“Miss… you…” The vampire—who had been posing as a real estate agent—stammered helplessly as they stepped out of the secret passage.

  “I understand his appearance is… difficult for ladies to accept,” the agent said, bowing slightly. “But His Lordship means no harm. Thank you for keeping your composure and soothing him.”

  “It was nothing,” she replied. “I came seeking his help, and my request clearly disturbed him. The least I could do was offer some comfort. You, on the other hand, risked the sun to gather flowers for him—that’s far more commendable.”

  Vampires revered their sires with the reverence of children honoring ancestors—a primal instinct. Yet the one entombed here was no kin of the agent’s bloodline, despite his age. No ancestral authority bound him. His aid was given freely.

  “It’s different,” the agent insisted. “I am Kindred—I understand his suffering. But you, a mortal, faced him without flinching. That takes courage and kindness alike. Truly… thank you.”

  Randall murmured agreement, though his thoughts had already strayed.

  The Kindred boasted of their immortality, claiming superiority over transient humans. And yet—where were the eldest among them? The oldest living vampires dated only to the Medieval Ages. What of those from Rome? The Iron Age? They had not vanished. They could not.

  Few knew the truth: Rome’s adoption laws were a vampire’s invention, designed to pass wealth to those who truly bore the cursed blood.

  Immortality came at a price. Though their flesh endured, their souls withered. Some elders chose the sun before madness took them. Others rotted into monstrosities—slain by witchers or their own desperate progeny.

  Even the Prince had grown weary. Aurora’s execution had only deepened his solitude. Soon, perhaps, he too would seek the dawn, crumbling beneath his roses.

  And yet—

  Randall’s fists tightened as he watched Yvette, radiant with joy over the agent’s pastries.

  Her time was even shorter.

  What was eternity worth, without those who gave it meaning? It was no blessing. Only a curse.

  Now, at last, he understood the Prince’s melancholy. And in understanding, he felt its weight settle upon himself.

  Once, gazing from the castle’s heights, he had watched villagers celebrate a wedding—music and laughter drifting on the wind. The sight had twisted his heart with envy for the man who would someday stand at her side.

  But now… now he imagined something far darker.

  Her death.

  Marriage might not be the worst fate. At least she would leave descendants—children with her blood, her fire.

  And when the time came… perhaps he would Embrace one.

  Their blood would merge.

  Would that not make them his child too—hers and his?

  That evening, Yvette returned to her Covent Garden apartment. After a soothing bath, she curled up in an armchair by the fireplace, cradling a warm mug of cocoa. A notebook lay open on her lap—pages filled with Chinese characters documenting recent mysteries that still eluded her.

  Her mind churned with unsettling questions from the past days. The ghoul who'd used wealth and status to hide among humans, feeding on corpses in plain sight. The ancient vampire lurking in catacombs, adopting the personalities of his victims through their blood.

  The ghoul's target had clearly been his own daughter. Dr. Leptun had confessed everything, yet even he couldn't explain his unnatural craving to consume his own family—a compulsion most ghouls didn't share. His grotesque transformation was equally puzzling. In this age, supernatural beings rarely displayed such obvious mutations. Had his mountain guide's flesh poisoned him? Or had the Alpine caves where he hid contained some eldritch influence?

  And then there was the vampire...

  Beyond the reasons she'd voiced for sparing him, Yvette harbored a secret she'd never share. Against all logic, she'd felt an eerie kinship with the creature—like patients sharing the same hospital ward. In her past life, fellow sufferers had been her only outlet for fears and despair. Family would only worry. Doctors were too busy—and she'd noticed how asylum windows were designed to prevent escapes. No need to burden them with dark thoughts.

  But why identify with a monster? Perhaps events had simply overwhelmed her senses. As sleep claimed her, dreams blurred reality's edges. The waking world might be the true illusion—its madness only visible in dreams.

  Her mind built labyrinthine corridors, endless halls lined with locked doors concealing unspoken horrors. Rain-smeared windows showed misty towers looming through storms, while abyssal fog coiled like living mist below.

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  She waited. He would come. Their bond pulsed through shared blood—his murderer's mark upon her. Though she hadn't slain him, if his desire remained, he'd find her.

  Footsteps approached through rain. At the knock, ravenous hunger surged through her—serpentine and trembling with excitement. She knew her guest's craving matched her own. No need for pretense now.

  Born from sin, corrupted by temptation, he offered himself as sacrifice. She would feast, yet grant absolution in return—the Primordial Serpent's mercy for debts repaid. Dagger in hand, she descended spiraling stairs toward dark communion...

  Yvette jolted awake at dawn, the coppery tang of blood flooding her mouth. Despite delivering Dr. Leptun to justice, the dreams had returned.

  Stumbling to the washroom, she spat into the basin—and for a heartbeat, the water ran pink, like a ghoul rinsing away evidence. Blinking cleared the illusion. Just fatigue.

  Two dream types visited her: memories stolen from slain supernaturals through their blood, and rarer visions of the world's hidden truths—perhaps divine rewards. Dr. Leptun's memories confirmed his grisly confession: chewing his own child's stiffened flesh from his wife's portrait, a horror still twisting her stomach.

  But the followIng vision chilled deeper—the half-fish monsters he'd described, swarming over a rotting mountain of flesh. Sometimes eating each other. She'd seen this grotesque "flesh-god" before when slaying fishmen aboard the Trident. Back then, its tumorous tentacles hunted the hybrids. Now the roles reversed—the festering deity lay dead, gutted by its offspring gorging on its putrid innards.

