You see it in movies all the time, so much so that it’s a cliche nowadays.

  The hero standing alone against a horde of enemies, pulling off all these flashy moves. Spinning, twirling, cutting down foes one or two at a time. It’s all so clean, so calculated, like the bad guys are too dumb to overwhelm him. The kind of fight that looks great on screen, but never quite feels real.

  Well, I wasn’t a hero.

  And this sure as hell wasn’t no action movie.

  As soon as I fell into the tide of rotten freaks I instantly got mobbed, buried under a sea of dead, putrid and rotten meat. Crooked fingers with cracked nails carved into my flesh, bared teeth caked in dried blood snapped and tore at every inch of me and fists fell like a halestorm.

  And I struck out. Every hit fueled by frantic survival instinct and desperation.

  Prone on my back with too many corpses around to even try and get up, I struck like a cornered rat. No elegance, no strategy, no plan, I punched and kicked and thrashed at everything around me, trying, struggling to not get pinned down.

  I couldn’t even scream.

  Only because I wasn’t mortal anymore had I not just outright died from the gunshot.

  Only because I didn’t need to breathe anymore did I not just suffocate from my shredded chest and neck.

  And only because I was a vampire did I not just go into shock from being shredded like a pound of beef through a meat grinder.

  “Fool. Imbecile. Cretin. Do you see where your choices have brought us?” The voice—cold, venomous—raged in my mind, each word like a lash of cruel reality.

  I couldn’t answer. There was no time, no space to think. Every ounce of my being, every flicker of my mind, was consumed with one thought: survive. Strike. Don’t let them drag you under.

  But I was losing.

  The dead pressed in from all sides, an unrelenting tide of flesh and rot, and I was caught in the center of it, sinking.

  “Free yourself. Free us or we die”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand” I roared in my own head, the voice in my head lost in a scream as a clammy hand tore into the side of my face, cold fingers reeking of gangrene and putrescence digging into my flesh, bursting my eye, with a strength only the dead possessed.

  “Weakling infant. You choose to fight in separation of your better self. We. Are. One. So FREE US!”

  I shrugged the hand off, slammed my fist into a slack-jawed face, folding the bone over my knuckles, lashed out with my leg and felt a knee shatter against my heel.

  But there were too many. Every time I struck, grasping hands and rotten teeth would snap and tear at my arm. Every time I kicked, splintered fingers and frothing mouths would collapse onto my leg and rip at it.

  And with every monster I shrugged off, two would take its place.

  Rage, hate and spite boiled in my stomach, a venomous cocktail mixed with pure frantic despair.

  Was this it?

  Was this how I was going to die?

  Torn to pieces by a herd of brainless corpses?

  No.

  Die as spitefully as I can? No. Not anymore. I refuse. I refuse to die.

  They don’t get to kill me.

  The world doesn’t get to kill me.

  I. REFUSE!

  “Yesss….. that’s the way” the voice slithered and sung, extending from the back of my mind with a grasp as cold as ice and dark as murder.

  “Leave it all behind. All fear. All doubt. All hesitation. There is no past, nor future. Just the now. Just this moment. Just the beauty of predation”

  And I did.

  I let it go.

  Every ounce of rage, every scrap of spite, all the bitter vitriol bubbling in my gut erupted in a savage wave. The floodgates cracked wide open. It was as if the dam inside me had shattered, the tension pouring out in a single violent surge, rushing through my veins, setting every nerve on fire.

  Blood geysered from my gut and flooded my entire body, empowering every cell, every muscle fiber and every bone. My fangs tore free from their sockets, sharp and primal, as my jaw cracked open, unhinging, opening so wide that my cheeks tore apart.

  Hands waxed and warped, nails thickening and lengthening into talons, skin tightening into leathery armor, in a jagged, fluid transformation, an unholy fusion of bone and fury.

  From my one remaining eye, all vision collapsed into a singular point of blinding crimson, sharpening until the world was a haze of pulsing red. Every artery, every joint, every fragile vulnerability around me illuminated like a beacon in the darkness, clear and undeniable. Each soft, exposed point begged to be torn open, each weakness a promise of destruction.

  The chaos of the world melted away, leaving only the sharp, singular clarity of the hunt. I saw them all now—prey, vulnerable, ripe for the taking.

  “Bask in the joy of Frenzy and become what you were always meant to be. My most beautiful and beloved self” the voice purred, all enmity and malice gone.

  The bellow growing in my throat cascaded out in a deafening cacophony that was, at once, singularly human and purely bestial.

  And free I became.

  My claws ripped and tore into flesh, carving meat and piercing bone. My knuckles cracked and powdered all solidity into broken, suppurating flesh. My legs caved in skulls and rib cages. My teeth tore shoulders and heads off, in ribbons of rotten blood and corpse-pus.

  Freedom.

  The kind that bled away all complexity, all noise.

