Gregoria – Mount Falle, Teranua– March 29
The wind whispered lies.
They slid between broken pillars and soot-stained prayer stones, curling through the ruins of the old shrine like the ghost of a hymn long forgotten. Gregoria sat wrapped in a tattered cloak near the edge of the archway, her knees pulled to her chest, her breath misting against the cold.
Dawn threatened the sky beyond the spires. And below, the lights of Dempsey pulsed in gold and copper — the city's arteries alive with smoke and steam.
She hated how beautiful it looked from up here.
A lie always is.
Gregoria's stomach clenched again. She'd eaten a shriveled root yesterday — or the day before? Time was loose here. Soft and dragging. The shrine had no clocks. No walls left to hang one. Just her, the wind, and whatever echoes the old god left behind.
She shifted on the stone floor, bones protesting. The shrine of Lalume had once been grand, she'd been told — all white marble and black bell chimes. Now, only fragments remained: hollow columns, scorched murals, and a half-shattered altar where moss grew like mold in old wounds.
She hadn't come here for religion. She came for distance.
And silence.
Both had failed her.
A hollow wind blew through the southern arch, carrying with it a memory she didn't want.
Her mother's scream.
It had been midday. Spring, she thought — though the seasons had meant less and less in Teranua since the old kings fell. They'd been in the city when it happened. The market square. Crowded, noisy. Her mother had just finished haggling for dried berries. She smiled — the real kind, the one that made her eyes squint.
Then came the roar. The blur of motion. The hiss of fangs.
Gregoria hadn't seen it all. Just flashes: a black coat, pale arms, something — someone — striking faster than sound. Her mother was on the ground. Then torn. Then still.
She'd screamed. Fought. Bit a man's arm trying to get back to her mother's side.
The guards had pulled her off. The market had cleared. They told her the killer was a rogue, a rogue strigoi, that it wasn't sanctioned. That he'd been caught. Executed.
She never saw the body. Never got a name. Only silence.
That's when her father stopped speaking to her.
Two days later, after the fall of Warden's Maw, he was seen meeting with one of them. A strigoi. Alone. In public.
He hadn't looked ashamed.
She hadn't spoken to him since.
Gregoria's fingers curled into fists in the folds of her cloak. That night never left her. The image of her mother — throat open, eyes wide — burned itself into every moment after. Every heartbeat since had thudded like a drum of vengeance.
She rose slowly, unsteady on numb legs, and stepped toward the broken ledge near the edge of the shrine.
The city spread out beneath her, steam hissing from its metal veins.
Dempsey.
The heart of Teranua's rebirth. Or so they said.
A gilded lie wrapped in fog and coal smoke. And down there — somewhere in one of those towers — her father wore fine coats and gave interviews beside the man who now wore the crown.
Carrington's half-brother.
William Wilson.
Her father.
Once the only man who ever hummed lullabies when the trains passed overhead. Once the man who carved animal shapes into her candleholders, just to make her smile.
Now a stranger. Or worse.
Now the face of betrayal.
Gregoria pulled her satchel close. Her fingers fumbled with the latch, half from cold, half from anger. Inside, under two pieces of hard bread crust and a folded scarf, was the holo-scroll. She flicked it on.
Static. Buzz. Flicker.
Then the screen stabilized.
A pale blue frame, the seal of the new regime shimmering in the corner. The headline pulsed in bold red letters:
> "KING CARRINGTON DEAD – OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION 3 DAYS AFTER INCIDENT."
William Wilson assumes provisional authority in the wake of royal succession collapse. Public mourning period enacted.
Gregoria didn't cry. Not for Carrington. Not for the city.
But the words William Wilson assumes made her jaw tighten.
She shut the scroll. The last time she'd seen him was during the Requiem broadcasts. He hadn't even blinked. Just read his statement with a calm like iron, flanked by masked guards and Sang-designed banners fluttering behind him.
She remembered whispering at the screen: Why?
No answer ever came.
Gregoria exhaled slowly and turned from the ledge. Her breath caught in the cold, curling around her like smoke. Her back ached. Her ribs pressed against the skin of her stomach.
She couldn't stay up here. Not forever.
Not anymore.
The city was poison, but so was starvation.
Her hand grazed one of the shrine's fractured support beams — the carvings faded, but still visible. She traced them once, absentmindedly. A sun, then a hand reaching from it. The old religion. They said Lalume wept for the world before it was born. That we were all sketches in her journal — fragments of a dream.
Gregoria scoffed. Then she dreamed wrong.
The shrine bell tolled suddenly — low and distant. A gust of wind pushed through the stone arches and tugged at her cloak. She stepped back into the shadows as leaves scattered at her feet.
The bell hadn't worked in years.
She knew that.
Her eyes scanned the space, wary. No birds. No rodents. No wires.
Only silence.
And then — movement.
A flicker. A figure — far below, barely visible between the edges of the cracked walls. Black cloak. Still. Facing the shrine.
Her breath froze in her throat.
She pressed closer to the edge, heart pounding. Whoever it was didn't move. Just stood there. Watching. The red light of dawn caught their outline — too familiar in height. In posture. The way he used to stand when watching trains go by.
Her lips parted. A name formed, unspoken.
Then the figure vanished.
Gone like mist.
Gregoria staggered back, nearly tripping over a loose stone. She waited. Listened.
Nothing.
The wind howled again, louder this time. The sun was rising.
She shook herself.
No time for ghosts.
Not today.
Gregoria pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulders, lifted her satchel, and stepped past the altar. She knelt briefly — not in prayer, but in something like it. A farewell to the only shelter she had left.
Then she turned and began her descent.
Down the craggy side of Mount Falle. Toward the city that betrayed her. Toward her father who had abandoned her.
And toward whatever fate the streets of Dempsey still held.
She did not see the second figure.
Not cloaked. Not breathing. Not bound by sun.
He stood on the opposite ridge — where the shrine's shadow touched the far stone.
Watching her.
Still. Silent.
And smiling.