The cathedral remained closed until sunrise.

Not because the Order cared about preserving crime scenes, but because fear spread faster in crowds.

By four in the morning, every hunter inside Saint Vitus Cathedral had repeated a different version of what happened.

Some claimed Lucien had appeared out of thin air.

Others swore his eyes glowed red the moment silver bullets touched him.

One particularly shaken recruit insisted the temperature dropped ten degrees when he entered the room.

Seraphina ignored all of them.

Rumors had a way of becoming religion if people repeated them long enough.

She preferred evidence.

Which was why she remained kneeling beside the altar long after the others started clearing bodies from the nave.

Rain still tapped softly against the shattered stained glass overhead. The storm had weakened sometime before dawn, leaving Prague wrapped in that strange gray stillness cities fell into before morning traffic began again.

In her gloved palm rested the ancient silver coin Lucien had left behind.

Or dropped intentionally.

Nothing about him felt accidental.

Seraphina turned the coin carefully beneath the light of a nearby candle. The metal was worn smooth around the edges, darkened with age, but the symbol stamped into its center remained unmistakable.

The same hooked sunburst carved into the victims.

Containment.

Not execution.

Not worship.

Containment.

Which meant somebody hadn’t been trying to summon something beneath Prague.

They’d been trying to keep it there.

A quiet set of footsteps approached from behind.

“Commander.”

Seraphina slipped the coin into her coat pocket before standing.

Gregor Hale, one of the senior hunters stationed in Prague, stopped beside her with a tired expression and a fresh bandage wrapped around his throat where Lucien had grabbed him earlier.

He looked embarrassed by it more than injured.

“You should let the medics check that again,” Seraphina said.

Gregor touched the bandage automatically. “I’m fine.”

“You’re bruising.”

“I’ve had worse.”

She believed him. Gregor had survived enough hunts to earn scars in places most men wouldn’t admit existed.

Still, his pulse was visibly uneven beneath the edge of the bandage.

Lucien had frightened him badly.

That part would linger longer than the bruises.

Gregor glanced toward the cathedral entrance where workers carried out the last covered body.

“You really think this wasn’t vampire work?”

Seraphina walked past him without answering immediately, stopping near one of the broken pews where moonlight still touched the stone floor.

“There was almost no feeding,” she said eventually. “The blood loss came from ritual cuts.”

“And the symbols?”

“I’ve seen them before.”

Gregor frowned. “Where?”

Seraphina’s jaw tightened slightly.

“Restricted archives.”

That got his attention.

The Order categorized information aggressively. Anything tied to forbidden relics, failed crusades, or Church-sanctioned disasters usually disappeared behind sealed records and Latin warnings nobody below senior rank was allowed to read.

Gregor lowered his voice instinctively.

“You think the Church is involved?”

“I think someone wants this blamed on vampires.”

“Why?”

She looked toward the ruined altar where Lucien had stood earlier.

Because wars stayed profitable when both sides remained terrified of each other.

But she didn’t say that aloud.

Not yet.

Instead, she asked:

“Did anyone identify the victims?”

Gregor nodded once. “Two local priests. One historian from Charles University. One black-market relic broker.”

That last part made her attention sharpen immediately.

“Relic broker?”

“He specialized in underground antiquities auctions.” Gregor hesitated. “Mostly Church artifacts.”

Seraphina exhaled slowly through her nose.

Of course.

Everything always circled back to relics eventually.

Before she could ask another question, a younger hunter hurried toward them from the cathedral doors.

“Commander Van Helsing?”

The moment he said her surname, something uncomfortable shifted beneath her ribs.

Not because of the hunter.

Because of Lucien.

You have her eyes.

The memory arrived too clearly.

Not flirtatious.

Not mocking.

Worse.

Familiar.

The recruit stopped in front of her, visibly nervous. “Your transport is ready. The Order wants immediate debriefing.”

“Already?”

“They sent priority authorization from Vienna.”

Of course they did.

The First Vampire appearing publicly for the first time in decades tended to attract attention.

Seraphina collected her coat from the back of a nearby pew and pulled it on carefully over her shoulder holsters.

Gregor watched her for a second.

“You ever seen him before?”

“No.”

“Then why did it look like he recognized you?”

She fastened the final button at her wrist before answering.

“I don’t know.”

The problem was—

she wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

—

Two hours later, Prague blurred past the train window in streaks of silver rain and fading neon.

Seraphina sat alone in the private compartment reserved for Order officers, one boot resting against the opposite seat while files lay scattered open beside her untouched coffee.

Outside, dawn had finally started bleeding slowly into the city skyline.

Inside the compartment, the lights remained dim.

Most people found overnight trains calming.

Seraphina never had.

Too many exits.

Too many reflections in dark glass.

She glanced absentmindedly toward her own reflection now.

Pale hair pulled loosely back.

Smudged eyeliner from lack of sleep.

A healing cut near her jawline she barely remembered getting.

And eyes her mother once described as “too soft for this family.”

Her father hated when she mentioned that memory.

The train rattled softly over old tracks.

She reached into her pocket and removed the silver coin again.

The metal felt colder than it should have.

Ancient.

Heavy.

The hooked symbol caught faint light from the compartment lamp overhead.

Seraphina stared at it for several seconds before finally pulling her laptop closer.

Order database access required triple authentication off-site. Fingerprint. Blood confirmation. Verbal authorization.

Paranoid.

Usually justified.

The archive finally opened with a soft chime.

She typed the symbol into the restricted search field.

No results.

Not surprising.

She tried again using older classification terms.

Containment seals.

Forbidden rites.

Pre-Cathedral relic doctrine.

Still nothing.

Then, almost as an afterthought, she entered one final phrase:

Lucien Valerius.

The screen froze briefly.

Access denied.

Her expression darkened immediately.

That alone told her enough.

Because the Order only buried records for two reasons:

Failure.

Or fear.

The train lights flickered once overhead.

Seraphina’s attention snapped upward instinctively.

The compartment had gone quieter somehow.

Not silent.

Just… wrong.

Like the air pressure had shifted.

Slowly, she turned toward the darkened window beside her seat.

At first she saw only her own reflection.

Then another face appeared standing behind it.

Not inside the reflection.

Behind her.

Her hand moved for the silver knife beneath her coat almost instantly.

“Relax,” Lucien’s voice said quietly from the doorway. “If I intended to kill you, the conversation would already be over.”

Seraphina rose from her seat in one smooth motion, blade already drawn.

The train compartment suddenly felt much smaller.

Lucien stood near the closed door with rain still clinging faintly to the shoulders of his black coat.

No visible weapons.

No visible concern either.

His gaze moved briefly toward the open Order files scattered beside her laptop.

“Careless,” he murmured.

“You broke into a secured Order train.”

“I walked onto it.”

“That’s not better.”

A faint trace of amusement touched his expression.

There it was again.

That strange calmness.

Like violence existed somewhere beneath his skin but never needed to rush.

Seraphina kept the knife steady between them.

“You know my surname.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Lucien studied her quietly for a moment.

Not her weapon.

Her face.

As though searching through memory instead of looking at her directly.

The train lights flickered once more overhead.

When he finally spoke, his voice had softened almost imperceptibly.

“You look like her.”

Seraphina’s grip tightened.

“Who?”

But Lucien only glanced toward the silver coin still resting beside her laptop.

And smiled very slightly.

Not happy.

Something closer to regret.

Then the compartment lights died completely.

Darkness swallowed the train car.

A startled shout sounded somewhere farther down the corridor.

By the time emergency lighting flickered dimly back to life several seconds later—

Lucien was gone.

Only the compartment door remained swaying faintly open against the silence.