Chapter 1 Part 3
Kael couldn't scream.
He wanted to—but the sound got tangled in his throat, crushed by the weight of everything that was happening at once.
The bite was only the beginning.
Pain flared down his neck, but that wasn't the worst of it. No. The worst was deeper—inside his spine, his skull, the marrow of him. Something old and coiled, embedded in the sigil now branded across his vertebrae, had awakened. It didn't feel like a parasite. It felt like a lock turning. And whatever had been sealed inside his blood...
...was opening.
He collapsed sideways, fingers clawing at the cold floor. His HUD was dead—full black. The wrist-mod sparked once and died. His augmented eye showed nothing but static. For a terrifying second, he couldn't even feel his body. Just heat. Rising. And pressure.
Vireya stood above him.
Still. Regal. Watching.
Her lips were stained red with his blood, her expression not regretful, not apologetic—but confused. She held her right hand in front of her, turning it slowly, as if expecting it to dissolve.
"You're not dying," she said.
Kael coughed, hard. His ribs ached. "Good... to hear."
"I didn't feed enough to kill you," she added. "I stopped as soon as the link began."
He rolled onto his back, panting. "The link?"
She crouched beside him, not touching him but close. Her eyes, still glowing faintly with that eerie golden light, studied him. She looked at him like he was a puzzle she half-remembered solving centuries ago.
"You activated the glyph. That isn't just a seal—it's a binding contract. Written in pre-Clade blood rites. You opened it. That makes you the Warden."
Kael laughed, once—dry, bitter. "Lady, I don't even balance my own finances."
Her head tilted. "This shouldn't have been possible."
"Join the club."
He sat up slowly. His vision was doubled, then tripled, before it finally snapped back into clarity. He wiped his mouth. Red. Not just blood. It shimmered faintly, like mercury mixed with ink.
Something in him had changed.
"Okay," he said, dragging breath into his lungs. "You're Vireya. You're Primeclade. That's bad. Because Primeclade is extinct. Erased. Forbidden. Sealed away for good reasons."
She didn't flinch. "And yet, here I am."
"Yeah," he said. "Here we both are."
The room flickered around them.
Above, the emergency sigils began to flare in pulse-rhythm: a deep red glow that bounced between the glyphs like a heartbeat. His HUD crackled to life just long enough to show three words before going dark again.
> PROTOCOL BREACH DETECTED
Kael felt the shift.
The Citadel had noticed.
"Shit," he muttered. "Inquisitors'll be here in minutes."
Vireya stood. Her posture shifted subtly—less disoriented now, more... awake. She moved like someone recovering muscle memory, a queen remembering how to walk after a long sleep.
"Then we move."
He stared at her. "You sure you can move?"
"I've waited a century. I've had time to plan."
She turned toward the west wall of the chamber. Her hand raised, fingers splayed. Glyphs responded. A seam opened, silent, revealing a vertical shaft coated in frost and lined with bones shaped like conduits.
"Maintenance escape route," she said. "Built before they sealed me in. I left cracks."
Kael tried not to think about that. A vampire sealed for a hundred years who had been expecting an escape?
He stumbled after her, ignoring the pain in his legs, the flicker of static still playing behind his eyes. The glyph down his spine was cold now. Dormant. But it wasn't gone. It was waiting.
They climbed together. Her movements were effortless. His were not.
The shaft was narrow, vertical, and full of whispering noise—like static laced with words he almost understood. Names. Places. Bloodlines. Forgotten oaths.
He was halfway up when his heart skipped.
Not from exertion.
From sound.
A mechanical screech echoed from below.
Vireya looked down sharply.
"Drones," she said. "Blood-class."
"You sure?"
"I remember their breath."
They breathe?
Kael didn't ask. They climbed faster.
They emerged through a break in the infrastructure grid—old, unused transit routes sealed off from public access decades ago. The space was lit by dying lamps and biofused moss that pulsed faintly blue on the walls.
Kael collapsed against a pipe, gasping.
Vireya didn't even look winded.
She stared at the city skyline ahead—visible through a grate in the far wall. Towers stabbed into the clouds, their lights moving in perfect sync. The Citadel rose behind them, monolithic and uncaring.
"This city," she whispered.
"You recognize it?" Kael asked, wiping his brow.
"It was cleaner when I ruled it."
He blinked. "You what?"
She said nothing.
Instead, she turned back to him. Her eyes drifted to the sigil still burning faintly on his back.
"I need to stabilize that."
"Yeah, well, I need an exorcist. We don't always get what we want."
She reached into the folds of her gown and retrieved a thin vial. The glass looked like it had been spun from starlight.
"Drink this."
Kael eyed it. "I don't take drinks from vampires I just met."
"It will slow the mutation."
He stared at her. Then drank.
The taste was… nothing. Like silence.
His heart slowed. His limbs stopped shaking. His mind cleared.
A little.
"Thanks," he said reluctantly.
She nodded once.
"Now what?" he asked.
"We disappear," she said. "And you help me finish what I started."
He opened his mouth to argue.
But the first drone passed overhead—a steel-winged blur scanning with a beam of red light.
Kael cursed under his breath.
And followed her into the dark.