u/inkmoonprincess

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Chapter One – The New Girl

It has been said that young love never dies, but what happens if you do not age physically? Assuming you both stay frozen in time, can that type of belonging next to the person truly last? Would that feeling of love for someone never fade, or perhaps it is something closer to the under-waves deep inside the ocean? Moving in a perpetual motion, keeping the flow in harmony alive, nurturing the initial infatuation while slowly morphing into caring. Later, being able to name this emotional feeling "true love" prevented it from ever becoming stale and eventually dying in the end.

This is my story.

We were inside the woodlands located between Westville and Duoville. That day was foggy from the earlier hours of the day until the late hours of the night. I knew deep down inside that kind of fog was not normal, but sometimes this is how things go with the power of hindsight. The events of that night still haunt me. The moment she ripped the heart out of his chest, I called for James to keep Adam alive with one of his spells as I chased after her.

She began taunting in her own self-served glee. "Oh... poor little O... You never truly had his love... But now you certainly cannot and will not have his heart..." Elizabeth shouted at the top of her lungs as she tried to run away after crushing his heart.

"You will certainly pay for this!" I said, allowing the wind to carry my final words before overtaking the distance between us. Once I had hold of her, I dragged her along the cold ground.

The moment we made our way back to them, the blood moon was at its highest point in the sky. "Miss Olive, why haven't you killed her?" he finally asked. James' puzzled expression brought me back from the anger and hunger caused by the effect of the blood moon. "James, open his mouth and make sure it stays open..." Those were the only words I could muster.

Precisely when James did what I had requested, I placed Elizabeth's collarbone in alignment with Adam's mouth, and with one sharp incision, the stream of blood fell down like a beautiful bloody waterfall from her straight into his mouth. As the warm, thick liquid fell, I hoped for the spell to work, while my hunger grew several times stronger than normal because of using forbidden magic during the blood moon. I waited for any signal that the spell had in fact worked.

The moment when nothing changed and Elizabeth's body was not able to pump any more blood, making what was left unfit for purpose, I brought her shoulder in contact with my fangs while offering her motionless wrist to James to join me, as we shared what was left of the Sampaio's blood.

The closer we were to daybreak, once the blood moon vanished from the night sky, the more I was certain that the spell had not worked. "Miss O... we must make our exit... the Sampaios will be here soon in search of her body, and we are in no condition to engage in battle with them nor Victor hunters right now." James' words were gentle and caring for someone who was under the same side effects of the blood moon.

The decades after that were a mere scarlet blur, if it wasn't for James keeping me grounded from the lasting effects of the blood moon; but everything changed sixteen years ago when I began to have dreams about Adam once again, not long after we met a woman who had a smell similar to Adam's. Perhaps she was a descendant of his bloodline. She was running for her life, looking for a safe haven underneath my territory. She claimed that she was told to come here by a friend of mine, after her husband was brutally killed by a Sampaio in accordance with Victor's hunters, who were working together to capture and kill any magical creature in their way.

In exchange for saving her and her son, she prophesied that in a few years a student called Daniel Agoroph would enter King Crow Academy and that he would look almost identical to the one I loved, if not for his eyes...

Many years later…

We were a few days away from Daniel's seventeenth birthday, and before that moment, I thought the spell had not worked. With each passing day, I noticed that Daniel began to smell more like a vampire and a lot less like a human. I watched over Daniel's dorm room from afar, knowing he had been having visions of a distant past.

One of many things I loathed about school, college, or any educational campus was those obnoxious alarm bells and their loud sound. His small vintage alarm rang for a few minutes until Daniel, still filled with haze, tried to reach for it to silence the damn thing. He succumbed to sleep once again, relaxing in bed, only to be disturbed by two distinctive knocks coming from his bedroom door.

"Who is it?" he asked with an air of half-asleep haze, propping himself up and revealing his somewhat slender figure.

"Dan..." The boy sighed from the other side before continuing. "Dude... Nanda sent me here to make sure you're getting up and to remind you about the picnic she is planning later."

"Thanks, man."

