Eva stood in the silence.
Lucien was gone.
But she remained.
The dagger had fallen from her grasp, slick with his blood. She should have felt grief—raw, unbearable grief. But instead…
She felt nothing.
No—not nothing.
Something worse.
Her veins pulsed with an unfamiliar heat, like fire curling under her skin. The world around her had dulled, sounds stretching and warping, her senses bending in ways they never had before.
She stumbled forward, bracing herself against the wall—but when she looked at her reflection in the shattered window, she froze.
The woman staring back at her wasn't her.
Her eyes, once wide with sorrow, had gone dark. Void-like. Bottomless.
Her fingers had lengthened—elegant, sharp, inhuman.
Her skin… flickered.
Eva lifted a trembling hand to her chest, where her heart should have been racing.
But it was steady. Too steady.
And then she understood.
The cycle had not ended.
It had simply… changed.
---
The Final, Unforgivable Truth
Lucien had tricked her.
Not out of malice. Not out of cruelty.
But out of love.
He had known the curse could not be broken. Only transferred.
So he had done the one thing she never could.
He had let her kill him—so that she would take his place.
And now, she was the one who would suffer.
She was the one who would hunt.
She was the one who would find him—wherever he was, whatever he had become.
And she would make him remember.
Just like he had always done for her.
---
Eva exhaled, her breath curling like mist in the cold night air.
She took one step forward.
Then another.
And in the distance, beneath the darkened sky, she felt it—a presence.
A soul she had known across lifetimes.
Lucien.
Somewhere, in some new form, he was waiting for her.
He just didn't know it yet.
But soon…
He would.
And this time—this time, she would make sure he never escaped her again.
---
The End.
Or rather…
The beginning of her hunt.