Book 2 : Obscure Essence

I stood motionless at the top of the rampart, where the fortress stone merged with the millennial ice of the glacier. Before me, the horizon was nothing but an infinite sheet of white—a frozen desert that should have brought me peace.

I still remembered the first time I had ever seen snow, during our crossing of the forgotten mountain passes. I had frozen in place, my breath stolen by that stardust falling from the sky. Its purity had dazzled me, its fragility had moved me; every single snowflake seemed to be a mirror of my own existence—a delicate, ephemeral thing destined to melt at the slightest, overly human touch. In that immaculate white world, I had recognized myself. I, too, was a blank page upon which the world was only just beginning to write, a creature of ice and silence, forged in the chill of a laboratory.

Since our arrival two months ago, I had grown fond of climbing up to this tower and losing myself in the contemplation of this muted world. Koldur was built against towering walls of ice, frozen in time, unbreakable. Behind it stretched an endless ice floe. In front of it lay a vast, snowy wasteland that would expose the slightest trespasser. Ash hadn’t been wrong when he said there was no safer place on earth.

Down below, the city sprawled like a scar of wood and metal across the skin of snow. Clusters of sturdy chalets and industrial shipping containers surrounded the citadel, linked by iron walkways that hummed under the assault of the blizzard. From my vantage point, I watched the inhabitants bustling about like insects in a muffled struggle against the freeze.

It was a fascinating and brutal spectacle. Here, no one lived for pleasure; they lived by contract. I watched wind-tanned humans unloading crates of provisions while sleeker, more fluid shadows glided beside them. Vampires. They were returning from the ice floe, hauling the carcasses of seals or polar bears across their shoulders, the frozen blood no longer even staining their cloaks.

There was something in that perpetual movement that struck a strange chord deep within me. A symbiosis. The humans maintained the machines, the warmth, and the light; the vampires offered their strength and their night vision to feed the city. It was the very foundation of what I had begun to imagine during our journey: an equal coexistence, dictated not by submission, but by necessity.

Yet, the atmosphere drifting up to me was no utopia. It was harsh, distant, saturated with a deep-seated distrust that not even the freezing temperatures could numb. People didn’t love one another in Koldur; they tolerated one another so they wouldn’t die alone.

The wind whipped through my hair and I shivered, pulling the thick fur cloak I now wore tighter around myself. Upon our arrival, I had been given warm clothes. My trousers were tailored from heavy fabric, accented by a fur belt and tall, fleece-lined boots. Thankfully, the bitter cold did not seep within the city walls.

Inside the Citadel, the heat was almost indecent, heavy with the scents of sandalwood and beeswax. The corridors were draped in velvet, the walls lined with dark wood paneling. The atmosphere inside was soft, warm, and comfortable—a far cry from the glacial harshness outside.

Despite that comforting luxury, an underlying unease twisted my stomach. In those corridors, I was nothing more than a ghost. The Citadel’s inhabitants passed me without a word, their cold stares weighing on me like a sentence. They saw me as an outsider, an idle ward who had not yet earned her keep.

At first, during those three weeks of traveling through the wilderness, this new arrangement had seemed like a blessing. Between makeshift camps and attacks by prowlers, Ash’s blood had been my armor. I remembered our nightly halts, the heat of his body pressed against mine to ward off the frost, and that strange intimacy that had woven itself together in the urgency of our flight. It wasn’t just gratitude; it was an electric connection, a fusion I couldn’t explain, binding me to him more tightly than any sworn oath.

But in Koldur, that gratitude had curdled into a quiet rebellion. Little by little, as the days bled together, I finally understood. My body was craving it. A burning thirst, like fuel for my very life force.

I wanted his blood.

I hated that thirst. Without my dose, my own blood would revert to that unbearable beacon—an open invitation to slaughter for every predator in the North. It felt like being stripped of myself. My body demanded Ash like a drug, and that dependency robbed me of whatever dignity I thought I had won when I escaped the laboratory.

Something inside me screamed that this wasn’t how things were supposed to be. I couldn’t remain a hothouse flower, kept alive by the whim of a master, even if that master was Ash. Impatience ate away at me like acid. I felt as though my entire life had been a succession of cages: first the sterile walls of my childhood lab, then Ash’s estate, and now this gilded citadel which, beneath its guise of a sanctuary, was just another prison.

I dreamed of freedom—of wandering through this world I was only just beginning to discover, of feeling the wind on my face without needing permission to step outside. But freedom wasn’t something you waited for; it was something you forged. And sitting here, smoothing my furs in front of a fireplace, wasn’t going to help me break my biological chains.