As soon as I noticed the footsteps moving away, I saw Daniel reaching for his journal that was located on the top of his nightstand. Every morning he would spend some time writing his most intimate thoughts in the journal that he would never share with anyone, before putting on his school uniform. However, lately, since his smell had begun to change and he had experienced visions of what happened to Adam, my guess was that he was writing those dream memories down while trying to make sense of them.

It was very entertaining watching him so engrossed in inner thoughts and memories that were not necessarily his. Most entertaining of all was the rush when he looked at his clock and realised he was late to meet his friends at the school dining hall. As he flustered, the more his heart beat, the more the blood travelled around his body, which made me hungry. My mouth salivated in silence and the vein in my face twitched, wanting to make my true nature show, but I had decided long ago I would wait patiently as I watched over him, so no harm would ever come to him. Everything changed when his smell began to change.

"Dudes... Morning, Nanda."

"Good morning, Dan," a brunette with shoulder-length hair said with a big smile, pointing to a seat next to her.

"D-man... tell me the secret, how come you can be this late, knowing that your room is the closest here?" A taller boy with caramel-coloured hair berated Daniel.

"Sorry, Will... Damn, the pudding."

"They are all gone!" George said while licking his finger which was carrying some pudding on it.

"Dan, I saved one just for you."

"Awesome, Nanda... I totally owe you one," Daniel said after giving her a peck on the cheek.

"Oh... Nanda, I didn't know we had our own food sack keeper," Will said in a taunting way towards the girl, as if he was baiting her.

"Sod off, Will, yeah," the girl's reply was short and dry.

"It's not like we don't know that she has a crush on D—"

"DON'T! Shut the fuck up, George," the girl abruptly interjected.

When their mood was about to turn to a more uncomfortable, awkward silence, the bell soared around the school grounds, indicating that their classes were about to start. The students began to fill the classroom. I had their previous art teacher replaced with James to see how schools full of teenagers would interact with us and how James would react around pupils a couple of hundred years his junior.

"Good morning, students... My name is James Scobar... please call me Mr James and I will be your new art teacher. Now please open your books at chapter ten." James' voice was patient.

In just a couple more hours, I would make contact with him. I waited for the end of the third period before the headmaster could come and speak with Daniel to create a scenario where he would not be able to refuse, making the whole situation more manageable.

His third period was with Mrs Penny Black. According to the information I received, she was a book-obsessive literature teacher; in most of her lessons, she requested that her students bring anything they were reading at the moment. No matter the subject, in that instant she felt more like an honorary librarian than a teacher... Once Mrs Black entered the classroom, all her students seemed to have books, magazines, or car manuals in hand.

"Mrs Penny..."

"Mister Agoroph," she said, moving her face away from her book and turning her attention towards Daniel. She looked mildly annoyed at being disturbed.

"I forgot my book today, because I spent too long in my journal writing about this weird dream I've been having."

"Let me see if I understood you correctly, Mister Agoroph. You are saying that you, sir, became so engrossed in a 'dream' of yours that you are excusable from the rules in my classroom?" Mrs Black raised one of her eyebrows.

"As perceptive as always, Mrs Penny," Daniel said with a grim smile on his face before continuing. "Why don't I write an essay for you, or a story? Or do you want me to leave the classroom?"

"Nice try, Mister Agoroph." She smiled before continuing. "Your little short story had better be entertaining, or this will affect your final grade for this year." She finished what she had to say and went back to her book, making a motion with her right hand for Daniel to go back to his seat while she held her book with her left.

"This is Olive Crownoel and she is a new transfer student from Swallow Falls; please be welcoming to her." The headmaster did what I had requested of him, while Daniel wrote as if he was in a trance as the headmaster presented me to the whole class.

"Mister Daniel Agoroph... please follow me," the headmaster said, looking somewhat angry. As Daniel walked by, some of his friends booed, with George whispering, "You are done for."

Once we were both outside the classroom, the headmaster shifted his gaze from left to right, making sure we were alone. "Mister Agoroph, what I am about to inform you... I will only say it once. Do you hear me? So listen carefully." The headmaster paused, trying to calm a temper that was about to explode, before continuing. "You, sir, are going to share your dorm room with the new student, and under no circumstances should you tell a soul who you are sharing the room with. Nod if you have understood me."

