"In the Golden City, the light does not warm... and shadows bloom where no one dares to look.Here, a white flower defies oblivion.And its heartbeat could change everything."
She was born in shadow. He was created to survive the sun. Together, they will defy the Blood Empire.
The wind in the Infernal City didn't carry the scent of life.It reeked of rust and decay—nothing but a breath of corrosion beneath a sky that never changed.
The eternal night, veiled in toxic smoke, wrapped the ruins like a heavy funeral shroud.Hope had become a myth whispered only in broken tones by the slaves who still dared to remember.
Arisha walked barefoot through the gray dust, the tattered edges of her robes floating around her like wilted petals. Her hazel eyes, deep and luminous like drowned stars, showed no fear.Only silent resistance, carved by loss.
In a forgotten crack among the ruins, her foot brushed against something soft.She crouched, her heart tapping gently against her ribs, and carefully moved a broken brick aside.
There, barely illuminated by the dying flicker of corroded fluorescent lights, a white flower grew.Cold. Fragile.Like her.
"Shadow flower," she thought, without knowing why—without yet realizing that the slaves whispered of such a sign as an omen.
Days melted in the underground labyrinth.Vampires from the middle class descended from the Golden City like spoiled hunters, claiming their share of life.Humans, degraded to livestock, barely survived outside the corrupted protection of toxin-soaked metal panels.
Arisha belonged to neither world.She didn't drink blood. She didn't need it.And the vampires knew.
That's why they looked at her from the corner of their eyes.That's why her arranged suitors always ended up dead—never even getting to speak her name.
They called her "the compassion-born," a forbidden whim of Varek, the ancestral leader now sleeping in the deepest catacombs.
Mikhael, heir of Skiller Snova and Daesa Ghali, young ruler of the vampire elite, pretended kindness.His green eyes followed her like a hawk from the shadows.His voice, sweet in public, was a sheathed dagger—patient, calculating.
Arisha knew.She trusted no one.
And in the deepest nights, when the underground air turned nearly solid with humidity and fear, Arisha felt another presence.A whisper in her mind.A forgotten promise.A shadow watching her… and it wasn't Mikhael.
It was something else.Something ancient.Something that didn't need words to be understood.
That night, driven by pain, defiance, and something deeper, Arisha crossed the boundary.She left behind the safe zones—the sanctioned paths.She walked alone, barefoot, into forbidden lands where neither slave nor vampire dared tread.Where the damned wandered in silence.
Beneath the ruins of an old biological lab from the lost human era, she found a rusted door half-buried in rubble.She pushed it open.
The passage descended like an open throat into utter darkness.She didn't hesitate.She went down.
And there, in the thick shadows, she saw him.
A flash of movement—A tall body, wrapped in chains tattooed across his arms.A boy, bound to a stone wall. Dirty. Wounded. Alive.
His eyes barely lifted to meet hers.He didn't speak.He didn't have to.
Arisha felt something slam into her—a connection.Ancient. Unspoken. Unexplainable.
But she had no time to step closer.
A metallic shriek cut the air.The hunting squad stormed in, ruthless and efficient.They threw a white energy-blocking sheet over the boy.Electric batons cracked against his skin.They pinned him, chained him, caged him in a black cell with glowing bars built to contain high-risk creatures.
It all happened in seconds.
Arisha stepped forward, only to be stopped by the guards.They didn't let her speak.Didn't let her ask.
She only caught a final glimpse—Those crimson eyes staring back at her…Like they already knew her.
Like their stories were bound, even before they began.
She was born of shadows.He was made to survive the sun.Together, they would challenge the Blood Empire.
And in the silence that followed, as the heavy door slammed shut,Arisha felt—for the first time—curiosity.
A spark that neither Mikhael, nor the Infernal City,nor even fear itself could extinguish.