Chapter 22- Saving a Maiden

Raven blinked, staring at her status window as it flickered in his vision.

A vampire queen. Reincarnated. Betrayed in her past life.

And somehow sitting in a literature class at Prague University like none of that mattered.

’This world is more fucked up than I thought.’

He dismissed the screen with a mental swipe, his expression shifting back to casual interest. Elena still sat there with her eyes closed, but there was a tension now—like she sensed something had changed but couldn’t quite place what.

"So," Raven said, his voice cutting through the silence between them, "there’s this festival coming up. Few days from now. Spring celebration thing the university does every year."

Elena’s blue eyes opened slowly, focusing on him with that same detached curiosity. "I’m aware of it."

"Yeah, well." He leaned against the desk beside her, keeping his posture relaxed even though his mind was calculating seventeen different approaches to this conversation. "I was thinking about setting up an advertisement booth. You know, for the fest stalls. Get some early promotion going, see what vendors want to participate."

Her head tilted slightly. "That sounds... tedious."

"Pays decent though." He shrugged, watching her reaction carefully. "And I could use someone with an eye for detail. Noticed you’re pretty organized with your notes."

That got a flicker of surprise across her features—barely visible, but his enhanced perception caught it.

Truth was, he had no fucking clue if she was organized or not. But flattery based on observation tended to work better than empty compliments.

Elena’s fingers drummed once against her desk, a nervous habit she probably didn’t realize she had. "You’re asking me to help?"

"More like asking if you want to join me," Raven corrected. "Split the work, split whatever profit comes from it. Fair deal."

For a moment, something shifted in her expression. Not quite interest, but maybe... consideration? Her favorability meter flickered above her head, ticking up from 67% to 68%.

Small progress, but progress nonetheless.

Then she seemed to catch herself, that ice-queen mask sliding back into place like a shield. "I appreciate the offer, but—"

"But?"

"This kind of thing..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Shouldn’t the teachers be the ones assigning these roles? Organizing official university events?"

’There it is.’ Raven recognized the excuse for what it was—a polite rejection wrapped in reasonable logic.

She wasn’t wrong though. Technically, the festival committee usually handled vendor coordination. But that bureaucratic mess took weeks, and he needed something more immediate. More direct.

Something that would get him closer to understanding why a dormant vampire queen was playing college student in modern-day Prague.

"Fair point," he said, straightening up from the desk. No point pushing when the door wasn’t fully open yet. "Just thought I’d ask."

Elena’s gaze lingered on him for half a second longer than necessary—like she wanted to say something else but couldn’t figure out what.

Then she just nodded, that small gesture somehow feeling heavier than it should.

Raven turned and made his way down the lecture hall steps, Dennis already waving frantically from their usual seats in the middle row.

"Dude! Over here!"

The classroom was starting to fill up now, students trickling in with coffee cups and tired expressions. Morning classes always had that half-dead energy to them.

Raven slid into the seat beside Dennis, who immediately leaned over with wide eyes. "Bro, did you actually just talk to Elena Martinez? Like, for real?"

"Yeah. So?"

"So?!" Dennis looked at him like he’d sprouted a second head. "That’s Elena fucking Martinez! Nobody talks to her! She’s like... untouchable!"

"She’s a person, Dennis."

"A person who rejected the football captain!" Dennis hissed, keeping his voice low as more students filtered in. "And the student council president! And that exchange student from Germany who looked like he stepped out of a cologne ad!"

Raven just shrugged, pulling out his notebook. "Maybe they weren’t her type."

"And you think you are?"

"Didn’t say that."

But the truth was, he didn’t need to be her "type." Not in the conventional sense, anyway.

What he needed was to figure out how a reincarnated vampire queen ended up in this timeline—and why her dormant bloodline hadn’t awakened yet despite clearly having the potential.

Because if there was one thing his regression had taught him, it was that power like hers didn’t stay dormant forever.

Eventually, something would trigger it.

And when it did, he wanted to be close enough to make sure that awakening went in his favor.

Dennis was still rambling something about Elena’s rejection statistics when Professor Karev walked in, dumping a stack of papers on the desk with the kind of exhausted sigh only tenured faculty could muster.

"Alright, settle down," the professor muttered, not even looking up. "We’re discussing the symbolism in early Romantic poetry today. Try to stay awake."

A collective groan rippled through the class.

Raven flipped open his notebook, mind already half-elsewhere. He needed to figure out his next move with Elena—something subtle, something that wouldn’t trigger her walls going up higher.

Beside him, Dennis finally stopped talking and started digging through his bag for a pen.

"By the way, dude," Dennis said, turning to his right, "did you finish that essay on Byron’s—"

He stopped mid-sentence.

Blinked.

Then stared at the empty seat beside him with his mouth hanging open.

"What the fuck?"

Raven’s seat was completely empty.

No bag. No notebook. No sign that anyone had been sitting there at all.

Dennis twisted around, scanning the classroom in confusion. Students were settling into their seats, Professor Karev was pulling up slides on the projector, everything looked normal.

Except Raven Lustre—who had literally just been sitting next to him thirty seconds ago—had completely vanished.

"Where the hell did he go?" Dennis muttered, half to himself.

"Mr. Kozlov!"

Dennis flinched, head snapping forward to see Professor Karev glaring at him over thick-rimmed glasses.

"Since you seem so interested in whatever is *not* my lecture," the professor said dryly, "perhaps you’d like to explain the significance of the sublime in Wordsworth’s ’Tintern Abbey’?"

"I—uh—"

"That’s what I thought." Professor Karev’s expression could have curdled milk. "Pay attention, or you’ll be writing a ten-page essay on Romantic transcendentalism by Friday."

Dennis sank lower in his seat, face burning as scattered snickers echoed around the room.

But his eyes kept darting to that empty seat beside him.

Raven had just... disappeared.

In the middle of a fucking classroom.

At the back of the lecture hall, Elena sat perfectly still in her corner seat, hands folded on her desk like always.

But her eyes—those sharp blue eyes—were locked on the empty space where Raven had been sitting.

Her fingers tightened slightly against her knuckles.

"Did he just vanish from his seat?" she murmured, so quietly even she barely heard it.

The words hung in the air, unanswered.

Around her, students were pulling out laptops and textbooks, settling into the mind-numbing rhythm of morning lecture.

But Elena couldn’t look away from that empty chair.

Something was wrong.

Or maybe... something was finally starting to make sense.

’N-no, is this another hallucination?’

The corridor stretched ahead like some kind of empty promise—fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, scuffed linoleum reflecting nothing worth remembering.

Raven walked with both hands shoved in his pockets, his mind already three steps ahead of where his feet were taking him.

Elena. Vampire bloodline. Dormant power.

’I’ll get her to spread those legs, fuck her proper, steal that bloodline for myself,’ he thought, the plan forming with the kind of casual brutality that came from too many lifetimes of survival. ’And maybe—’maybe’—I’ll help her escape that mayor’s son idiot she’s tied to afterall.’