Soon after Daniel nodded, the headmaster began to walk away, sounding as though he was about to have an aneurysm. "What is she thinking? What will people think about the academy if word gets out..." Daniel did not notice that the headmaster was not saying that aloud, but muttering beneath his breath.

To think his transformation was already at that stage. When he entered the room, he had a confused look on his face. "Hey, I am Olive," I said, trying to break through his confusion and overwhelmed feelings while he looked at me as if he were dreaming.

"Hi, Olive, right... I am Amanda Addams, but my friends call me Nanda." She extended her hand with a friendly, fake smile and continued, "Normally Dan is much more friendly than this, trust me," the girl said, trying to save him.

"Oli..." he started. "Daniel Agoroph... nice to meet you."

At first, hearing him say that nickname took me back; it, along with his charming smile, brought back so many memories of Adam, making all those years, decades seem like nothing more than a bad dream, if not for his emerald green eyes.

"Do you know someone else with the same name as me?" I asked slyly, hoping he would be a reincarnation.

"I don't think that we know anyone with a name similar to yours," Amanda filled the silence between us.

"No... Not really... it's just... never mind," he said, as if he did not know where that had come from.

"That is a great nickname for you, Olive," the girl interjected, as if not wanting to see her crush in distress.

"Daniel, could you show me the school grounds, please?" I said, trying to pay no attention to the human girl.

"Sure, why not," he replied, as the lunch break bell travelled through the halls before they were filled with a swarm of hungry teenagers making their way out of class.

As we passed by the teachers' lounge, a teacher tried to catch up with us. "Mister Daniel," an old gentleman in his late forties, dressed in tweed, called out.

"Sir Robert, what is it?"

"Where did you find the historical information in your short story?" Mister Robert asked, as he shook Daniel profusely.

"Robert... calm down... A teacher should never shake his students as if they were a racket or a plaything," Mrs Black berated the teacher for his impulsive actions. "Let the boy go; we can discuss this another time." She walked away, gesturing for the other teacher to follow.

"Mrs Penny, what if the boy is a descendant, or is this a case of reincarnation?" The two teachers talked among themselves, unaware that we had sharper ears.

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Chapter One – The New Girl

It has been said that young love never dies.

But what happens if you don’t age physically? Can that kind of love truly last?

Assuming you both stay frozen in time, would that love eventually fade away, or might it be like the deep currents in the ocean — moving in perpetual motion, keeping the feeling alive and stopping it from ever becoming stale and dying?

This is our story.

We were in the center of the woodlands that lie on the border between Duoville and Westville. That day was foggy from the early hours of the morning until late evening. Even then, I knew deep down that this kind of fog wasn’t normal. Sometimes you only understand these things with the power of hindsight.

The events of that night still haunt me. The moment Elizabeth ripped Adam’s heart out, I cried for James to try to keep Adam alive while I chased after her.

She taunted me in her self-serving glee: “Oh… poor little Olive… You never truly had his love… But now you certainly cannot and will not have his heart!” she shouted at the top of her lungs as she tried to run away.

“You will certainly pay for this!!!” I replied, letting the wind carry my final words toward her. In an instant, I closed the distance between us, grabbed her tightly by the neck, and dragged her back to the others.

By the time we returned, the blood moon was at its highest point in the sky. Seeing James’s puzzled face pulled me back from the anger and hunger the blood moon had cast over me.

“Miss Olive… why haven’t you killed her?” he finally asked.

“James… Open his mouth and make sure it stays open.”

As soon as James did what I asked, I positioned Elizabeth’s body over Adam’s and aligned her neck with his mouth. With one sharp incision across her collarbone, a bloody waterfall streamed down from her throat straight into his mouth.

The thick ruby liquid was still warm as it poured out of her. I hoped the spell would work even as my own hunger grew. I waited eagerly for the crimson flow to weaken. When the last of the blood inside her body had stopped moving, I lifted her shoulder to my fangs and offered her motionless wrist to James so we could share what remained.

As daybreak grew closer, I became more certain that the spell had failed.

“Miss O… We must leave,” James said gently. “The Sampaios will be here soon looking for her body, and we are in no condition to fight them or the hunters right now.”