  These hybrids were its children. The primordial being had preyed on its own—just as Leptun craved his family's flesh. Was this the infection's source? Some blasphemous mimicry of ancient rites?

  Yet countless cannibals existed without transforming. What made Leptun different? Her thoughts turned to the Alps—where miners found ocean fossils in peaks Leonardo once theorized were seabeds. Modern science knew of the Tethys Ocean, crushed between colliding continents to birth the Alps and Himalayas. Could this be the deity's burial site—a cosmic "whale fall" where sea-life feasted for eons?

  If primordial gods never truly died, what had slain this one? Those weeping wounds, organs boiling with disease...

  And the hybrids spawned new dread. Dagon—the fish-god of Mediterranean cults—might he be one such offspring, gaining divinity by gorging on his progenitor's corpse?

  The terrifying thought struck Yvette like a blow—once again, she felt as though she stood at the brink of a bottomless abyss, balancing on a rotted plank barely a foot wide. Any moment, it might splinter, sending her tumbling into madness.

  If even the faintest echo of an ancient past could hold such power—if some bumbling mortal’s clumsy imitation could stir the remnants of a forgotten feast and ensnare minds with visions of horror—then what unimaginable beings must the true Old Gods have been? What force could have cast down these eternal titans to the ocean’s depths?

  Had the Old Gods warred among themselves? Or...

  Yvette recalled the blind hatred she’d felt under the Serpent’s influence—the visceral loathing for other Chosen, the divine approval when she sacrificed them.

  What role had the Serpent played in the fall of its kin? Had it watched? Or had it struck the killing blow?

  Shaking off the thoughts, Yvette steadied herself and inventoried the gifts from the Slumbering Creator.

  This time, her dream had shown her a triumph.

  Rose petals rained over a city as toga-clad crowds cheered their Imperator—a conqueror returning in glory.

  Bathed in the adoration of senators and commoners alike, the warlord rode a golden chariot, his face smeared with crimson, his body adorned with jewels. He gripped a scepter and laurel branch as armored soldiers escorted him up the Sacred Way to the marble temple atop the hill. Noble households lined the path, offering wine and feasts for his troops.

  Behind him came wagons groaning with plunder—idols of foreign gods buried under gold and silk. Chained prisoners stumbled alongside: enemy officers, nobles, and their weeping families, dragged toward the mountain shrine.

  At the temple’s base, priests replaced the crowd, their incense and hymns guiding the procession inside.

  In the Pantheon, stolen gods of conquered nations stood enshrined. The Imperator knew even heathen deities held power; he’d placed their idols here to be worshiped before the sacrifice began.

  At his nod, priests slit the prisoners’ throats, spilling their blood into the sacred flames.

  Fed by carnage, the fire burned unnaturally—its light twisting the Imperator’s face into something less than human. His eyes elongated like a goat’s, his feet hardening into hooves.

  Then, a slave stepped from the shadows.

  Scarred and starved, the man shoved a jagged golden crown—woven with thorned roses—onto the Imperator’s brow, hissing in his ear:

  "Remember, you are mortal!"

  Thorns pierced flesh, blood blurring vision.

  Whether it was the slave’s degradation or the pain that broke the spell, the Imperator’s rapture shattered. He drew a shuddering breath, and when his eyes reopened, they were human again.

  With a gesture, he halted further sacrifices. He’d paid the gods their due in blood; the rest would be enslaved.

  The feast began. Soldiers drank and roared his name, praising the divine-blooded conqueror. Yet the Imperator tore off his royal purple, stalking toward the captive women. He seized the fairest priestess and took her atop the temple steps, reveling in her terror.

  The dream shifted—past the towering columns, Yvette saw the throne room empty but for a single figure.

  A nude woman sat upon the central dais, her hair unbound, crowned only by crimson roses. In her hands glowed a lamp so bright it burned through shut eyelids, searing into the mind.

  The Light of Arcane Wisdom. Only those who sought truth beyond the veil could perceive it.

  In mystic tradition, such visions—the triumph, the rose-crowned woman—were symbols. A new Sephirah opened its doors.

  Netzach—[Victory].

  The fourth Sephirah, where mortal will reached its zenith. The final step before surrendering humanity for higher realms.

  In the dream, the Imperator had nearly lost himself—until a whip-scarred slave stabbed his brow with a crown of golden thorns.

  His eyes, full of fear and hunger, had said it all: Reason is no match for the abyss.

  Yvette had lived that dream. She’d been the conqueror, drunk on wine and bloodlust. She’d felt the crown’s bite, heard the slave’s voice:

  "Remember, you are mortal!"

  The ecstasy of conquest was the lure of power. The scarred slave—human frailty, wounded yet unbroken.

  But what of the next Sephirah? Would a godlike conqueror still heed a slave’s warning? Would he spare the voice that might drag him back from the edge?

  Yvette plunged her face into freezing water, scrubbing away the dream.

  Drying her fingers first, she felt static crackle at her fingertips—a flicker of lightning.

  The power of Netzach?

  She tried to hurl it like a spell—Lightning Javelin—but it refused. Within three meters, she could shape the current like clay. Release it, and it vanished. Air itself resisted, thick as a wall.

  No ranged strikes. Not yet.

  Electricity had a mind of its own—slippery, drawn only to metal. Fine control was possible, but brute force? Futile.

  There had to be another way.