My thoughts drifted to Hakon. The lord of this domain was a glacial enigma, a block of marble sculpted by Ash himself centuries ago. I couldn’t get a read on him. Ash kept telling me that things were progressing as they should. Yet his two-month silence in the face of my pleas for research, for action, was a brick wall I crashed into every single day. Every passing day only drew me closer to Ash, trapping me in a storm that was becoming too difficult to navigate.

My gaze drifted back down to the glass floor, where the amber glow of the chandeliers faded into the bluish depths below. Beneath us, Koldur hid its greatest secret. Massive ice galleries—true catacombs of frost that trapped the remains of the old world within them. They weren’t just ruins; they were a technological graveyard where entire sections of human laboratories, computer servers, and complex machinery sat untouched, preserved in the freeze. To anyone else, it was a pile of useless scrap metal. To Kaele and me, it was the Holy Grail.

Down there, among the remnants of abandoned human ingenuity, Kaele could finally work. If he managed to reboot some of those machines, to harness the computing power of the old world to decode my blood, I might finally find a way out. A way to be less... addicted to Ash. Less dependent on his presence just to keep from catching fire.

“What are you thinking about?”

Roxanne’s crystalline voice made me jump. I looked up, my heart beating a little too fast, as if she could read the rebellious scientific thoughts written across my face. I swallowed hard, trying to regain my composure. I wasn’t the only one who had changed during our three-week journey. The fragile young vampire I had met had vanished, replaced by a sharper, more grounded version of herself. With every passing day, Roxanne displayed a fierce determination. She fought against her new vampire senses with an inspiring discipline, entirely resolved not to yield to her instincts or become a soulless predator.

Sandro had a lot to do with that. His patience and gentleness were enough to soothe Roxanne’s frightened heart. Over the course of the journey, we had gotten to know each other well. Her devotion to her brother was deeply touching. And I sensed she saw me as a kind of hope—one I didn’t quite understand. I just wanted to live freely. And stay by Ash’s side. In his warmth.

“About the future,” I finally answered, my voice a little rougher than I would have liked.

She stepped closer, her footsteps making no sound on the blanket of snow. She, too, looked down at the glass floor, where an immaculate eternity stretched out below us.

“The future is a vague concept when you’re frozen in ice,” she murmured. “Sometimes, I feel like mine stopped the moment I was bitten.”

I turned my head toward her. She had never really spoken about the circumstances of her turning. Roxanne was young, possessing the cold, flawless beauty of her kind. Smooth, pale features and deep, blood-red eyes. Time had stopped on the curve of her silhouette. She was quiet, reserved.

“Vampirism isn’t the end of the road,” I whispered softly. “You will find your part to play in this world.”

Roxanne let out a joyless laugh—a crystalline sound that evaporated instantly into the freezing air.

“My part?” she repeated, turning her ruby eyes to me. “Right now, my part consists of not draining the first human who bumps into me a little too hard.”

She took another step toward the edge of the rampart, where the wind was whipping up swirls of fine powder.

“You have a mission, Imunë. You are the key to a better world, I’m sure of it. But me... I’m just a mistake trying not to stain the carpets.”

My heart ached for her. Roxanne saw herself as an anomaly, whereas to me, she was living proof that a vampire still possessed a soul. But I understood her. I felt the exact same way.

“We didn’t survive a journey like ours just to end up as decorative knick-knacks in an ice citadel,” I said firmly. “You have a willpower that many born into this world lack. As for a better world... I’ve only really known this world for a short time. I wouldn’t know how to make it better.”

Silence settled over us, broken only by the howling of the blizzard. Roxanne offered a sad smile—an almost human expression that clashed with the pallor of her features.

“Well, I know one thing,” I smiled softly, reaching out to take her hand. “If I am to make the world better, it will be with and because of you.”

Roxanne didn’t pull her hand away. Instead, her icy fingers closed around mine with surprising strength—a mutual anchor in the middle of this white desert. She seemed to weigh my words, letting them sink into her immortal mind.

“If you decide to move forward, we will follow you. Kaele and I, at least. You have that power, Imunë. That innocence that can unite the world. But you know as well as I do that Hakon and Ash don’t see things that way.”

She turned back toward the glass floor, where the darkness of the depths seemed to call out to us.

“And Ash?” I whispered, suddenly dreading her answer.

Roxanne fixed her gaze on me. Her red eyes stared into mine with an intensity that made me shiver. I felt as though she were reading my very soul.

“Beware of Ash, Imunë.”

I opened my mouth to protest. I could feel my blood boiling inside me, as if the mere thought of doubting him were pure heresy. A side effect of his blood running through my veins.

