Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 104: First Step on the Chessboard

Chapter 104: First Step on the Chessboard

I crossed the threshold.

Immediately, the temperature dropped. Not a simple coolness — a dry, deep cold, almost symbolic. The air bit into my skin, not harshly, but with that dull insistence that said: you are no longer outside.

As if, here, even the flames had gone silent.

As if warmth had been banished, expelled by the mere presence of those who sat there.

At the center of the tent, a table. Immense. Carved from black wood, almost charred, but streaked with veins of gold. Liquid gold, ancient, that pulsed faintly under the light like sleeping blood. It was beautiful. And a little disturbing. As if the furniture itself was breathing, slowly, in its own way.

Around it, nine chairs arranged in a semicircle. Eight were occupied. And not by just anyone.

No. It was them. The Lords.

I didn’t need to know their names.

Their mere presence was enough.

Every breath, every stillness, every beat of silence around them... exhaled a brute force, dense, indisputable. Not an open hostility. No. Nothing that simple.

It was something else. It was what they were.

Their very existence carried a form of destruction. Ancient. Silent. Unalterable.

Monsters. Elders.

Nobles of the night, forged in centuries no one had dared recount. Beings whose gaze could weigh more than a wall of stone, whose silence alone could bend the proudest.

Behind them, standing, straight, frozen in an almost sacred obedience, stood other figures. Generals. Powerful, surely. Dominant, elsewhere.

But here...

Here, they seemed almost small.

Loyal shadows, reduced to the rank of witnesses.

And in that contrast — in that vertigo of scale between those who rose and those who remained seated — I understood exactly where I had stepped.

But the worst of it... was at the end of the table.

A silhouette. Small.

Almost invisible, if you didn’t look closely. A presence so discreet she could have passed for a servant, a child forgotten there. But no. It was something else. Something far more.

She didn’t move. And yet, everything turned around her.

A little girl.

Barely ten years old, perhaps. Or frozen at that age, somewhere outside of time. She had the appearance of innocence... but frozen. As if innocence itself had petrified into something older, more terrifying. A mask from before pain. Before even fear.

Her skin... it wasn’t flesh. It was moonlight. Haunted porcelain. Smooth, too smooth. As if light didn’t dare truly touch it. Or that it passed through. She seemed empty and full all at once. A void charged with something my mind refused to name.

Her hair... black, totally black. But not dull. A black that absorbed everything. That slid down her back like a trail of living ink, too perfect to be natural.

And then, there were her eyes. Two abysses. Not dark. Not dim. But black. Perfect. Without pupils, without depth, without return.

I thought I saw my own image dissolve in them.

A shiver of fear ran through me.

Not a fear that makes you flee. A fear that stops you. Nails you in place. As if my own blood, suddenly, refused to go any further.

She wore ceremonial attire. Perfect. Chiseled. Woven from something unspeakable — a silent fabric, almost alive, adorned with black embroidery like fossilized blood. Inlaid with stones that no longer had names. Every detail seemed to scream without sound: untouchable. Sacred. Inhuman.

I stopped dead.

No more breath. No more movement.

Words were not needed. She hadn’t spoken a single syllable. And yet... I already felt her inside me. Etched somewhere between my nerves, my memory, and my blood.

I knew her. Not by meeting. By transmission.

Anarael.

The Vampire Vestige.

The first of our kind.

An entity born at the origins. Before kingdoms. Before titles. Before even names. A survivor of the beginning. A presence spoken of only in whispers — when one still dared to believe in her.

One of the twelve. And she was there. Seated at the end of that table.

Looking at me.

The guard bowed deeply, a sharp, sincere movement. His voice, when it returned, had grown graver. More restrained.

— Please forgive my interruption. Here is the Grand Varkh, Lukaris Thalaris Von Eskarion... and his adopted daughter, Lysara Thalaris Von Eskarion.

I felt several gazes turn toward me, but none fell into disbelief. None wavered. They already knew. Or... they had been waiting for this moment like one waits for a long-missing gear.

