A single day had crawled by since those vile blood parasites had latched themselves onto Dracula's flesh, embedding deep like iron nails driven by a wrathful cosmos. They were not mere creatures, but curses given form—each one gnawing, sucking, and siphoning his primordial lifeblood with a hunger that could unmake worlds. By every calculation, by every rule of vitality, he should have been a husk by now. A titan brought to its knees.
"They should've drained him to nothing already," said Seraphel, the seraphic sovereign whose wings shimmered like spears forged from starlight. Rising slowly from where he leaned against a pillar of crystal light, his voice carried a note of urgency that snapped through the chamber. "If they haven't bled him dry, they've at least weakened him to the brink. This is the moment to strike. Let him have no chance to recover. We move now, while he's bleeding, while he's desperate."
