Chapter 301: Meeting with Roselle Vasilyev
Samuel's POV
The dead wind howled across the blighted plains of the Obsidian Verge as I stood at the precipice of the Hollow Bastion. It was here—beneath the cracked moons of Oblivion, where shadows bled from the earth—that she waited.
Roselle Vasilyev.
The last time we stood face-to-face, we swore to be enemies in this lifetime. No more truces. No more trysts. Just blood and silence between us. But now she'd summoned me with a request—no, a command veiled in diplomacy: escort me to Queen Nerezza.
Queen of Oblivion. Widow of Realms. The Pale Queen.
And Roselle... what business did she have with her?
The doors creaked open, massive blackened iron parting like the maw of a beast. I stepped inside the Bastion, boots clicking over ancient stone carved with sigils that pulsed faintly—like veins under skin.
She stood at the center of the chamber, bathed in the pale glow of a singular lantern hanging high above. Crimson eyes like twin suns of ruin, and hair as dark as the night I was born into.
"Samuel," Roselle said, her voice like the first chord of a funeral hymn. "You're later than I expected."