisor. They were arguing about a woman named Ekaterina. My father said she was dangerous. That she had brought fire and blood into the Order."
Larissa's breath caught.
"He said she betrayed them. But the priest said no—he claimed she was protecting something. Someone." He looked at her. "You."
"I was a baby when she died."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
Larissa blinked. "What?"
Lukyan stood and pulled something from a locked drawer in the bookshelf. A faded medical file. He handed it to her.
Her hands shook as she opened it.
Patient: Larissa Ekaterina Volkov
Date of Birth: REDACTED
Date of Transfer: REDACTED
Notes: Child of high spiritual interest. Protective spells intact. Adopted under emergency protocol.
She read it twice. Then again.
"I wasn't raised in a hospital," she whispered. "I was adopted by a family friend… but they told me…"
"They told you what you needed to believe." Lukyan's voice was low. "But you were born under protection. And someone—my family included—made sure your real identity stayed buried."
She looked up at him, wide-eyed. "Why are you just telling me this now?"
"Because I didn't want to believe it myself." He reached out, brushing a lock of hair from her face. "But you have to understand—your past is part of what's threatening us now."
That night, Larissa couldn't sleep again. She stood at Alina's crib, watching her daughter's chest rise and fall. The toddler clutched her stuffed rabbit and murmured in her sleep.
She's the key.
The girl is the key.
Those words echoed in her mind like a curse.
As she turned to leave, she caught something out of the corner of her eye.
A shimmer.
In the mirror across the room.
It wasn't her reflection.
It was the faceless figure from the crypt—standing behind her again.
She spun around.
No one.
She faced the mirror again. Empty.
Larissa clutched the edge of the dresser. "What do you want from me?"
No answer. But a whisper slid through the silence like a breath on her neck.
"The blood must remember."