From the Private Papers of Vlad Dracula
Sealed Addendum — Transversal Surveillance Archive
Rova does not belong to this world.
That is precisely why she is useful.
Her presence carries the faint dissonance of misalignment—subtle enough that most cannot name it, strong enough that systems behave differently around her. Doors open where they should not. Boundaries thin. Patterns hesitate. She walks between planes not as a conqueror or scholar, but as a hunter who refuses to accept borders as meaningful.
Her appearance is deliberately misleading. Youthful. Casual. Almost careless. The bandages, the exposed skin, the irreverent accessories—all of it signals impermanence. She looks like someone passing through because she is. This disarms observers and unsettles those who recognize the lie beneath it.
Rova’s humor is not coping. It is distance.
She laughs because she has seen too many versions of the same horror to dignify it with solemnity. Demons, to her, are not metaphysical evils or theological errors. They are invasive species. She eradicates them with the same focus one would apply to fire or disease. No hatred. No mercy. Only completion.
Her mastery of plane-walking is instinctual rather than ritualized. She does not open gates so much as step sideways when reality loosens. This suggests an internal adaptation rather than learned technique—an evolutionary response to prolonged exposure to unstable realms. I have forbidden further experimentation on this point. Some phenomena are more valuable unexplained.
Rova’s appointment as spymaster was inevitable. She does not gather information through infiltration or coercion. She gathers it by standing where secrets cannot help but reveal themselves. Entire demonic networks collapse simply because she exists in proximity to them.
She is loyal, but not reverent. She respects capability, not title. This places her in quiet tension with the Court, which mistakes loyalty for submission. Rova submits to nothing. She aligns.
Her cigarette habit is affectation and ritual combined. The ash flick is not idle—it marks transitions. Moments before movement. Moments after a decision has been made. The cross she wears is neither mockery nor faith. It is a reminder that symbols only matter insofar as they wound what believes in them.
I trust Rova because she does not seek permanence. She does not want to rule. She does not want to perfect the Night. She wants to thin the infestation beyond it.
Should she one day decide that vampires qualify as demons by her definition, she will not hesitate.
This possibility does not concern me.
A blade that might one day turn is still preferable to one that grows dull.
Rova is the Court’s eye beyond reality—and its reminder that even eternity can be hunted.