I did not look back when I carried her away from the Memory Tree.
Not because I was resolute,
but because I knew—
the moment I turned around, this moment would become an error that had to be corrected.
I took the old path behind the palace.
That path is remembered only in two circumstances: childhood games, and adult deviations that are no longer permitted.
Shadows overlapped among the trees. I stopped in front of a half-collapsed tree hollow.
I had once given it a name—the secret base.
Not because it was safe, but because it had never been written into any record.
I settled the little fairy inside.
She sat steadily, as if only just allowed to exist, her curiosity toward the world still untouched by instruction. She looked up at me, her eyes so clear they felt almost unreal. In that instant, a powerful sense of familiarity rose in my chest—
like holding something once lost and finally returned.
Then the constraint descended.
Not pain.
Not a warning.
Just a calm severing—
trimming the emotion that was about to surface down to a compliant size.
I crouched so we were eye level.
“You…”
I stopped. The name circled in my throat, but was not permitted to land.
She tilted her head, as if learning an expression. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. She did not know how to speak—or rather, this memory had not yet assigned her language.
She reached out, pointed at the mark on my chest, then pointed at herself.
The gesture was too light.
So light that I dared not interpret it as meaning anything at all.
Before I could confirm—
before I could know whether she was Rosa—
voices surged closer along the palace walls.
Footsteps. Armor. Short commands.
The palace guards were looking for me.
I had to choose quickly.
“Stay here,” I whispered, as if entrusting something that had not yet been permitted to exist.
I covered the hollow with fallen leaves and vines, leaving only a narrow seam for air and light. She did not resist. She was not afraid. She only watched me, as if storing my retreating figure in a place not yet named.
I turned and left.
—
By the time I returned to the palace, the voices had arrived before me.
The elders’ rebukes echoed through the corridors—dry, dense phrases, like conclusions long prepared.
“Defiance.”
“Abuse of authority.”
“Endangering the greater order.”
Each word had a place ready for it in the records.
I entered the grand hall. My father and mother sat upon the dais.
They did not defend me.
Not because they did not wish to, but because they could not.
“For the sake of stability,” the High Elder said,
“the princess shall be confined.”
When the decree was spoken, the hall was not loud.
Everyone here knew the process—
secure the risk, secure the person.
My father looked at me. There was no anger in his gaze, only exhaustion.
My mother’s fingers tightened, then loosened. Her voice was very soft, almost a sigh.
“We… have no power.”
I nodded.
This was neither forgiveness nor acceptance.
Only acknowledgment—of position.
—
Days of confinement have no sense of time.
Light moved outside the window by fixed increments, as if reminding me: you are still being recorded.
Nameless came at dusk.
He did not knock. The guards did not stop him—perhaps because no one wished to write this down.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said.
“I know,” he replied, standing inside the doorway, his voice unnaturally calm for a trespasser. “The punishment will be severe.”
“Then why—”
“Because when I can’t see you,” he interrupted quietly,
“it’s like losing myself.”
There was nothing romantic about the words. They lay on the table like a noncompliant fact, impossible to soften with phrasing.
I turned my gaze away.
“You will be dealt with.”
“As for punishment…” he said, “I was prepared for that.”
In that moment, I realized—
this was not the first time.
It was not the first time he had chosen to step closer, knowing exactly what it would cost.
The air sank slightly.
A voice emerged from the shadow within the hall—
not loud, but cutting cleanly between us.
“This is no longer following the original trajectory. This is a memory fracture.”
It was not an elder’s voice.
Not a guard’s.
It sounded more like a preexisting calibration—
checking a line that had drifted off course.
Nameless and I both froze.
The light outside the window destabilized, as if time itself had shifted.
I understood.
I was not fleeing history.
History, in that moment, noticed for the first time—
Someone had pushed it off its original measure.
—
After that, the memory became unreliable.
Not blank—
but as if its resolution had been deliberately lowered.
I remember that Nameless and I spoke more, yet I cannot grasp the sentences themselves. I remember the weight of the air, how close we stood, but not who reached out first.
Only one image remains.
He stood before me, head lowered, as if receiving something that did not belong to him.
And upon his head—
Something like a crown was placed.
It was not a symbol of sovereignty. There were no ornaments, no splendor. It looked more like a functional device—
fitted, stabilized, locked in place.
I cannot even be sure whether it was worn, or calibrated.
I wanted to speak. To ask what it meant.
But in that instant, the entire memory lost power.
No darkness.
No falling.
Just—
shutdown.
I fell asleep.
—
In the middle of the night, the moon was swallowed by clouds.
Not gradually, but as if the clouds had gathered at once and consumed the light in a single bite. The courtyard sank into an unnatural silence. Even the wind seemed to have its throat constricted.
The next moment, nature erupted.
Birdsong, beasts calling, insects beating their wings—
not panicked noise, but as if an ancient signal had awakened everything at once.
I sat up in bed, my heart striking heavily against my ribs.
I went to the window.
The moonlight was fractured, but another kind of shadow spread across the ground.
Not cast by trees.
Not shaped by buildings.
It was blackness.
It lay flat, without height, yet with clear boundaries. Without substance, yet enough to make the body recoil instinctively. Shadows overlapped and crossed, like countless footsteps arriving at the same time.
I recognized it immediately.
An old acquaintance.
Death.
Not a single form, but the trace of having passed through.
A mode of existence I had learned to recognize long ago.
I wanted to scream.
To wake the guards. Wake my parents. Wake the entire palace and show them this forbidden anomaly.
But the sound was strangled in my throat.
The restriction descended again.
Not fear.
But: this moment does not belong to your right to speak.
My mouth was open, yet I heard only my own breathing.
The blackness gathered, then—
as if a confirmation had been completed—
began to disperse.
No eruption.
No invasion.
Just passing through.
They moved along unseen paths, crossing and diverging, until they faded one by one, like a completed inspection.
The sounds of nature gradually subsided, returning to the cadence of night.
The clouds parted.
Moonlight fell again.
The courtyard was empty.
As if nothing had happened.
I stood at the window, my hands ice-cold.
I knew this was neither omen nor warning.
It was confirmation.
Not the world watching me,
but certain beings nodding to one another—acknowledging that something had begun to deviate.
There was no permission to stop it.
No permission to record it.
Only to stand still,
and let the anomaly be swallowed back into the process of time.
In that moment, I understood with absolute clarity—
What had happened during the day was no longer just a violation of order.
It had begun to tear a fracture into memory itself.
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Whispers last a moment.
Curses last a thousand years.
She was never meant to love him.
He was never meant to remember her.
Bound by blood, time, and a mark that refuses to fade, a vampire who has lived for a thousand years comes face to face with the one love the world forbade him to keep.
When the world demands sacrifice,
what happens if love refuses to die?
The Veil’s Mark: A Vampire’s Thousand-Year Dark Romance
A dark fantasy romance of memory, fate, and defiance.
This is not a story about destiny fulfilled—
but about love that survives erasure.
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From Chapter 24 onward, the remaining chapters of The Veil’s Mark: A Vampire’s Thousand-Year Dark Romance will be published on a paid platform to centralize funding and support the continued development of the series.
Book 1 length: ~70,000 English words
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