CHAPTER 104: DMITRI’S PAST

Dmitri POV

The old portrait burst into flames the moment I touched it.

I jerked my hand back, watching three hundred years of careful preservation turn to ash in seconds. The picture had shown my maker, Elena, the night before the Void Walkers killed her. Now it was gone, just like everything else they’d taken from me.

"Dmitri?" Caleb’s voice came from behind me. "We felt the magic from outside. What happened?"

I turned to find Caleb and Sage standing in my study doorway, their faces worried. They’d come to ask for my help finding Lily after she’d slipped into whatever dimension the brothers were trapped in. But seeing Elena’s portrait burn had brought back feelings I’d spent centuries trying to forget.

"The Void Walkers are stirring," I said, brushing ash from my fingers. "Things connected to their last appearance are starting to react."

That was putting it lightly. For the past week, ever since Lily’s sacrifice, items from my past had been acting strange. My maker’s jewelry had turned ice cold. Books from the old country had their pages rearranging themselves. Even my image in mirrors had started looking different - younger, like I was back in 1724.

"You’ve faced these things before," Sage said, stepping into the room carefully. "That’s why you know so much about them."

I nodded slowly. There was no point hiding it anymore. If we were going to save Lily and the Silver boys, they needed to know the truth about what we were really fighting.

"I was there when they were first banished," I revealed. "Not as an ally helping with the ritual, but as a victim who barely survived their attack."

Caleb’s eyes widened. "You were there? But that was centuries ago."

"I’m older than I look," I said sadly. "Much older. And I have very personal reasons for wanting these creatures destroyed."

I walked to my desk and pulled out a locked box that hadn’t been opened in decades. Inside lay the only things I had left from that terrible night - Elena’s silver ring and a piece of black stone that still pulsed with dark energy.

"My maker, Elena Volkov, was one of the most powerful vampires in Europe," I began, holding the locket carefully. "She’d lived for over a thousand years, weathered wars, plagues, and the rise and fall of empires. She was also the nicest person I’d ever known."

Sage moved closer, feeling the pain in my voice. "What happened to her?"

"She tried to stop them," I said simply. "When the Void Walkers first appeared in 1724, they started in the old woods of Romania. They didn’t just kill people - they erased them completely, removing them from existence so thoroughly that no one even knew they’d lived."

I opened the locket, showing them the tiny picture inside. Elena’s face smiled up at us, her dark hair framing kind eyes that had seen centuries of human pain and still chose compassion.

"Elena gathered other supernatural creatures to fight back," I continued. "Witches, shifters, even a few fae who still walked the earth back then. She believed that if different magical beings worked together, we could find a way to stop the Void Walkers."

"Did it work?" Caleb asked quietly.

"For a while." I closed the case and set it down gently. "We managed to track the Void Walkers to their source - a tear in reality itself, hidden deep in an old cave system. Elena led the final attack, taking our strongest fighters into the void to seal the rift from the inside."

My hands clenched into fists as the memories came rushing back. Even after three centuries, the pain felt fresh.

"I wasn’t meant to go with them. Elena ordered me to stay behind with the other young vampires, to guard the humans in case the operation failed. But I was stubborn and stupid. I thought I could help."

"You followed them," Sage guessed.

"I did. And I arrived just in time to watch them die." The words tasted like ash in my mouth. "The Void Walkers had been waiting for us. They’d used the rift as bait, knowing that heroes would come to close it. When our people tried to perform the banishing rite, the creatures turned their own power against them."

I picked up the black stone, feeling its cold weight. " Elena threw this to me as she fell. It’s a piece of the original rift, the only proof that any of it really happened. She wanted me to remember, to make sure someone survived who knew the truth."

"But you were just a new vampire," Caleb said. "How did you escape when older, more powerful creatures couldn’t?"

"Because I was nobody important," I said sadly. "The Void Walkers feed on power, on importance, on the bonds that connect people to others. Elena had lived for a thousand years and was loved by dozens of vampires she’d made. The werewolf alpha had a pack of two hundred. The witch master had trained hundreds of students. "

I looked at my hands, still young-looking after all these years. "But I was just Elena’s newest child. Barely fifty years old, with no pack, no coven, no one who would miss me if I vanished. I wasn’t worth their attention."

"So you survived by being overlooked," Sage murmured. "Just like Lily did in her pack."

The comparison hit me like a physical blow. "Yes. And I’ve spent every day since then planning for their return. Learning their weaknesses, gathering friends, making sure that when they came back, someone would be ready to fight them properly."

Caleb frowned. "But if you knew they’d return, why didn’t you tell more people? Why wait until now to tell us this?"

"Because I wasn’t sure they were really back until Lily’s sacrifice," I revealed. "The Void Walkers don’t just kill or eat. They change reality itself, making people forget their victims ever existed. When Elena died, most of the magical world forgot she’d ever lived. Books about her disappeared. People who’d known her for ages couldn’t remember her name."

I held up the locket again. "This is the only proof I have that she was real. And now it’s responding to their presence, getting warmer every day."

Sage’s face went pale. "Dmitri, if they can edit reality, and Lily is existing in multiple dimensions..."

"She’s in more danger than we thought," I finished. "The Void Walkers don’t just hunt in one world. They can follow her across worlds, erasing every version of herself until nothing remains."

Before anyone could react, the locket in my hand began to burn. Not with heat, but with a cold that bit through my vampire skin like acid.

"They’ve found her," I gasped, dropping the charm as it turned white-hot. "They’re attacking her right now, somewhere between worlds."

The black stone on my desk began to pulse faster, its dark energy reaching out like fingers.

"Dmitri," Caleb said quickly, "your reflection..."

I looked at the mirror behind my desk and froze. My reflection wasn’t showing my present self anymore. Instead, I saw myself as I’d been that night in 1724 - young, frightened, watching Elena fall into the void while creatures of living darkness reached for her with hungry claws.

"They’re not just back," I whispered in horror. "They’re rewriting time itself. Changing the past so they were never banished at all."

The mirror cracked, and through the cracks, I could see Elena’s face. But it wasn’t the Elena from my memories - it was Elena as she would be now, if she’d survived, if the Void Walkers had never killed her.

She was trying to tell me something, her mouth moving frantically behind the glass.

"Elena?" I breathed, reaching toward the broken mirror.

Her mouth formed three words I could barely make out: "Save the girl."

Then the mirror shattered totally, and in the falling glass, I saw the truth that made my centuries-old heart stop beating.

The Void Walkers hadn’t just killed Elena.

They’d turned her into one of them.