Notes: Against my better judgement, after I finished Memento Mori I realized that there was a lot I wanted to cover and a lot more ideas I had for it. My compromise was to make a multi-chapter to be able to do everything I wanted and hopefully keep things interesting. Now, you don't really need to read Memento Mori to read this, but there will be some references and a character that carries over from it.

Either way, I hope you few that read this enjoy it.

EDIT: I've gone through all the chapters up so far, edited them, and changed them to present tense. After rereading them recently to get back into the right headspace, I realized my writing reads a hell of a lot better this way.


The events of Zendikar and its effects have long since passed, and the Multiverse is slowly beginning to mend from the ordeal. It'll be far harder for Zendikar itself to recover. The battle against the Eldrazi had been a long and hard fought one and there had been many losses along the way, which effected everyone that had been involved in it. There was more than just physical wounds suffered.

Of course, it wasn't all bad; there had been some valuable acquaintances made as well that would prove to be very useful in the years to come.

One such acquaintance is what leads Sorin Markov, a vampire lord from haunted plane of Innistrad, to Ravniva and to the sanctum of the so-called Living Guildpact. None of the citizens take notice as he walks among them, slipping through the crowd like a ghost. His aura shrouds his presence from anyone who might take concern with a vampire being among them. They won't be aware that he's even here in the first place.

It doesn't take Sorin long to find the Guildpact's sanctum, as well hidden as it may be with the mind mage's magic. He walks in and sees him sitting at his desk, surrounded by piles of paperwork that has gone ignored for much longer than it probably should have been. He can barely see the man -more a boy in Sorin's eyes- over it all. Sorin drops his cloaking and allows himself to be sensed by him.

"I'm glad that you got my message. I wasn't sure that you would." Jace Beleren looks up to meet Sorin's intense stare, lips twisting upwards in some bare resemblance of a smile. Utterly exhausted. "You're a difficult man to get a hold of."

"And you've neglected your paperwork. I don't envy you." Sorin steps forward into the shadows of the sanctum, glad to be out of the direct and glaring sunlight. His fingers trace over the piles of paper, making out some complaint or another from various guilds in his peripheral. His eyes flicker up to study Jace's youthful face, noting the stress lines around and between his eyes. "Am I to take it that you have news, then?"

Jace nods, leaning back in his high-backed chair. The wood creaks with the movement and so does his back. He winces and rubs at it. "I dropped by Innistrad a bit ago. I hate to say it, but things have gotten...rough."

Sorin's ever present frown deepens. "Go on," he says, weary already. He should have known.

"Well," Jace fiddles with a paper, clearly trying to figure out a way to best say what's on his mind without angering the ancient vampire in the room, "there's been in-fighting between the humans. As you can imagine, all sorts of creatures are taking advantage of this. The angels are trying to keep the peace, but they're having a hard time of it. It's hard to cast enough protective magic when half the plane is fighting against each other.."

Sorin lets out a heavy sigh. It's always something. The moment things appear to have gotten on track it inevitably all comes crashing back down. He's been so busy dealing with the fallout of Zendikar and the Eldrazi, and his hunt for Nahiri that he hasn't had the time to think about his home plane. This is obviously the payback for being so inattentive.

"Thank-you for alerting me." Sorin's already halfway out the door.

"Be careful when you go back there," Jace warns. "I don't have a very good feeling about this. You're powerful, but even you aren't immune to danger."

"I'm aware," Sorin replies, coolly. He thinks back to Zendikar.

"I know. I'm just saying. I think there's something more sinister happening then meets the eye."

"Isn't there always."

It's an ominous prospect, Sorin thinks as he lets the room fade into the Blind Eternities.


He expects much when he reappears on Innistrad, but he doesn't quite plan for a direct attack against his person the very moment he sets a foot down near a village. He hasn't even had a chance to right himself from the trip, let alone cast any protective spells before he's dodging a sword that swings uncomfortably close to his neck.

His skin prickles uncomfortably. Silver. Wonderful.

"Monster," one of the men attacking him spats, stepping back and readying another swing. There's at least five Cathars, all armed to the teeth and trying to look as intimidating as they can manage. It's not a very effective.

