“You see something I don’t, kid?” Gallo’s voice, rough with suspicion, cut through the buzzing aftermath of the vision. Renzo blinked, the phantom stench of decay still clinging to the inside of his nose. He forced his gaze away from the victim’s chilling vacancy, turning to the detective. The fluorescent lights of the prep room hummed, casting harsh shadows that did little to soften the lines of Gallo’s world-weary face. Chiara stood beside him, her camera hanging forgotten, a tense stillness about her that belied her usual composure. “See what, Detective?” Renzo asked, his voice a little too bright, a little too shaky. He fumbled for the damp cloth he’d dropped, wiping at his forehead. The sweat was cold now, a clammy film. “Just… the poor woman. It’s always so sudden, isn’t it? One minute, life, the next… nothing.” He tried for a sympathetic shrug, aiming for his usual affable, if slightly naive, persona. Inside, a storm raged. The vision had been brief, brutal, a raw tearing sound that echoed in his bones. *Erasure.* Not just death, but the violent unmaking of a soul. Gallo’s eyes remained fixed on him, sharp and assessing. “You went pale. White as a sheet, Valeriani. And you nearly toppled over.” “Sensitive stomach,” Renzo offered, attempting a weak grin. “Always been that way. The… the smell. It gets to you, doesn’t it, Chiara?” He glanced at his friend, hoping for an assist. She usually knew how to run interference for his more eccentric moments. Chiara, however, offered no easy out. Her dark eyes, usually so guarded, held a flicker of something akin to worry, but also a nascent curiosity. “He’s right, Renzo. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.” “More like a bad lasagna,” Renzo mumbled, pushing past them with a practiced ease, heading for the sink. He turned the tap on full, splashing cold water on his face, letting the mundane act ground him. He could feel Gallo’s gaze still on his back, a prickling sensation. The detective wasn’t buying it. Not entirely. But Renzo had years of practice perfecting the art of innocent obliviousness. Zenthos, the supreme formation master, had been a master of misdirection, but Renzo Valeriani was an artist of distraction. “We’ll send the report to the prosecutor’s office. You two… finish up here,” Gallo grumbled, finally turning away. The sound of his heavy footsteps receded into the corridor. The double doors swung shut with a soft thud, leaving Renzo and Chiara alone with the silent victim. Chiara waited until the last echo of Gallo’s presence had faded before she spoke, her voice low, almost a whisper. “What was it, Renzo?” He dried his face slowly. “What was what?” She stepped closer, her expression serious. “Don’t play coy. I’ve known you since you climbed out of that slab. You don’t get like that for a ‘bad lasagna.’ You saw something. Felt something.” She pulled out her phone, swiping through images, then held it out to him. The screen displayed a close-up photo: a crude, almost organic symbol etched into the dirt near where the victim had been found. It looked like a tangled knot of veins, or roots, circling a void. Renzo stared at the illuminated glass, his fingers tightening against his apron. The image on the screen wasn’t just a symbol; it was a schematic, a diagram of intent. His mind, without conscious effort, began to unravel its intricacies, its purpose. Old, forgotten knowledge returned in a sharp flash, startling in its clarity. “A devouring ward,” he murmured, the words foreign on his tongue, yet perfectly formed. “It… it consumes. Drains the spiritual essence, not just the life force.” He traced a finger across the image, a frown deepening on his face. “Designed to leave nothing, no trace for the spirit to cling to. Utter eradication.” Chiara pulled her phone back, scrutinizing him with sharp curiosity. “How do you know that? It’s not in any of the textbooks, not even the old volumes from my grandfather’s shelf.” Renzo shook his head, pressing his palms against his temples. “I… I don’t know. It just… came to me. Like remembering a dream I never had.” The lie felt clumsy, but true enough. He didn’t understand it himself, this sudden, instinctive understanding of something so utterly alien to this world. *Zenthos*. The name echoed, an elusive trace from his prior existence. Chiara studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. “Well,” she finally said, her voice dry, “it’s a good thing you’re working at a mortuary, then. Plenty of… spiritual essence to go around, I suppose.” The sardonic humor, however, didn’t quite mask the tremor in her voice. She seemed to be processing something profound, something that shifted the ground beneath her own stoic feet. Hours later, the mortuary had settled into its evening quiet. Autumn chill seeped through the masonry, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant woodsmoke. Renzo stood alone in the prep room, quietly tending to the deceased. The air was thick with the lingering melancholy of her abrupt end, a subtle current that Renzo had learned to draw upon, strengthening a nascent, indefinable power within him. He was humming a tuneless old Italian folk song, his movements precise and practiced, when the air shifted. Not a change in temperature, but a sudden, heavy pressure, like a storm front rolling in. Two figures materialized in the