The past few decades after that night were a scarlet blur. If it hadn’t been for James keeping me grounded through the lingering effects of the blood moon, I might have lost myself completely. Everything changed sixteen years ago when I began dreaming of Adam once more.

Then we met a woman who carried a scent similar to his — perhaps a descendant of his bloodline. She was running from someone, trying to save her family, and seeking a safe haven in my territory. She told us her husband had been killed by a Sampaio. The hunters and the Sampaios, she claimed, were working together to capture and kill any magical creatures in their path. She didn’t want her son to suffer the same fate. In exchange for safety, she prophesied that in a few years, a student named Daniel Agoroph would enter King Crow Academy. He would look identical to the one I had lost, except for his vivid green eyes.

We were only a few days away from Daniel’s seventeenth birthday. Until that moment, I had believed the spell had failed. But with each passing day after I first laid eyes on him, Daniel began to smell more like a vampire and less like a human.

One of the many things to loathe about schools and academia is those alarm bells and their obnoxiously loud rings.

I watched Daniel’s room from afar, knowing he had been having visions of a distant past. His small vintage alarm rang for a few minutes before Daniel, still hazy with sleep, reached over and silenced it. He tried to drift off again, but was soon woken by two distinctive knocks at his bedroom door.

“Who is it?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep, as he propped himself up and revealed his slender, athletic figure.

“Dan…” a boy sighed from the other side.

“Dude… Nanda sent me to make sure you’re getting up and to remind you about the picnic she’s planning later.”

“Thanks, man.”

As soon as the footsteps moved away from the door, I watched Daniel reach for the journal on his nightstand. This was one of the first things I noticed that set him apart from Adam. Every morning, Daniel would spend time writing his most intimate thoughts before getting ready for school. He poured his inner feelings into that journal — thoughts he never shared with anyone. Ever since his scent began to change and the visions of what happened to Adam started, I guessed he was writing down those dream memories, trying to make sense of them.

It was entertaining to watch him so engrossed in memories that weren’t entirely his. But what excited me most was the rush I felt when he suddenly glanced at the clock, realized he was late, and his heart began to race. The faster his blood flowed through his veins, the hungrier I became. My mouth salivated in silence; the veins in my face twitched, threatening to reveal my true nature. Still, I had decided long ago: I would wait patiently and watch over him from afar so no harm would come to him.

That resolve began to waver, however, once he started smelling like a vampire — as if he were slowly changing.

In just a couple of hours, I would finally make contact with him.

Daniel’s Point of View

Sometime earlier that day…

As soon as I grabbed my journal.

X July XX

First my alarm goes off louder than normal, then George gets sent by Nanda to drag me out of bed. But most puzzling of all is this recurring nightmare.

Last night was no different from the past several nights: the same three people for the most part. The main girl — a petite, short redhead with hypnotic honey-colored eyes — was chasing another woman with a much more voluptuous figure and luscious golden locks, wanting to kill her. The final part of the dream felt like a fragmented mess.

Why do I have this growing feeling that I’m forgetting something important?

When I finally look at the clock, I realize I need to get to the cafeteria.

Olive’s Point of View

“Dudes… morning, Nanda.”

“Good morning, Dan,” Nanda said with a big smile, pointing to the seat next to her.

“D-Man… tell me your secret. How can your room be so far away and you still get here first?” a fairly tall boy with caramel-coloured hair asked with friendly teasing.

“Sorry, Will… Damn, the pudding.”

“They’re all gone!” George said, licking pudding off his finger.

“Dan, I saved one just for you.”

“Awesome. Nanda… I totally owe you one,” Daniel said, giving her a peck on the cheek.

“Oh… Nanda, I didn’t know we had our own food keeper,” Will taunted.

“Sod off, Will,” the girl replied dryly.

“It’s not like we don’t know she has a crush on D—”

“DON’T! Shut the fuck up, George,” Nanda abruptly interjected.

Just as the mood threatened to turn awkward, the bell rang across the school grounds, signaling that classes were about to start.

The students began filling the classroom. I had arranged for James to replace their previous art teacher so I could observe how a school full of teenagers interacted with us — and how James would handle being around people several hundred years his junior.