Humans are not the most original when it comes to their threats.

The hand Sorin raises is surrounded by a cloud of sickly purple, and he gestures outwards in a sinuous motion, ghastly words whispering from his lips. The man closest to him begins to scream and claw at his throat as if air-starved. Seconds later he collapses into a pile of withered, rotting flesh and weathered bones. Sorin looks to the survivors and raises an eyebrow, daring them to try and make another move against him.

They take a step towards him, uncertain, weapons raised as if they'd do any good at all.

"Oh, yes, please do," he urges with a small, wicked smirk. Bloodlust sings through his chest in anticipation.

Sorin, for all his long-sightedness, fails to notice one thing, not until the ramifications have already been set into motion.

With a snarl, Sorin jumps back to avoid a blast of white magic coming at him from behind.

Something hits. It's been a long while since a weapon has touched his skin. He had forgotten how much it hurts. The dagger is short and very sharp with enchantment and it slips between armor plating and the leather beneath. It slashes deep into his skin, deep enough that he knows it's sliced down to the muscle.

Sorin staggers back, clutching at his side as blood drips through his fingers. Anger and pain fuels him as he lifts his hand again with a snarl and sends another Cather falling much like the first.

As Sorin tries to reorient, the mage that's caused this situation appears at his side and hits him with a stunning spell. He tries to shake it out of his head. There's too much happening at once. The remaining Cathars and the mage converge on him. One pulls out a pair of silver bands and uses the opportunity still to clasp them around Sorin's wrists.

Sorin feels it the moment they're on him; the connection between him and the mana of Innistrad is severed.

He needs to leave. He can't fight in this condition. Without the use of his mana to cast spells and the wound to his side, he will only be father hindered. The only real choice he has is to try and planeswalk away and hope he doesn't end up in a worse spot then he's already in. Focusing, Sorin wills himself into the Blind Eternities again for only a moment, long enough to remove himself from that area. He thinks of a familiar house and pictures it as clearly as he can in his mind, hoping that he will appear there.

When he materializes, he finds himself staring at it and relaxes slightly. Dumb luck that it's worked. Planeswalking has never been an exact art. He's not going to question why it's worked now, and instead goes to the door and knocks.

Sorin hopes that she's still here.


Valeria can't sleep. She lays on her side with her eyes closed as she listens to the sounds of fighting in the distance. She knows that all her neighbors are hearing the same thing she is if they're still awake as she is.

Innistrad's on the brink of civil war and that makes it difficult to find any peace at all.

Restlessly, she shifts onto her back with a deep sigh, hands crossed over her belly.

It's when she's just on the verge of finally falling asleep she hears it; the sharp, but firm, knock at the door downstairs. Her eyes snap open and she sits up, blinking as they try to adjust to the room's darkness. Frowning, Valeria reaches over to pick up a small knife that she keeps beside her bed for safety and stands up slowly. She grabs her dressing gown and pulls it over her nightdress before making her way downstairs and to the door, opening it hesitantly, unsure of what will meet her on the other side.

What she doesn't expect is to see him standing there to meet her.

Sorin appears much like he had when she'd first met him, not that she expected anything else from such an ageless creature. Aristocratically handsome features and a pair alien eyes that perfectly mark him out for what he is.. Although, there's a lack of a haughty or annoyed expression where she remembers it being and instead she can see barely hidden pain. Her gaze shifts from his face downwards until she sees what the cause is. Blood trickles between his red-stained fingers.

"Sorin?" Valeria asks. Her eyes go back to his face. She's confused and concerned. "How-"

"Valeria," Sorin cuts her off, his tone clipped with quickly dwindling patience. "Could we continue this inside?"

Valeria blinks as she realizes that he's standing there, bleeding, while she's questioning him. She takes a step back to give him space. "Please, do."

Sorin brushes closely past her and the hairs on the back of her neck rises. She watches him as he quickly locates on of her chairs sitting near the fire place and lowers himself into it with barely a wince.

"How did this happen?" Valeria asks in full this time, forcing herself to close the door and find supplies while Sorin slowly bleeds out in her parlor. The absolute last thing she needs this night is for him to die in her house.

