I woke to the soft morning light slicing through the blinds, a golden warmth that felt completely wrong after the night before.

For a moment, I didn’t move. I wasn’t in the chair anymore. I was in bed. My shoes were off. The lamp still burned low on the desk. The journal lay closed beside it.

I hadn't gotten into bed.

A chill climbed my spine as I sat up slowly, scanning the room. Everything was just as I left it—except me. Except that.

Had I sleepwalked? Dreamed it?

No. I knew what I'd felt. The hand. The voice. The woods. It had happened.

I reached for the journal.

Its leather was stiff, edges crusted with dried blood. My fingers hovered over the latch for a second before flipping it open.

March 1st.
She’s asking about her mother again. I tell her the same lies I’ve always told. That she died when Lilith was a baby. That she was beautiful. That she was kind.
God forgive me.

I turned the page quickly.

March 2nd.
The howling came again last night. Not a wolf. No normal wolf sounds like that. I stood on the porch with the gun in my hand, and I swear the air tasted like ash.

March 3rd.
Valen. I never thought I’d write his name again. The blood froze in my veins the moment I saw the mark. He’s close. Watching.
I have to warn her. But how do you tell your daughter that her mother was once claimed by a monster? That she might carry part of that darkness, too?

I paused.

My throat went dry.

Claimed.

Darkness.

Me?

I turned the page. Sketches covered the next one—dark, messy sketches. A pair of eyes: deep-set, haunting. A wolf's silhouette, towering and wrong. A snarling mouth, too human, with fangs too long.

And beneath it all, one word, etched over and over again:

VALEN.

I closed the journal on instinct. My hands trembled.

Everything I thought I knew about my mother... was a lie. My father had been afraid. Of Valen. Of what he might do. Of what I might become.

And somehow, this Valen was tied to me. To my mother. To the night my father vanished.

I pushed away from the desk and stood.

The mirror caught me—hair wild from sleep, my eyes pale and strange, grey and amber mixing like storm clouds and fire. For a second, I didn’t recognize the girl staring back.

Who was she?

I flipped deeper into the journal, past the confessions, past the lies. The ink began to shift—less measured, more jagged. The lines slanted harder across the page, like each word had been scratched in a hurry.

Then I saw it.

A full-page sketch, torn at the edge like it had been redrawn again and again.

A beast—no, not a beast. A wolf.

But not like anything I’d seen before.

Huge. Hulking. Black as pitch. Its back was hunched unnaturally, legs too long, claws like spears. The fur was rendered in frantic strokes, and the eyes—solid red, without pupils, like coals glowing under ice.

Just like in the forest.

The caption beneath the sketch was scrawled, barely legible.

He shifts into this now. No man left in him when it takes over. Only hunger. Only rage. Only the beast.

If Lilith ever sees this thing—run. Run, and don’t look back.

I stared at the page, breath caught in my chest.

My father had drawn the thing I saw. He knew it. Feared it.

And somehow, that thing knew me.

I turned the page.

March 6th.
She asked again today if her mother had a favorite flower. I told her daisies. But it was always nightshade. Always poison.

March 8th.
He’s circling closer. I saw the eyes in the trees. The red. The cold. It’s him. Valen. After all these years. Why now?

March 9th.
She has to know the truth. But I’m too late. He’s already seen her.

I swallowed.

The ink bled at the edges of the paper now, as if even the pages couldn’t hold his fear.

The last entry on the page chilled me to my bones:

If I disappear, if the blood leads her into the woods—Valen is near.
Do not trust his beauty.
He was never a man. Only the mask of one.

The lights in the room flickered. A gust of wind battered the window.

I slammed the book shut.

I didn’t want to read anymore.

Yet for now, as I cradled the journal and stared into the half-light of the room, I clung to the fragile hope that it was only my heart playing dangerous games with my mind.

But deep down…
I knew better.

I didn’t sleep after that.

The journal lay shut on the desk, its presence louder than thunder, even in silence. Every time I looked away, I swore I could feel it watching me. Or maybe he was.

So I did what anyone does when they’re afraid of something they don’t understand.

I searched his name.

Valen.

At first, nothing. Just obscure references—folklore, scattered mentions in old vampire myth forums, message boards filled with blurry photos and conspiracy theorists.

But the deeper I dug, the more the picture twisted.

Some said Valen was a god of blood.
An ancient being, worshipped by old vampire houses. A bringer of order… through carnage.

Others said he was a traitor.
A vampire who had turned on his own, cursed to roam as a beast, devouring those who defied the old blood laws.

And a few—too few—claimed he protected humans once.
Long ago, before he vanished into the shadows. Before he became a whisper in the dark.

None of it made sense.

Yet in every version, one detail remained the same:
The eyes.
Red. Glowing. Burning.

I shut the laptop, pulse throbbing in my ears.

Was this real?

Was he?

Or had I stumbled into one of my father’s old nightmares?

A memory surfaced—me as a child, maybe six or seven, asking Dad why we didn’t go into the woods at night like the neighbors.

He didn’t say “because it’s dangerous.”
He didn’t say “you could get lost.”

He said, “Because things that remember your scent live out there. And if you go close enough, they’ll remember you too.”

At the time, I thought it was just a creepy bedtime warning. Now…

Now I wasn’t so sure.

I looked back down at the journal. My hand hovered over it.

And even though everything inside me screamed not to open it again, I did.

There was one last page. Folded in half. Taped shut.

My fingers trembled as I peeled it free.

Inside was a message written in thick, dark ink:

Lilith, if you're reading this—then you’ve already seen him.
Whatever he tells you, remember this: your mother chose him once.
And she paid for it with blood.

Little flame, it can hurt to be so curious," a voice from just outside my ears whispered.