“Good morning, students. My name is James Escobar. Please call me Mr. James. I will be your new art teacher. Now, please open your books to chapter ten.”

I waited until the end of third period, when the headmaster would speak with Daniel and create a situation he couldn’t refuse.

His third-period class was with Miss Penny Black. She was a book-obsessed literature teacher who often felt more like an honorary librarian. She usually asked students to bring anything they were currently reading, regardless of the subject.

Daniel’s Point of View

Once Mrs. Penny entered the classroom, all my friends had books, magazines, or car manuals in hand. Nanda was reading the first book in a paranormal thriller series called The Deal I Made with a Girl That Turns Out to Be a Devil by Owan Egan.

I knew Mrs. Penny was going to give me grief.

“Mrs. Penny…”

“Mister Agoroph,” she said, lowering her book and turning her attention to me with mild annoyance.

“I forgot my book today… because I spent too long writing in my journal about this weird dream I’ve been having.”

“Let me see if I understood you correctly, Mister Agoroph. You are saying that you, sir, became so engrossed in a ‘dream’ of yours that it excused you from the rules in my classroom?” Mrs. Penny raised one eyebrow.

“As perceptive as always, Mrs. Penny,” I said with a grim smile. “Why don’t I write an essay or a short story for you? Or would you rather I just leave the classroom?”

“Nice try, Mister Agoroph.” She smiled. “Your little short story had better be entertaining, or it will affect your final grade for the year.” With that, she returned to her book, waving her right hand to dismiss me while holding her own book with the left.

With pen and paper in hand, vivid visions began to fill my mind, and the words flowed onto the page.

Her name was Olive Agoroph…

Her name was Olive Agoroph, and she lived south of Westville in a country home for summer break after many months away at her Aunt Morgana’s boarding school for gifted girls, alongside her best friend.

Lucy was soon to be married to John Doe before his untimely death. His body was found drained of blood next to a lady of the night that had the same biting mark across their bodies. At first, the townspeople began to worry about a rabid wolf, or maybe something more notorious was at play. But once an autopsy was given to the bodies by the new doctor called Adam, all the townspeople became aware that they could've easily done that to themselves. He suggested they were under the influence of powerful substances, and the lack of blood was explained by the fact that decomposition after being exposed to the elements for weeks had occurred.

Even though some found his theory to be true, Olive found them to be mere excuses. As soon as she brought her own hypothesis to her coven, they were dismissed. When she suggested that it was the work of a werewolf, she was told that werewolves were expelled from those lands over hundreds of years prior, and to leave the subject alone.

As the days and weeks passed, Adam tried to court Olive to go out on a date with him, but after so many rejections, he began a friendship with her father by often buying wine from their vineyard. Adam had been bewitched by Olive’s petite features, hypnotic honey eyes, and fire-red locks of hair that, on a bright moonlight night, shone the same color as blood.

The city was celebrating one hundred and fifty years. Adam was making his way into the attendant's carriage when he saw Olive and Lucy next to an injured man. The man seemed to have a bite mark around his shoulders and ripped clothes.

"James was attacked by something…" Lucy said in a state of panic.

"Something or someone," Olive interjected as she looked at Adam with pondering eyes.

"Take James and Lucy to the hospital… I shall accompany Miss Olive home."

"Oli... Are you going to be okay?!"

"Lucy, don't worry, go with James. I'll be fine."

"Mister Daniel Agoroph... please follow me," the headmaster said, looking somewhat angry.

As I passed, my friends booed me, and George whispered, "You are done for."

Once we were both outside the classroom, the headmaster shifted, looking from left to right to make sure we were alone.

"Mister Agoroph, what I am about to inform you... I'll only say it once. Do you hear me? So listen carefully." The headmaster paused, trying to calm his temper that was about to explode, before continuing: "You, sir, are going to share your dorm room with the new student, and under no circumstances should you tell a soul who you are sharing the room with. Nod if you understand me."

I nodded, and as soon as he began to walk away, he looked like he was about to have an aneurysm.

"What is she thinking? What will people think about our academy if the word gets out…"

Her name was Olive Agoroph, and she lived south of Westville in a country home for summer break after many months away at her Aunt Morgana’s boarding school for gifted girls, alongside her best friend.