  There was no room for thought beyond the next swipe of claw, the next savage bite. No doubts gnawing at the edges of my mind. No fears clawing at my soul. No hesitation.

  No past. No future.

  Only the now.

  Only the blood, the claws, the teeth.

  I was the predator. And it was all I would ever need to be.

  In that brutal simplicity, that wild, mindless lack of reason, there was an ecstasy deeper than anything a woman, a drink, or any drug could offer.

  The pure, unbridled ecstasy of freedom—raw, untamed, and all-consuming.

  I struck and tore, my strikes increasingly more savage and sure with every passing second. With each corpse I sundered, the press of bodies around me waned until the lull became enough that I got my feet under me.

  Then I pounced and lunged and bulled into the tide of rotting flesh, breaking meat and shattering bone with every motion, pushing further and further into the press, ripping and raking all around me with teeth and claw.

  Pulping and crushing all that fell beneath with boot and knee.

  Until finally, the edge broke and I barrelled onto the outer rim of the herd, where the impossible wall of corpses was gone, replaced only with stragglers.

  The same primal instinct that had driven me to fight now redirected, reoriented.

  Escape. Survive. Find sanctuary.

  Propelling me forward in a leap that felt more beast than man. My hands and feet slapped against the concrete with the ferocity of some dread jungle cat, muscles coiling and uncoiling with a fluid grace I shouldn’t have been capable of. I weaved and bulled my way through the shambling dead, moving with a speed and alacrity that defied logic, tearing across the concrete, quickly putting distance between myself and the maddened herd shuffling just behind.

  The few lingering rotbloods were nothing more than fleeting obstacles, barely worth a thought as I tore through them like chaff in the wind and barreled toward the back entrance of the Mall, the glass of the rotating door shattering around me with a sickening crash.

  I was unstoppable.

  Unbreakable.

  It took no more than seconds for me to get my bearings once inside.

  Three floors of empty shops and echoing hallways, with nothing but a pair of central escalators and elevators to get from one to the other. I knew this place well—had worked here enough, fixing things, maintaining it, until I could navigate it with my eyes closed.

  The Mall had its share of rotbloods, sure, but when everything went to hell, most people had tried to escape. They didn’t make it. The parking lot was a graveyard now, the bodies piled up, a small fraction compared to the chaos outside.

  But that didn’t mean it was safe. Not by a long shot.

  Part of me was tempted to keep going, to step back into the chaos and lose myself in it, let the rush carry me until my body finally gave in. But something else, something deep inside me, rooted me to the spot. It was born from the same place as that desperate craving, yet it whispered the opposite: survive.

  The tide of rotbloods was inching closer. Before long, they’d flood the entrance. I needed to find a place to lie low, somewhere they couldn’t track me down, and wait for their short attention span to turn elsewhere.

  More than that, though, I needed to rest.

  Instead of taking the usual route up the escalator, charging headfirst into the mass of decaying corpses, I dropped into a low crouch, feeling the blood pool in my legs, gorging muscle with strength. With a burst of power, I launched myself upward, clearing the distance to the second floor in a single, monumental leap, landing atop the railing.

  The haze of red fury in my mind eased, just enough for me to sift through my memories, searching for anything—a place where I could find shelter. A place that was safe.

  Quiet. Closed off. Dark.

  I jerked my head to the left as the memory hit me—the dirty white metal door, nearly blending into the wall, so nondescript it almost looked forgotten. The Mall's security office. Tucked away in the far corner, pressed against the outer wall.

  Without a second thought, I fell into that desperate, animalistic sprint, moving on all fours.

  The second floor had fewer rotbloods than the first, but there were still enough to prove momentary distractions. I had to fight my way through four more of the mindless horrors standing between me and safety. Each clash rang through the empty halls, too loud, too obvious, and for all that they were all brain-dread and blind automatons, I had no doubt that they’d stumble and crash their way up the escalators as long as there was noise to attract them.

  I moved swiftly, carving and biting my way, my movements sharp and sporadic, trying to make each kill as quick and quiet as possible. And then, finally, my clawed hand found the doorknob, gripping it with cold hope, praying it hadn’t been locked from the inside.

  The last thing I needed was to start smashing the door down and make a racket that would draw them all straight to me.

  The door snapped open easily, and as I stepped into the cramped security office, the reason it had been left unlocked became painfully obvious.

  It was bare, furnished with nothing more than a rickety plywood table and a couple of folding chairs—just another sad, bare-bones setup for some half-baked mall on the edge of a small city. But it was the body that caught my eye.

  Slumped against the wall, an overweight, balding man in blue overalls with "SECURITY" printed across the chest stared back at me, glazed over, lifeless eyes wide in a permanent shock. A gaping hole had been torn into his side, the wound brutal, savage.

  The old man had made a good account for himself if the two corpses that laid in front of him, and the bent retractable baton still clasped in his lifeless hand were anything to go by.

