A Sanguinary Rose (Complete)

Burnt hair and scorched flesh became my most hated smells.

When I came to, a biting pain made me whimper. Minor burn wounds covered my arms and legs. My black-sooted hoodie had torn and had scorched parts in crisps. Clumps of red hair had singed off my head. I rolled face down as I threw up the acrid bile creeping up my throat. Particles of coal hung around my nostrils, making me cough my lungs out as the vomit pooled before me.

Anything and everything that had been their camp, the center of operations, had been reduced to smoldering rubble and slag.

There was no sign of the Archdemon anywhere to be seen except for his path of destruction. There was nothing here, not a hint of my friends, of any living soul in this barren dimension where the gray seemed to absorb all life.

Not a sound to hear.

I was alone.

Trapped.

The realization sped up my heartbeat. I saw six humanoid figures standing still in the distance, waiting for me, until… it couldn’t be them. The numbers didn’t add up. Five there had to be. Five. Not six.

“Anja… Anja.” The memory struck me like a bullet to the heart. I fell to my knees and pounded the hazy ground, letting out a scream that ripped out from my core, out my scraping throat, out my parched and bloodied mouth, silenced by the eternity of Limbo. Grief choked me in its cruel fist. My chest spasmed in uncontrollable outbursts. The silence was eternal, overpowering, maddening…

There was a sudden gasp of air. I whipped to the source, alert on my feet. A bump on the ground stirred, half-concealed in gray wisps of drifting mist, struggling for breath. It was Mandala, sprawled on his back, his whole body covered in serious burn wounds. Skin had begun to slough off his face and to show bone.

“Odile?” he said as I shambled into his field of view. The disappointment hurt him physically, prompting a whine.

“Why? Why did you shield me?”

Tears dripped down his ruined face. “I was aiming at you… Not her.”

I bit my lips, fighting to hold back the outflow. “Why did you shield me?”

“Y-you’re a good girl… You have the fire, the will, to see it done…” He wheezed. “My inside pocket.”

I hesitated, clenching my fists until it hurt my palms. I knelt at his side and opened the flap of the smoking leather and reached inside his breast pocket. It was a gazer, relatively unharmed. I held it by its straps.

The All-Seeing.

Mandala stared at me with a longing look. “For your eyes only. Never forget.”

My jaw hung open. The device’s eyestalks peered back at me.

The warlock groaned. “My other pocket.”

This time I was prompt to obey. I felt the familiar leather-bound handle as I gripped it. The serrated, demonic blade glinted in my hands.

There was a rush of wind behind me. I turned on my heels to the roaring wormhole the warlock opened.

Mandala nodded. “End it.”

The grief racked at my lungs. “It’s not enough. Tell me. Why did you save me?”

“Hurry… before it closes. Put those on… before you go.”

“Answer me!”

“Remember what I told you before?” He let out a tiny, pained chuckle. “D-despite all your efforts… in the end you’ll know I still won…”

I sank the knife into his heart, hands shaking from the sorrow. Mandala drew in one last breath of air before his eyes glazed over and his head lolled to the side.

My legs shook violently when I rose before the wormhole. With trembling, bloodied, sooty fingers, I strapped on Horus’ Sight to my face and fell forward into the abyss.

***

The stars shone and twinkled. I asked, and they answered. I asked, and they showed.

I readjusted my vision for clearer answers.

How would I resurrect a person I loved? The Starlit Almanac answered—Necromancy, ghoul rituals, reanimation. Only gods and phoenixes truly return to life.

How can I communicate with a dead person? Galaxies turned, shifted, exploded in clouds of glittering dust. And I knew the answers, the possibilities, despite being beyond my reach or ability.

Is Anja Lynn happy now wherever she is? Yes.

I took deep breaths to keep from breaking down. It wasn’t the time for that.

What is the cure to vampirism? How do I become human again? Constellations spun, slinging stars around like unstable electrons. And I knew how to get cured. That won’t do.

Show me the extent of powers and abilities I may have as a vampire. Stardust showered me in its cosmic glitter. Hundreds of thousands of images flitted and flickered before my sight, until it was too much to stand. The overload of knowledge would’ve been too much had I not narrowed down the eyestalks.

A rekindled kind of vigor and power flowed through my veins. It set a fire in my heart. The surge of strength was there, rejuvenating every fiber in me, filling me with new life.

I was strong.

I was fast.

I could do so much more… except…

How do I return home? Travel through dimension lies within your potential.

Show me.

The wormhole tore open before me, the one I opened, its gales the only sound in this vast abode.

No. Hold on.

There was one last thing that had been bothering me since before I entered the Starlit Almanac. Even before I became a creature of the night. Since my first night spent in Farpoint, our dear, odd, little town, as I watched the stars with Mom and Marcus, lying down on our back lawn.

Mandala had asked me, Do you know why we only see one side of it? One side of the moon.

Why?

The Starlit Almanac answered promptly.

Stars swirled around me and zipped down and out of my sight and beyond the seen universe in elongating stripes until they’d vanished. I stood alone in pitch darkness, and then there was the moon, a colossal thing, silver and ominous, floating before me.

It rotated.

It turned.

Because It hates being seen.