Lucy was soon to be married to John Doe before his untimely death. His body was found drained of blood next to a lady of the night that had the same biting mark across their bodies. At first, the townspeople began to worry about a rabid wolf, or maybe something more notorious was at play. But once an autopsy was given to the bodies by the new doctor called Adam, all the townspeople became aware that they could've easily done that to themselves. He suggested they were under the influence of powerful substances, and the lack of blood was explained by the fact that decomposition after being exposed to the elements for weeks had occurred.

Even though some found his theory to be true, Olive found them to be mere excuses. As soon as she brought her own hypothesis to her coven, they dismissed it. When she suggested that it was the work of a werewolf, she was told that werewolves were expelled from those lands hundreds of years prior, and to leave the subject alone.

As the days and weeks passed, Adam tried to court Olive to go out on a date with him, but after so many rejections, he began a friendship with her father by often buying wine from their vineyard. Adam had been bewitched by Olive’s petite features, hypnotic honey eyes, and fire-red locks of hair that, on a bright moonlight night, shone the same color as blood.

The city was celebrating one hundred and fifty years. Adam was making his way into the attendant's carriage when he saw Olive and Lucy next to an injured man. The man seemed to have a bite mark around his shoulders and ripped clothes.

"James was attacked by something…" Lucy said in a state of panic.

"Something or someone," Olive interjected as she looked at Adam with pondering eyes.

"Take James and Lucy to the hospital… I shall accompany Miss Olive home."

"Oli... Are you going to be okay?!"

"Lucy, don't worry, go with James. I'll be fine."

"Mister Daniel Agoroph... please follow me," the headmaster said, looking somewhat angry.

As I passed, my friends booed me, and George whispered, "You are done for."

Once we were both outside the classroom, the headmaster shifted, looking from left to right to make sure we were alone.

"Mister Agoroph, what I am about to inform you... I'll only say it once. Do you hear me? So listen carefully." The headmaster paused, trying to calm his temper that was about to explode, before continuing: "You, sir, are going to share your dorm room with the new student, and under no circumstances should you tell a soul who you are sharing the room with. Nod if you understand me."

I nodded, and as soon as he began to walk away, he looked like he was about to have an aneurysm.

"What is she thinking? What will people think about our academy if the word gets out…”

Olive’s Point of View

Daniel didn’t seem to notice that the headmaster hadn’t actually spoken those last words aloud — a sign that his transformation was already progressing.

When he entered the room, he had a confused look on his face.

“Hey, I’m Olive,” I said, trying to cut through his confusion.

“Hi, Olive, right… I’m Amanda Addams, but my friends call me Nanda.” She extended her hand with a friendly (though slightly forced) smile. “Normally Dan is much friendlier than this, trust me.”

“Oli…” he began, then corrected himself. “Daniel Agoroph… nice to meet you.”

Hearing that nickname hit me hard. Combined with his charming smile, it brought back so many memories of Adam that all those years suddenly felt like nothing more than a bad dream — if not for his vivid emerald-green eyes.

“Do you know someone else with the same name as me?” I asked slyly.

“I don’t think so,” Nanda answered.

“Normally Dan is much more talkative.”

“No… Not really. It’s just… never mind,” he said.

“That’s a great nickname for you, Olive,” Nanda added, clearly trying to ease the tension.

“Daniel, could you show me around the school grounds, please?” I asked, deliberately ignoring the human girl.

“Sure, why not,” he replied.

As we walked, the lunch bell rang, and the halls quickly filled with hungry teenagers. As we passed the teachers’ lounge, one of the teachers hurried after us.

“Mister Daniel!”

“Sir Robert, what is it?”

“Where did you find the historical information for your short story?” Mr. Robert asked, shaking Daniel’s shoulder vigorously.

“Robert… calm down,” Mrs. Black scolded.

“A teacher should never shake a student like that. Let the boy go. We can discuss this another time.”

As they walked away, still talking, we heard Mrs. Penny says, “What if the boy has notes from a descendant… or it’s a case of reincarnation?”

The two teachers continued their conversation, unaware that we could hear every word with our sharper ears.