Letter 13 (Isadora to Callum)
One week later
My Dear Callum,
If you care for me the way you intimate, please, tell me everything. Don’t try to protect me from the truth. We both know it will find me one way or another
With affection,
Isadora
Who wishes she could talk to you directly.
Letter 14 (Callum to Isadora)
My darling Isadora,
You have been part of this from the very beginning. Nothing can protect either of us from what the past holds. I tried to keep you from the truth, but I can no longer hold it back. I would do anything to shield you — and that is precisely why I have to tell you now.
Where do I begin?
What I know comes from vampire mythology passed between immortals across centuries. You will not find any of this in a library. It exists only in whispered inheritance, one undying voice to the next.
Since before written history, a dark force has ravaged our world. It is not a creature in any shape you could recognize — no body, no face, no form. It is a specter, a consuming void that feeds on souls, devouring everything good in a person until nothing remains. When it has taken its fill, it retreats into dormancy for fifty years. But it always returns. And when it does, it brings ruin to the living and the dead alike.
The last time it walked freely was three hundred years ago. Two warriors — one mortal, one vampire — drew it out by offering themselves as bait. They lured it into a stone cavern beneath what is now the Royal Library and sealed it there with their lives. They sacrificed everything so the rest of us could have a safer world.
The Accord Between the Living and the Dead was born from that sacrifice. Mortals were given dominion over the daylight hours; the undead, the night. Together, through constant vigilance across both halves of every day, our realm would remain guarded. The beast would stay buried. That was the hope. That was the agreement.
It held — until your mother.
She heard the myth by accident; through a vampire she trusted. She started asking questions. And that is the danger no one warns you about: the beast does not need a key or an invitation. It needs interest. It senses the shift. When people begin searching for it — speaking its story aloud, pulling at threads better left alone — something stirs in the darkness below, as though the attention itself is a summons. The authorities knew this. They became frightened. And they silenced your mother.
I am sorry.
But there is more, and you need to hear all of it.
The beast does not wake on its own. It is called. The world carries its own evil — ordinary evil, human evil — and when civilization holds together, that darkness stays diffuse, scattered, too weak to reach the cavern beneath the library. But when things fracture — when cruelty spreads unchecked, when enough minds turn toward destruction — those scattered voices begin to harmonize. The call grows coherent. Grows louder.
The tide is rising. And the beast is growing stronger. I suspect someone is helping this process.
You asked me for the truth, and I have given it to you, as I know it.
With great affection,
Callum
Past Letters
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1&2, 3&4, 5&6, 7&8, 9&10, 11&12
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Have a great week, my friends,
Jo-Ann
Not sure if she will walk away