"Complications," he replies cryptically, tiredly, his golden eyes following her movements as she moves about. It's deeply unsettling. "A miscalculation on my part. Stupid, really."

"I see." Valeria comes over to his side with a handful of bandages and a small tin that she keeps her needle and thread in, just in case. She sits them down and grabs another chair, pulling it over to his side. He hasn't asked her for help, but that doesn't really matter. He won't last long without treatment if that wound keeps bleeding like this. She stares at him for a moment as she takes her own seat. "I need you to take this," she gestures to his coat and armor, "off."

Sorin stands up stiffly -Valeria realizing as she watches that she should have asked him to do this before he sat down- and slowly begins to remove his clothes, leaving him naked from the waist up. Beneath all the leather and metal is taut muscle and an expanse of more pale gray flesh pulled over it. Less clothing doesn't make him look any less formidable. He could still probably break her in half if he wanted to even if he'd been human with a build like that.

There are a few scars scattered over him here and there from various battles he'd been involved in over his many years, but none quite as noticeable as the one between where his shoulder starts and his neck ends. Valeria has seen enough marks like that on victims to know that it's a vampire's bite. No doubt that it's the one that had created him.

Valeria pulls her gaze away from it and to his wound. It looks rather deep, as far as she can see just from looking at it, and made by a rather nasty dagger. Enchanted to be sharper than normal, no doubt. Her eyes move from that to the silver bands encircling his wrists. There appear to be some sort of arcane language carved into them that she can't read.

She points at them. "What are those?"

Sorin examen's the bands with an ugly scowl, tugging at one. "Cathars and a mage. They managed to wound and get these on me." He pulls harder with a wince. "They've locked away my access to mana. I barely..."

He cuts himself off, looking disgusted with himself for a situation he clearly has no control over.

Valeria feels bad for him. Being caught off guard as he had been and his magic effectively muzzled has been a blow to his very much masculine pride. Human or vampire, it doesn't matter. Pride is pride.

She dabs at his wound with a damp cloth, trying to wipe away some of the blood to better examine it, and Sorin lets out a pained hiss through his teeth. Valeria's something flash through his eyes that might be hunger, but it's hard to tell for certain. It disappears just as quickly as it shows. She decides it's better to pretend that she hadn't seen that. Instead, she opts to initiate conversation as a distraction. If he'll participate it'll be easier.

"I wasn't sure when you were going to visit me again, if ever," she says casually, being gentle with her task. "Things have gone rather pear-shaped while you were gone. You may have noticed."

"I was busy until now," Sorin replies, relaxing only slightly. "I had other, more important things to deal with."

"Yes," Valeria agrees, "being a Planeswalker does seem to be hard work."

Sorin's sharp look makes her flinch away. "How do you know that?"

"There's been rumors." Valeria swallows nervously. "They started spreading a bit ago ago, shortly after Avacyn's return. Slowly at first, and then more quickly, getting more and more outrageous with each one. I have no idea where they've been coming from, only that they've mostly involved you."

The terse expression turns weary. "What, exactly?"

"Along the lines that Avacyn is your creation and that our religion is built on falsehoods." That had been the biggest shock and the locals hadn't taken that well. If they'd had a crisis of faith when she'd vanished , Valeria isn't sure what to call it now. "And then there's the one about the vampires, the first vampires, had been human once. Vampires are created originally by demonic magic. Or, so the rumors go."

"Ah," Sorin supplies quietly, obviously more to himself than to Valeria.

"Are they true?" she asks, stopping her task to meet his eyes. "You're the second eldest vampire here, aren't you? That was another rumor. That old Edgar Markov is a relation of yours and that he's the one that created vampires."

She can tell that he wants to deny her, mulling over what he's at liberty to say, but after a long moment, he nods. "Yes, it's true."

"Okay," she says with a small smile. "I should be more concerned, honestly. I should be as frightened as everyone else is of you, but I guess I'm still as naive as I was as a child. I don't think you created Avacyn and our religion as a bad thing. You gave us hope in this world. You help us fight against your own people. It's better than to be wiped out, isn't it?"

