Vampires: The Velvet Archive

The Restricted Archives of Oakhaven University are suffocatingly quiet tonight, rain lashing in cold streaks against leaded stained glass that bleeds muted blue and crimson light over towering oak bookshelves stacked high with dusted leather tomes.

The air smells of old parchment and camphor, but a faint, sharp metallic tang nags at the back of your throat—your newly awakening Courier senses hum, tuning into a steady, abnormally slow heartbeat that means someone else is hiding in the dark with you.

You’d stayed late to sort paperwork for your missing mentor, Professor Hale, who never returned from his meeting with the Sanguine Faculty, and you’d just forced his locked oak desk open.

When the drawer swings wide, an iridescent glow spills over your wrists, painting the dark red velvet drapery strung behind the desk in pale pink light: tucked between two crumbling ledgers is a single vial of pulsing synthetic blood, the faint hum of its power matching the thrum of your senses.

Before you can reach for it to stow it away, a soft, cultured voice cuts through the archive’s silence from the shadowed entry: "I see Hale left the prototype with you.Smart.

He knew they’d kill him if he kept it for himself.

" Julian steps into the glow of the desk lamp, his tailored black wool coat brushing the stone floor, his sharp aristocratic features gaunter than the last time you saw him, a faint feverish flush high on his pale skin as his gaze locks hard on the glowing vial.