Written by The Curator
Based on an idea by Juliet Landau & Christos Gage
Artwork and Covers by Steve Morris
“No curtain for you.”
Drusilla
It required an offering.
Not blood. Not soul.
Memory.
The memories of me. In exchange for immortality. The ability to be her Chronicler forever.
I found Thantorix in the hollow beneath the abandoned observatory in Northumberland. He was older than vowels, coiled in metal and shadow. No eyes – just recognition.
“I want permanence,” I said.
“You’ll have obsession,” he replied.
Thantorix smiled – if you could call it that.
“Now you live in the cracks. Where stories are immune to deletion.”
I asked “Will she remember me?”
He paused. The grin he gave made me shiver and I flinched.
I traded everything.
Name. Records. Photographs. Online presence. Birth certificate. Family threads. Digital echoes.
My bank deleted me.
My landlord forgot me.
My reflection took three seconds to catch up when I stared at it.
I called this stage the Blank Era.
No Drusilla.
No sightings.
No shadows.
The forums fell silent. Hunter groups shifted their focus.
No spirals.
No blood-trails.
Just emptiness.
My notebook grew heavier.
My camera lighter.
I baited her.
I sent anonymous letters to vampire cults. Carved spirals into stonework. Left artifacts she’d recognise – hair ribbons, old tarot cards, cryptic theatre posters.
I orchestrated a mock ritual in an old abbey – dripping red dye across pews, letting candles burn low, playing distorted music on loop.
I waited five nights.
She came on the sixth.
She walked past me.
Looked through me.
Moved like velvet on wind.
She danced once, giggled, murmured to a shadow in the rafters.
And went to leave.
I spoke her name.
She turned.
Looked puzzled.
“No curtain for you,” she whispered.
Then she was gone.
I dissolved.
Over months.
Lost appetite. Stopped filming. My shrine became weather-warped paper. The strings sagged. The database corrupted. My reflection blurred.
I had no voice anymore – just notebooks full of whispers.
She had forgotten me.
I had erased myself for nothing.
I found her again in Brighton.
She sang to pigeons.
She kissed the ocean spray.
She twirled beside a fire juggler and whispered into his ear.
When he turned, he wept.
I dropped my bag and walked away.
Left it beneath a bench wrapped in plastic.
Inside: my final journal. My drawings. My transcript of the church tapes. My sketch of her face. My annotations on Archaeus, Aurelius, and the bloodline mythos.
The book smelled like dust and ink and obsession.
She saw it.
Picked it up with one hand.
Hummed.
Flipped.
Laughed.
Paused at a sketch.
Her finger drifted over the word Archaeus.
She smiled.
The sea roared.
She sang to it.
I watched from down the beach, fading from history.
She sang louder.
And I, finally, disappeared.
The Watcher's Guide 