It's something she's been thinking about since she had first heard those stories. When Avacyn had gone missing every malevolent creature on Innistrad had taken advantage of it, attacking humans, playing with them like a cat and mouse. Ever since she had been restored things have gone back to the way they should have been. Although, these rumors have stirred the pot again and now humans are fighting other humans, more than ever. All because their angel was created by a vampire. It seems silly to her. He clearly meant nothing harmful towards them if he was willing to be loathed by his own to protect humans.

Sorin doesn't respond her her question, lost in the mire of his own thoughts.

Deciding to not press the subject, Valeria threads a needle and begins to sew up the long cut. She briefly considers just using magic and healing it that way, but she isn't sure that it would work on vampires. She's never tried before. She wishes that she had paid more attention to her studies...

"There, done," Valeria announces after a few minutes of work and quiet, tying off the ends of the thread. "I don't need to tell you to be careful not to rip the stitches."

"Thank-you," Sorin murmurs.

He stands up, careful not to strain too much, and towers again over Valeria's messily 5'2". She hadn't really grown over the years and now at twenty, she highly doubts that she's going to get any taller.

It's...surreal, this whole thing. Valeria has to admit that her first time meeting Sorin had made quite the impact on her then thirteen year old mind. He had saved her life, this handsome prince of the vampires. It really hadn't been a surprise that an infatuation had bloomed afterwards. Her parents, upon finding out what had happened, had been utterly horrified. Why couldn't she have taken an interest in the local, and more importantly, human boys?

Valeria had learned to be very good at ignoring the comments and the looks that she had received from those who had learned about the encounter and her "calf love". In their eyes she was an eccentric girl who grew up to be an eccentric woman who was pretty and intelligent, but unable to gain a husband. Her feelings for him had waned as the years had gone by without another meeting with him, but the damage had been done nonetheless.

And now here she is, standing in her little home, her only inheritance after her parents had died, with that man who had been the cause of it. Half-naked, mind you. The realization dawns on her and her face heats up in embarrassment. What makes it worse is that he's lifted a eyebrow. The bastard.

He takes a step towards her and Valeria stumbles back. He's trying to get a rise out of her, she knows, and it's working.

Sorin chuckles and abruptly turns back to the chair.

"So," Valeria clears her throat, wringing her hands. "What are you going to do about...?"

The humor disappears and Sorin picks up his things, going about redressing. "First, I need to find who started these 'rumors'."

"How?"

"By hunting them down." He pulls his coat on over his shoulders and pins Valeria under his stare. "And when I find them, I'll kill them for it."

Valeria shivers at the threat in his voice. "Oh."

Sorin sees it.

"Not so appealing now, am I?" he drawls.

Valeria suddenly wants to throw the bloody towel at his face.

Sorin rests his chin in his hand as he stares out the grimy window, watching the wind pull at the bare limbs of a Hawthorne tree. He had wanted to leave as soon as possible, however, when he had made an attempt to do so, Valeria had insisted -cornered him- that he remain there until he had somewhat healed. He hadn't been happy about it, but realized that he really didn't have the energy to argue with her. She had given him this small, drafty room as a place to sleep for the interim even as she apologized for less-than-elegant state.

His wound throbs as he moves from the window seat to his bed, but he ignores any discomfort it gives him, and lays down on the lumpy bed. The candles that light the room flickers wanly, nearly going out, as a particularly large gust smacks against the outside wall. A heartbeat later, it begins to downpour. The rain beats against the window, forming a curtain of gray. It's probably going to rain all night, which suits Sorin just fine; he always slept better when it rained.

While he lays there, he thinks about what he will do once he leaves Valeria's home. He has every intention on going about what he had suggested to her; he's going to hunt down those who started this mess and kill them in very creative ways. He has, after all, a fairly good idea on who's responsible. He doesn't have one hundred percent proof that his hunch is correct, but it makes sense.

Edgar Markov hasn't spoken with Sorin since he had created Avacyn and there's no doubt in Sorin's mind that if anyone has reason to paint a target on his forehead, it would be his grandfather. Any love that Edgar might have had towards him has long since vanished into the aether.

It's no great loss on his part; Sorin's grudges are legendary and this particular grudge has had centuries to stew.