The Capital of the Aurelian Empire did not change overnight. It did not fall to a siege engine, nor did it crumble under a spell. It changed slowly, like ink spreading through a glass of water.
It started in the shadows of the most respectable bedrooms.
The bedchamber of Lord Varic, the Imperial Minister of War, was usually a place of rigid discipline. The sheets were starched, the Aether-lamps were dimmed to a sensible 20% luminosity, and the conversation was strictly about the weather or the price of grain.
Tonight, however, the atmosphere was suffocating.
Lord Varic stood by the window, loosening his collar. He looked at his wife, Lady Clara. For twenty years, she had been the model of Solar Virtue—draped in white, soft-spoken, and utterly predictable.
Tonight, she was wearing a silk gown the color of a bruised plum. And she was staring at him.
"Clara?" Varic asked, his voice trembling slightly. "Is the... is the heating crystal malfunctioning? You are looking at me with... intensity."
"I am looking for your soul, Varic," Clara murmured. She didn't blink. "Do you have one? Or has the bureaucracy eaten it?"
Varic took a step back, clutching his sleeping cap. "I... I filed the soul-tax forms last week, my dear. Everything is in order."
Clara sighed—a sound of profound, tragic disappointment. She turned back to her vanity table. Resting there, disguised beneath a hollowed-out cover of The Daily Hymns of Light, was a black leather book.
She had paid her personal seamstress triple the usual rate to sew it into the lining of her winter coat. It smelled of contraband ink and danger.
She opened it to Chapter 9: The Invitation.
"He does not beg," she read aloud, her voice dropping to a husky whisper that made Varic's knees knock together. "The Solar Saints demand your worship because they are vain. The Count waits at the door because he is hungry. He wants you to open the lock. He wants you to choose your own destruction."
Clara ran a finger down the page. She looked at her husband's comfortable paunch. She looked at the sensible wool socks he wore to bed.
"Varic," she whispered. "Bite me."
"Excuse me?!" Varic squeaked.
"Bite me," she repeated, her eyes gleaming with a terrifying light. "Or at least... loom. Can you loom, Varic? Cast a shadow? Anything?"
"I... I can dim the lamp further?"
Clara blew out the candle with a sharp breath. The room plunged into darkness.
"Go to sleep, Minister," she said from the void. "I have a date with a fictional monster."
Varic lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, terrified that his wife might actually invite a vampire through the window if he didn't start acting more "predatory."
Miles away, the rain lashed against the stone pavement of the Imperial Training Grounds.
Sir Leon, the nineteen-year-old Prodigy of the Knight's Order, stood in the center of the mud. He was the poster boy for the Empire: blonde, chivalrous, and annoyingly perfect.
Usually, he fought with the "Solar Style"—flashy, bright, and loud.
Tonight, he stood perfectly still.
Three senior instructors circled him, wooden practice blades raised. They were sweating. Leon wasn't.
"Come on, Captain!" one instructor yelled, trying to hype himself up. "Show us the Light of the Vanguard!"
Leon didn't answer. He simply breathed out.
Earlier that morning, he had confiscated a "heretical text" from a terrified squire. He had intended to burn it. Instead, he had sat in the locker room for four hours, reading Chapter 13: The Wolf's Patience.
The wolf does not bark, the text had said. Barking is a warning. The wolf does not warn. The wolf convinces the sheep that running is an insult to the inevitability of death.
Leon lowered his sword tip to the mud. He didn't assume a stance. He relaxed his shoulders. He let his eyelids droop, mimicking the description of Count Dracul in the banquet scene.
Killing Intent, Leon thought. Not Mana. Not Muscle. Pure, distilled pressure.
He looked at the instructor on the left. He didn't look at the man's sword. He looked at the man's throat.
The instructor froze. He faltered, his instinct screaming that he wasn't looking at a knight, but at something that lived in the dark.
"Sir?" the instructor stammered, lowering his guard. "You're... you're doing that thing with your eyes."
"What thing?" Leon whispered.
"The... the thing where you look like you're going to eat my liver."
Leon smiled. It wasn't his usual bright, heroic smile. It was a small, sharp thing.
"Yield," Leon said softly.
The instructor dropped his sword. Clang.
"Pathetic," Leon murmured, channeling the Count's arrogance. "But effective."
He picked up his towel and walked off the field, leaving the veterans shivering in the rain. He needed to get back to his quarters. He had to read the chapter on "Mist-Step Footwork" before the morning drill.
High above the city, in the climate-controlled silence of the Grand Library, Lady Vianne was committing academic fraud.
Vianne was the Archmage's daughter. Her IQ was rumored to be higher than the Spire itself. She was supposed to be studying Advanced Thermodynamics of Fireballs.
Instead, she was hunched over a desk in the Restricted Section, hidden behind a fortress of scrolls.
Inside a thick tome titled The Economic Impact of Goblin Migration, she had hidden the Black Book. She had traded a high-grade Levitation Crystal to a courier just to get her hands on the latest chapters.
