Eleanor Ashcroft was not meant for immortality.

Born into the rigid expectations of Victorian society, she lived a life of quiet obedience—measured steps, lowered eyes, and words left unsaid. Love, when it came, arrived cloaked in devotion and promises of escape. The man who courted her spoke of eternity as if it were a gift.

It was not.

Turned against her will beneath candlelight and whispered vows, Eleanor awoke to a hunger she never sought and a body that no longer obeyed the laws of life. Her transformation was not violent, but deliberate—a possession disguised as affection. When she refused to belong to him, she was abandoned rather than destroyed.

Eleanor survived.

She learned restraint in an age that demanded submission, mastering her thirst through discipline rather than cruelty. The rituals once used to control her became tools of her own making. She feeds sparingly, guided by memory rather than instinct, and walks the centuries hidden behind mourning black and lace.

Eleanor Ashcroft does not seek vengeance. She does not forgive. She endures.

She remains a reminder that immortality can be a sentence—and that survival itself can be an act of rebellion.