“I’m saying this as your friend, Imunë,” Roxanne continued. “I know what you two are up to. I know you’re drinking his blood to mask the scent of your own. You might be immune to the turning, but blood possesses powerful properties. Be careful not to lose yourself in the control he might hold over you.”

Her words dropped into the silence of the rampart like stones tossed into a bottomless well. A dizzy spell washed over me, and my face flushed a furious red. Embarrassed, I pulled my hand away. The biting cold of the wind suddenly felt more bearable than Roxanne’s truth. She was right, and that was precisely what was driving me mad. This warmth I sought in him, this feeling of safety... was it a genuine emotion, or simply the cry of my cells demanding their next fix?

“That is why I need to go down there,” I said, pointing toward the snow-covered ground. “Below, into the galleries. I hope to find a way to change... this.”

Roxanne’s lips curled into a mischievous smile.

“Then hurry up. Kaele is waiting for you by the old maintenance ducts, behind the Citadel kitchens. He managed to force a grate open. And in a few seconds, I’m going to create a little diversion for you. You have two hours. Not a minute more.”

This time, I let out a genuine laugh. A real, honest laugh—the first in a long time.

“You’re the best.”

I didn’t waste another second. I turned away from the vast white wilderness and hurried down the spiral staircase leading to the lower levels.

The journey down was a blur of dark corridors and the scent of burning wood. I avoided anyone I crossed paths with, slipping into the shadows as if I were already a creature of the night. Finally, I spotted Kaele’s nervous silhouette near a door, hidden behind barrels of brine.

“Imunë!” he whispered, his eyes widening behind his glasses. “There you are.”

“I heard you found something?”

He pointed to a small, hidden service door tucked behind the kitchen’s wood reserves. We slipped outside, hugging the massive stone wall as the snow stung our faces. Kaele led me toward an industrial ventilation grate half-buried under a snowbank, located a few dozen yards from the main perimeter. It was one of the rare spots where the human architecture of the old world still pierced through the glacier’s ice.

“These ducts were used to vent heat from the servers,” he explained, forcing the rusted latch with a crowbar. “By going through here, we bypass the official entrances and get straight into the ice tunnels.”

He pulled the grate open with a metallic screech that the blizzard instantly swallowed. A different kind of air drifted out—a freezing, yet strangely still draft, heavy with the scent of oxidized metal and centuries-old electrical dust.

“We’re entering the dead zone,” he warned me, his gaze shining with a mix of excitement and fear. “If we get caught down there, Hakon won’t be pleased. And I’m not sure Ash will be too happy about it either.”

“I’ll handle Ash. This is too important.”

I sat on the ledge, my boots dangling over the technological abyss of Koldur. One last time, I felt the pull of Ash’s blood in my veins—an urge pushing me to turn back, to run to his chambers and lose myself in his warmth. Whispering to me that he would be furious. That I shouldn’t disappoint him.

I silenced that voice.

And I let myself slide into the dark.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCENTS

OLFACTORY FILE N°35: THE SNOW

Technical Designation: Cryo-Chrysalis | Category: Atmospheric / Boreal

“Snow is the shroud of the world. It is a substance that does not merely cover the earth; it devours its sounds and scents, leaving nothing behind but a glittering void.”

SENSORY PROFILE

TOP NOTE (The Crystalline): A sharp hit of ozone and cold metal. An electric bite that prickles the nostrils, signaling an approaching storm. It is the smell of the sky freezing over.

HEART NOTE (The Sterility): A scent of white paper and water dust. It is a “flat” smell, devoid of organic life, evoking the total absence of decay and the deep slumber of minerals.

BASE NOTE (The Dull Dampness): A lingering trace of wet earth and frozen stone. The scent of a natural vault that only reveals itself when the snowflake dies and turns back into liquid against a warm surface.

TACTICAL ANALYSIS

Snow radically alters hunting conditions, acting as a ruthless filter:

The Track Eraser: It covers trails faster than a man can run. It flattens surface odors, forcing the predator to search deeper beneath the white crust for the salt of sweat or the iron of blood.

The Olfactory Trap: Fresh snow traps the scent of fear. Prey plowing through a snowdrift releases plumes of body heat that I can track from leagues away, like beacons of steam in a frozen desert.

✍️ TRACKING NOTE

“To a human, snow smells of purity. To me, it smells of starvation. It is the perfume of absolute silence—the kind that precedes agony. In the Koldur blizzard, snow is a white wall trying to smother my instincts. It cools the blood of my prey, making their trails fainter, more elusive. But it also holds a betrayal: it makes the scent of Imunë’s blood shine even brighter. Against the immaculate white, her perfume does not blend in; it screams. Tracking in the snow means learning to read a book where every page closes behind you.”