I froze.

The journal slipped from my lap and hit the floor with a dull thud.

My heart pounded like it was trying to break out of my chest. Every hair on my arms stood on end. Slowly, I reached for the nearest thing I could grab—my pen—fingers trembling as I wrapped them around it like a blade.

I spun, slashing through empty air.

Nothing.
No one.

Only the hum of the house. The faint rustle of the curtains stirred by wind I couldn’t feel. My own breath, loud and ragged in my ears.

But someone had been there.

The voice was real—low, male, and impossibly close. Too close. It had felt like breath on my skin.

I took a step back. My knees bumped the chair, and I nearly stumbled. My eyes scanned the shadows, corners, windows. The door was still shut. Locked.

No footprints.

No scent.

Except—
A strange feeling in the air. Like the air had thickened. Like the room had just exhaled.

And then, on the windowpane, a faint mark… almost like the trace of fingers dragging across the glass. From the inside.

My throat tightened.

“No,” I whispered to myself, shaking my head. “I’m tired. I’m making this worse than it is.”

But I didn’t believe it.

Because when I bent down to pick up the journal, something had changed.

The page I’d left folded…
was now open.

And at the bottom of the final warning my father had written, someone had scrawled something new. The ink was dark red, not black like before.

Just three words:

“You’re next, flame.”

I stared at the words scrawled in dark red ink:

You’re next, flame.

My hands trembled. My eyes scanned the page again, half hoping the words would vanish, that I had imagined them—hallucinated them. But they were there, soaked into the fibers like dried blood.

I slammed the journal shut.

My breathing came too fast, too loud. I clutched the cover and pressed it to my chest like a shield.

I needed answers. Now.

I flipped through the pages again, this time with desperation. My father’s handwriting grew increasingly wild, frantic. Notes about vampires, old names, strange symbols. But it was the mentions of her—my mother—that made my blood run cold.

One entry stopped me cold.

“She said his name in her sleep again. Valen. Always Valen. I asked her once and she looked through me, like I wasn’t even there.”

“If I hadn’t found the mark on her throat, I would’ve thought she was dreaming.”

“But it’s not a dream. It’s him. He found her again.”

I sat back slowly, heart in my throat.

My mother—kind, quiet, always tired—was haunted. And not by memories, not just by grief.

By him.

There was a sketch on the next page. Drawn in charcoal: the same wolf I’d seen. Towering, with glowing coal-red eyes and a mouth full of jagged teeth. My father had drawn it over and over again, the eyes growing more frantic, more distorted, each time.

At the bottom, a note:

“Not a beast. A man in a beast’s skin. If she loved it, I’ll never forgive her.”

The room felt like it was spinning.

My mother… had known him.
Maybe more than known him.

And suddenly, everything felt wrong.
The lullabies she used to hum, low and strange. The times she stared out the window, unmoving. The necklace she never took off—the one my father buried with her.

I touched my chest.

It wasn’t just my father who had been hiding something.
She had secrets. Ones she never meant for me to find.

And if Valen had been hers once…

What did he want with me now?

I closed the journal, my hands aching from how tightly I’d gripped it. My mind was screaming, but the house stayed still—too still, like it was holding its breath with me.

The clock on the wall ticked softly.
Somehow, it was nearly 3:00 a.m.

I didn’t remember getting up. I didn’t remember walking to my room. But I found myself lying in bed, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling as shadows pulsed and shifted like they were alive.

Sleep didn’t come. It clung just out of reach, teasing me, pulling at the corners of my eyes only to vanish the moment I gave in.

Every creak of the house made me flinch.

I pulled the blanket tighter around me. The journal sat on my desk across the room, just within sight—and even in the dim light, I swore I could see the sketch of the wolf staring at me through the closed pages.

The words wouldn’t leave me.

She said his name in her sleep again.
Valen.
Not a beast. A man in a beast’s skin.

Who was he to her?

Who was he to me?

I rolled onto my side, burying my face into the pillow. I told myself it was just an old obsession, a figment of my father’s unraveling grief. Maybe even guilt. But a part of me—a small, growing part—whispered that this was no delusion.

Something real moved beneath the surface of my family’s past.

And now it had turned its gaze to me.

I tried to breathe evenly, like that would trick my heart into slowing down.

But every time my eyes slipped shut, I saw those glowing red eyes in the woods.
The voice like velvet smoke whispering at the edge of my ears.
The way my name had never sounded so dangerous.

Little flame…

I forced my eyes open again, heart hammering.

Maybe I’d sleep in the morning. Maybe.

But tonight…
Tonight, something old had woken up.

And I wasn’t sure it would let me rest again.

I sat up, suddenly unable to take the stillness. My skin crawled with the sense of being watched, though I knew I was alone. I had locked every door. Closed every window.

Hadn’t I?

I pushed the blanket off and crept toward the window, pulling the curtain aside just enough to peek through.

The forest loomed at the edge of the backyard—silent, unmoving.

But the same blood trail I’d found earlier?
It was gone.

No stain on the grass. No dark drops.
Like it had never been there at all.

I swallowed hard, cold crawling up my spine. I stepped back and turned to look at the journal again, lying shut on my desk.

Your mother was not who she said she was.
She made a deal with a devil—and thought she could outrun him.

I touched the sketch of the wolf again, the lines so sharp, so full of movement it looked like it could leap off the page.

That voice came back again, softer this time, like it was inside my skull:

You look just like her, little flame… but you burn even brighter.

I didn’t know if it was memory, madness, or magic.

But one thing was becoming clear:

If I wanted the truth—about my father, my mother, and Valen—I’d have to walk straight into the dark to find it.

Even if I didn’t come back the same.