"It's not a metaphor," Vianne hissed to herself, her glasses sliding down her nose. "The Church says it's poetry. The Knights say it's strategy. They're all simpletons. It's Arcane Theory."
She tapped her quill frantically against Chapter 15: The Mist Form.
"He did not vanish," the text read. "He loosened the Aetheric bindings of his form. He commanded his Mana to vibrate at the frequency of the fog itself. He became the space between the particles."
Vianne grabbed a piece of chalk and began scribbling equations on the floor.
"Vibration," she muttered, her eyes wide and manic. "The Solar Mages teach us that matter is solid because of the Sun's Will. But Truck-kun is suggesting that matter is just... condensed Mana held together by intent."
If this was true, it disproved five hundred years of Magical Law.
She held up her hand. She closed her eyes. She didn't chant a spell. She tried to loosen her spirit, visualizing her atoms drifting apart like the Count entering the asylum.
Be the mist. Be the void.
For a nanosecond, her fingertips blurred. They turned translucent.
"By the Eternal," she gasped, snapping back to reality. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
This wasn't fiction. This was a thesis.
"Who are you, Truck-kun?" she whispered, staring at the book with terrified reverence. "You aren't a writer. You're a rogue Archmage from the Void Lands. And you're teaching us forbidden magic for three copper coins a week."
She grabbed her notebook. She had to document this. She would title her paper: Theoretical Applications of Vampiric Phase-Shifting. Her father would be so proud. Or he would have her exorcised. It was a 50/50 chance.
The Golden Palace
The infection had reached the highest peak.
Crown Prince Valian, the Heir to the Solar Throne, was hiding in the Royal Linen Closet.
Valian was the "Golden Boy." He was blonde, handsome, and universally loved. He spent his days waving at crowds, kissing babies, and cutting ribbons. He was the embodiment of Light.
And he hated it.
"Your Highness?" The Captain of the Royal Guard knocked on the closet door. "The Ambassador from the Elven Isles is waiting. He brought gifts."
"Tell him I have... Solar Flare Sickness!" Valian hissed through the keyhole.
"Sir? That's not a real disease."
"It is now! Leave me!"
Valian sat on a pile of towels. In his hands was the book he had swiped from a laundry maid, who had been crying over it while folding his socks.
He was reading Chapter 20: The Crown of Bone.
It was the scene where Dracul meets a human King. The King threatens Dracul with armies. Dracul just laughs.
"You wear a crown of gold," Dracul sneered in the text. "It is heavy with obligation. I wear a crown of shadow. It weighs nothing, for I answer to no one. You rule the day, little King. But the night? The night is mine."
Valian gripped the page. A shiver went down his spine that had nothing to do with the drafty closet.
"I answer to no one," Valian whispered.
He stood up and looked at his reflection in a silver platter resting on the shelf. He tried to look menacing. He narrowed his eyes. He curled his lip.
He looked like a golden retriever trying to be a wolf.
"Dammit," Valian cursed, ruffling his perfectly gelled hair to make it look 'wild' and 'tortured.' "I'm too shiny. I need... darkness. I need mystery."
He resolved to stop wearing yellow. From now on, he would wear midnight blue. He would stop waving. He would brood.
"Captain!" Valian shouted through the door. "Cancel the tea party! I am going to the crypts to... contemplate the futility of existence!"
"Sir, the crypts are full of spiders."
"Then I shall commune with the arachnids!"
On the East Wing Terrace of the Astrea Estate, the cause of this societal collapse was currently eating a peach.
Julian wiped juice from his chin. "Marcus, how is the supply chain?"
Marcus, the High Steward, looked like a man who had aged ten years in three weeks. He placed a heavy ledger on the table.
"It is a catastrophe of success, My Lord. The Paper Guild has run out of stock. We are currently printing on napkins. Silas has hired twenty new couriers because the noblewomen are bribing the old ones to deliver chapters early."
"And the reception?"
"Mixed," Marcus noted dryly. "The Church has declared a 'Spiritual Emergency.' The Knights are arguing over whether 'Vampirism' is a valid martial art. And the Archmage Solus has sent a formal request to meet 'The Scholar Truck-kun' to discuss 'Quantum Mana Theory'."
Julian laughed. "They're overthinking it. It's just a story."
"Is it?" Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Lady Clara has stopped attending the Solar Mass. Sir Leon nearly hospitalized an instructor using 'The Glare.' You haven't written a book, My Lord. You've handed a loaded weapon to a bored society."
Julian clicked his Space Pen. The sound was crisp in the night air.
"Good," Julian grinned, his eyes sharp. "If they liked the Vampire... wait until they meet the Werewolves . I'm thinking of introducing a character who rejects society to run wild in the woods. The Prince is going to lose his mind."
"Please, My Lord," Marcus sighed, pouring wine. "Spare the Prince. He's already trying to dye his cape black."