I bowed in turn. Simply. Not too low.

Just enough.

Then I straightened, voice calm, stretched tight on an invisible thread.

— It is an honor, I said. Simply. Slowly. The words weighed one by one before they left.

And then... she looked at me. Anarael. She didn’t move. But her gaze... it wasn’t attention. It was dissection.

It sank into me like a slow blade, with no apparent violence, but with the implacable precision of things that neither seek to harm, nor to spare. Only to see.

I felt something tighten inside me. The soul, perhaps. Or what was left of it.

Then she spoke.

— Sit down, Lukaris.

Her voice was not that of a child.

Nor an adult.

It was something else. An ancient sound. Detached. An authority that asked nothing. That threatened nothing. That had never needed to learn how to persuade.

— We will introduce ourselves. Then we will speak.

I nodded slowly, as if the movement itself had to be validated by the space.

And I took the only empty seat in the circle.

Lysara, she, remained standing. Behind me. Straight. Dignified. Her gaze fixed, hands clasped behind her back. A calm presence, grounded, silent. Like a loyal shadow. Or an unsheathed blade, still, ready to strike.

A man slowly raised his chin, with a precise, measured gesture. His gloved hands came to rest on the table, without a sound.

His black cloak seemed made of a strange fabric, almost alive — a veil of shifting shadow, traversed with veins of liquid light that crept slowly over its surface like ancient creatures in slumber.

Dark gems were embedded in his throat, his forehead, and around his wrists. None truly shone. They pulsed. Softly. Like a forgotten heart.

His skin, bluish-grey, looked unreal. Spectral. Drawn from a dream where the living have no place.

His hair was long, smooth, black as a bottomless chasm. And his eyes... also black, but inhabited. Fragments of shattered onyx spun slowly in them, as if his pupils held the remnants of a dead world.

When he spoke, it was low. Smooth. But each word carried a subtle, refined poison, the kind that doesn’t kill right away.

— I am Mikaem. Warden of the Living Crypts. Lord of the Forbidden Silence.

Then, a woman rose.

Gracefully.

Her movement birthed a soft rustle of fabric, like a breath on bare skin. She was tall. Slender. With a lush, outrageously feminine silhouette — every curve drawn with almost cruel precision. Her body seemed sculpted for a single purpose: temptation.

Her dress, a violet with amethyst highlights, looked poured over her. A second skin. Fluid. Alive. The neckline plunged shamelessly, revealing bare shoulders, hips carved like a promise one regrets before it’s even received.

Her face was painted with a spectral white, almost unreal, crossed by deep violet lipstick, applied with surgical precision.

She slowly waved a black fan before her face. A lazy, almost indifferent gesture, but laden with an intention one couldn’t quite name.

Her black eyes gleamed with a sulfurous glow. In their shine was something obscene — a soft mockery, but ready to cut.

And when she spoke, it was with studied slowness. A voice that did not invite. That pulled.

— I am Nymphael. Queen of Slumbering Vices. She who kisses... then consumes.

A breath, imperceptible, crossed the room.

And even the silence seemed to shiver.

The next did not move. She didn’t need to.

She was already upright, frozen in a monastic posture, as if she had always been there, and time had simply forgotten to erase her.

Her frail body disappeared under a severe cloak, woven from ancient, rough, silent fibers. Nothing caught the eye — and yet, she was impossible to ignore.

Her long white hair was braided with almost sacred rigor, in a forgotten style lost for millennia. Each strand seemed to carry a rite, a vow, a trace of something older than the world.

Her skin, like parchment, was covered in fine, delicate wrinkles, like the veins of a grimoire no one dares open. But that wasn’t what marked her.

No. It was her eyes. Black. Lifeless.

And yet burning with a memory that forgets nothing. A memory that devours.

When she spoke, her voice flowed into the air like a command from elsewhere.

— I am Naraphin. She Who Remembers. Keeper of the Oaths.

A shiver ran down my spine.

Not of fear, but of recognition, for a reason I myself did not know.

To her right, a man slowly laid a gloved hand on the hilt of an invisible sword.

