"So how long ago was that? How did your heart get taken by Serbas?" Adam asked.
"Personally, I felt bad for Serbas," Vlad began, his gaze distant. "It has been more than 100 years since we got here. He, however, lost the souls needed to revive his wife and two children. We were stuck inside, and it became a pocket of our survival. Serbas was locked within the radius of the sealed area, while I was able to dig out more space, helping to make the area more comfortable. Before I was allowed to leave, he asked for my heart since he didn't trust that I would return."
A Century of Isolation and Shifting Alliances
"As I explored the world above, it was just human existence slowly learning about technology, along with their greed and power struggles. I watched as civilizations were lost and kingdoms rose and fell. I stood on the sidelines, collecting resources and bringing them back by making portals to the sealed area. As time went by, Serbas threatened me with my heart, as he'd placed a spell that could take away my abilities and even kill me if I didn't listen to him. I assured him that I was helping him and making it comfortable for him. However, it wasn't enough. He wanted to get out and collect souls to bring his family back."
Vlad's voice hardened. "This is where things grew bad between us. As he continued his demands and threats, he wanted to get the souls from above and use the artifact to break the seal and also bring his family back. I fought back, saying that he had lost it. The people of this world are innocent and have nothing to do with what happened to his family. I told him that even if he killed the people who had done it to his family out of revenge, at least I understood his reason and motivation."
"The human existence here, however, didn't do him wrong. Then I brought up that due to the incident, I lost my family and kingdom being here with him. Serbas was taken aback, knowing he had caused me trouble as well. He knew that he was the reason I lost everything, which is why he stopped threatening me with my heart. I made an exception for him: I would help him collect souls with the artifact, but only by killing the guilty – those that killed others, and those that raped and tortured the innocent. Serbas agreed to the conditions as I brought the artifact and feasted on the guilty souls."
"Then why didn't he leave or revive the family?" Adam asked, confused. "Since there were wars and even years to collect so many souls?"
"There's a problem: human souls of this world don't have mana, making them useless to harvest their souls," Vlad explained, revealing a crucial detail.
"Then why cause the apocalypse, if it's useless to harvest human souls?" Adam pressed.
"That's the issue. I brought back enough souls to unseal and even revive the family. However, the artifact didn't work as we wanted it to. The humans in our world sent us here knowing Serbas could never get out due to this manaless human world. It devastated Serbas, as years of work and being trapped amounted to nothing. He became insane as he tried to find a way to create mana in human souls. Soon enough, he conducted experiments and found ways to connect his subconscious to humans above, influencing them in certain ways and finding clues of any type of ancient knowledge in this world."
"As years went by, his attempts failed, and he slowly gave up the idea and succumbed to his life inside. He learned the sealed magic and tried to remove it but failed. He did, however, do something to the sealed magic without informing me, hiding himself in his own room. After a while, I couldn't help him anymore, as he totally went insane in his own depression. When I returned every year, I only met him to find humans inside his place. I pulled him aside, asking him why he led the humans into his place. He told me that he had given up, since there was no way for him to get human souls to have mana. He tried to channel mana and experiment on the humans, but it failed. So he brought the humans down to have companionship to keep his sanity." Vlad's tale concluded, leaving a profound silence in the room.