doorway, stepping out of the deeper shadows of the hall as if they had simply coalesced from the gloom. Both men were tall, with an unnatural elegance to their movements. The first had raven-black hair and a predatory gaze, framed by a permanent sneer. The second was paler, moving with a calculated, bloodless poise. They wore expensive, dark suits that seemed to drink the meager light. “Well, well,” the dark-haired man purred, his voice a low rasp. “Look what we have here. The little undertaker’s assistant. Playing with the dead.” Renzo turned slowly, a slight, bewildered smile on his face, the kind he reserved for overly aggressive door-to-door salesmen. “Can I help you gentlemen? The viewing hours are over. And I’m afraid this poor woman isn’t accepting visitors.” He gestured vaguely at the table, a glint of steel from his instruments catching the light. The paler man's lips twitched without humor. “We’re not here for the deceased, *Valeriani*. We’re here for you.” His tarnished-silver eyes flicked around the room, taking in the damp flagstones and the subtle ebb of grief energy humming against Renzo's skin. They were looking for something, testing something. “Me?” Renzo tilted his head, feigning confusion. “I’m hardly interesting. Just a simple parlor hand.” The raven-haired intruder took a step closer, sneering. “Simple, perhaps. But certain rumors reached the Matriarch. Word of a man who sees more than he should, who noticed something specific in that poor wretch’s demise. We came to confirm.” He took another step, his intent clear. He meant to intimidate, to probe. Renzo felt the ambient grief in the room respond to his subtle call, a low thrumming that grew steadily stronger. The sadness, the regret, the longing for what was lost – he pulled it in, not consuming it, but shaping it, giving it form. He had honed this quiet discipline for weeks. He let his expression remain vacant, almost childlike. “Confirm what, exactly?” Renzo asked, his voice still light, but his eyes were now fixed on a point just past Corvo’s left shoulder. His fingers traced tiny arcs against the cold rim of the prep slab. He wasn’t drawing a symbol with chalk, but weaving an invisible filigree of belief and memory, a web of sorrow. Corvo laughed, a harsh, dismissive sound. “Confirm you’re a nothing. A human who got lucky with a vision. The Matriarch merely wanted to be sure you weren’t… evolving.” He lunged, a blur of motion, intending to grab Renzo by the throat. But Corvo didn’t reach him. Instead, he slammed into an invisible barrier, stumbling back with a grunt of surprise. The air around him shimmered, dense with suffocating density. His eyes, seconds ago filled with predatory glee, glazed over. He stood frozen, his face contorted in a silent scream. His pale companion stepped back, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. “What trickery is this?” He tried to pivot, but his limbs stiffened beneath a mantle of cold dread. The ambient mourning, amplified and directed by Renzo, coalesced into a binding matrix constructed from lingering regret. Renzo stepped around the table, his movements slow and deliberate, the ditzy facade completely gone. His eyes were no longer vacant, but held a chilling, centuries-deep calmness. The first attacker stood paralyzed, caught in a loop of anguish radiating from his core. The pale one fought the trance, but old betrayals and lost hours pinned his joints, forcing him against his own memories. “Trickery?” Renzo’s tone remained low, yet it carried an authority that made both intruders tremble. He leaned in close to the dark-haired vampire, whose cheeks shone with tears wrung from bitter remorse. “Did you lose something?” Renzo asked, his words slicing through the hum of the array. “Someone? Something you can never recover?” The kneeling vampire spasmed, choking on a silent gasp. The pale one strained to break free, fangs elongating and iris flaring crimson, but the array held. The room's ambient sorrow bore down relentlessly, turning their centuries of guilt against them. The binding held firm, the silence broken only by the rhythmic drip of drainage tubes and choked breaths from both intruders. Renzo watched them, a grim satisfaction settling in him. They had underestimated him. They had underestimated the power of belief, of memory, in this forgotten world. Renzo severed the array with a sharp flick of his intent. The raven-haired man dropped forward onto his palms, gasping. His companion stumbled back into the masonry with a heavy thud, shivering in raw panic. They scrambled, pushing past each other, fleeing the room as if the very air was poison. Renzo watched them go, a faint smile playing on his lips. The city’s underworld was real. And it was terrified. He wiped his hands on a fresh towel, the scent of preservative fluids and ozone clinging to the tiles. He had barely picked up his scalpel, the hum of sorrow subsiding, when a soft latch clicked at the front entrance. The heavy brass bolt on the street door slipped free. A faint scent of night-blooming jasmine and blood drifted into the prep chamber. A shadow fell across the threshold, long and elegant. The Matriarch of the Verrani Coven stood there, framed by the faint glow of the streetlights outside. Her eyes, the shade of pale amethyst, locked onto Renzo with cool scrutiny.

Acolyte of Rust and Regret