The gesture did not seek to impress. It came from a reflex. Ancient. Unaltered.

He was aged, yes — his features marked, weathered by centuries of war — but he stood. Massive. Straight. As if sculpted from the marble of a battlefield abandoned for centuries.

His matte black armor was adorned with stylized blades that seemed ready to break free. Purple glints shimmered on the joints, discreet, almost organic.

A heavy cape weighed on his shoulders like a burden he refused to set down.

And in his gaze... there was that calm.

That hard silence.

The kind found only in the eyes of commanders of old — those who need not shout to be followed.

— I am Fillin. Strategist of the Red Siege. Servant of the Silent Wars.

His voice cracked. Dry. Deep. Sharp.

Not to seduce. Not to convince.

Just... to state. And it was enough.

On the opposite side of the table, I watched them take turns.

One by one.

Like a procession of ancient gods.

A woman rose next.

Not a rustle. Not a word.

She wore a black dress. Simple. Without a single ornament. No decoration. No artifice.

No jewelry. No makeup.

But her posture, her slow gait, and the absolute calm of each gesture were enough. She needed nothing more. She commanded. Naturally. Like a queen without a crown, whose authority never needed proclamation.

Her beauty was strange.

Raw purity. Unsettling. Neither adorned nor submissive. She did not seek to please. She existed. And that was enough.

Her black hair was cut short, neat, practical.

Her skin, cold white, seemed made of alabaster, but without fragility.

And her black eyes... calm. But unfathomable.

When she spoke, her voice didn’t rise. It descended.

— I am Ornée. Born without a throne, but worshiped by those who do not know me.

She did not smile. She didn’t need to.

The last to speak... had nothing of a lord.

He was slumped against the back of his chair, body relaxed to the point of abandonment. His arms hung on either side, limp. His half-closed eye glinted with a vague light, lost somewhere between here and a beyond he seemed unwilling to leave.

His outfit was disheveled.

A shirt unbuttoned. Wrinkled.

Gloves ill-fitted.

Locks of tousled hair, as if sleep had styled them in his place.

And yet... he was there.

Whole.

His presence, despite everything, filled the space. In an almost absurd way. As if that laxity, that detachment, became in him a power. An authority.

It was as if sleep belonged to him. Like an ancient kingdom. Tired. But inviolable.

— Yaris, he muttered, without even lifting his head. Lord of the Devouring Dreams.

A sigh followed. Light. A breath of exhaustion or indifference.

Then nothing.

Silence returned. And, for a moment, I thought I saw Naraphin stifle a grimace.

And finally... her. Cassandre.

She had not stood. She didn’t need to.

Her once-blond hair now fell in darkened waves over her shoulders. Duller. Heavier. As if weighed down by something only time could name.

Her face was paler than before.

Her features... more hollow, perhaps. But beautiful. Still.

And her eyes... Black. Deep. Broken.

They no longer truly looked at the world. They sank elsewhere — somewhere inward. Into a silent void. A void I knew too well.

She had changed. But she was still her.

When she spoke, her voice rose like mist. Soft. Veiled. As if the breath came from far away. Or no longer remembered the path.

— I am Cassandre.

And that was all. But it was too much.

I felt an invisible blade slowly slide into my chest. A raw pain, without scream, without blood, but so precise it nearly took my breath away.

I stood. Slowly.

My heart beat hard enough to break my ribs. It screamed her name. It wanted to run, fall to my knees, take her in my arms, tell her I was here, that I had come back, that nothing else mattered.

But I muzzled it.

I knew. This was not the time. Not here. Not before them.

So I spoke. Calm. Controlled. Each word torn out, polished, reforged before existing.

— I am Lukaris. Grand Varkh. I am honored to be in your presence.

A silence followed. Thick. Absolute.

And in that silence... something shifted.

I understood.

The game had just begun.

As I sat back down, my body still tense from having had to remain upright, I tried — in vain — to banish Cassandre from my thoughts.

She was there. So close.

And yet... so far.