Anthesis of Sadness

That night, I couldn’t find sleep.

Not a second.

My body was exhausted, drained by accumulated tension, but my mind stubbornly refused to quiet. It spun, returned, slammed against the same images—again and again—obsessed with Cassandre, with her silence, with her frozen stillness at Aranael’s side, as if she already belonged to a world I no longer had access to.

So, unable to close my eyes, unable even to lie down, I had gotten up.

And I had walked.

Aimlessly, with no real direction, just so I wouldn’t stay still.

I wandered in silence through the dark alleys of the camp, my steps swallowing the beaten earth, my eyes gliding over the sleeping tents, the blurred silhouettes of sentinels, the dying flames casting long, fragile shadows on the ground, like ghosts drawn by the moon.

I wasn’t looking for anything. I was fleeing. And even that, I was only half doing.

As I roamed, many figures revealed themselves at the edges of tents or in the pale glow of braziers, and I gradually became aware of the diversity reigning here. Different races of vampires, with marked features, distinct appearances, postures shaped by centuries of custom. Each one, I guessed, bore the mark of one of the Lords glimpsed earlier in the tent—a silent loyalty, almost palpable, inscribed in the way they stood, the way they breathed, the way they looked at you without seeing you.

But beyond faces, clans, variations in aura or attire, one thing kept returning.

The number 7.