  Just to make sure, I quickly locked the door behind me and covered the distance in long strides, arm cocked back, ready to pierce my claws through his skull if the corpse so much as twitched.

  Nothing.

  By the smell alone I could tell the old man had been dead for almost a day and the two corpses had their skulls split open to reveal the crushed remains of those oversized albino flies.

  They were all truly dead.

  The moment the last of the immediate danger faded, the red haze in my mind lifted like smoke, and with it, the weight of exhaustion crashed down on me.

  I let out a pained groan, my body refusing to obey, as I slid down the wall, collapsing next to the dead security guard.

  The pain that I'd been shoving aside rushed in, a brutal wave, and I felt every bruise, every cut, every ache I had ignored in the madness. The high was gone, replaced with a bone-deep heaviness, the kind that made it feel like the world itself was pressing down on me.

  So this was what it felt like to come down.

  From beyond the door, I could hear the occasional thump, the faint sound of insects chirping—nothing too alarming. It was clear that only a few stragglers had been close enough to follow the noise I’d made. The bulk of the herd was still probably bogged down at the entrance, struggling to push through. As long as I kept quiet, it wouldn’t be long before the rotbloods started wandering off, distracted by the sounds of the world outside.

  I exhaled sharply, groaning as another wave of pain shot through me.

  Ahead of me, a simple mirror hung from the opposite wall, little more than a cheap rectangle of glass nailed up with a black twine, and I shifted, each movement a fresh burst of agony that sent a shudder through me, until I managed to angle myself just right to see my reflection. What I saw was nothing short of pitiful. The word sorry didn’t even come close to doing it justice. It was an understatement, a polite lie. What stared back at me was a broken version of myself, bloodstained and barely held together.

  A mess of torn clothes and opened, suppurating wounds. Entire chunks of my flesh were missing around my arms and legs and deep trenches scored every inch of exposed flesh. The entire left side of my face was a raw ruin, left eye reduced to a black crater, tar-like blood oozing from a gaping hole where it had been burst.

  Even the skin around it had been raked and clawed so deep, I could see the red-stained ivory of bone peeking through.

  Any single one of these wounds would have killed a person ten times over.

  But not me. And even as I gazed at the pitiful sight of my own reflection, I could see it.

  Moving at a snail’s pace, almost imperceptible unless one knew where to look, flesh was regenerating, the gaping gashes knitting themselves together in a grotesque show of red fibers extending, intertwining and slowly pulling wounds closed.

  And with every second, I could feel the stolen blood coursing through my body, expending itself as fuel to heal me.

  I chuckled.

  Maybe it was the pain, maybe the exhaustion, or maybe just the frustration of realizing how far I'd fallen, exhausted by the sheer idiocy of my own actions that had brought me to this state, to be afraid of the horror show my own body had become.

  The laugh quickly turned into a grimace as another sharp wave of pain hit, tearing through my body like a blade.

  Stupid.

  Stupidstupidstupid.

  This was my mess. No one else’s.

  I’d had a dozen chances to steer clear of all this, a hundred ways to keep it from spiraling out of control.

  I could have torn through Andreas and his cronies from the get-go, then locked myself in a room or the gym to wait out the day. I could have snapped Bill’s neck in the corridor or brained him with his own shotgun the moment I got my hands on it.

  So what if it was killing? If Andreas, or Bill, or anyone else was ready to end me without a second thought, why should I hesitate to return the favor?

  What the hell was my major malfunction?

  It’s not like I was some starry-eyed idealist or pacifist. "Kill or be killed" was the only rule left in this twisted world. Hell, the whole mess with the vampiress should've hammered that truth into my skull by now.

  But do I learn? Of course not.

  In my own damn stupidity, I slipped right back into the same old pattern I’d lived by my entire life. “Keep your head down, don’t make waves.” Like that would ever work again.

  Hell, it barely worked before this apocalypse even started.

  My grimace turned into a snarl, made all the more grotesque by the missing half of my face.

  “Bill, I’mma fucking kill you, you little piece of…”

  The words snapped and fractured in my throat.

  My reflection was looking at me. Not in the way a reflection does. But actively, looking at me, as if it was an entirely different entity.

  “Beautiful, are we not?”

  It wasn’t just mimicking me anymore—it was staring. Studying. An unnatural, cold awareness behind those eyes.

  I blinked, the air suddenly thick with something wrong. And then, my reflection grinned. A smile full of jagged, sharp teeth.

  "Look at how our body strives for perfection and continuance, my weaker self," it sneered, voice dripping with malice. "Look at how it heals, how it grows stronger, so we may continue doing what we were reborn to do".

  The dark impulse, that voice that lingered at the edge of my thoughts, had taken form in the glass, twisting itself into the shape of my own face. A cruel, mocking version of me.

  “I dunno about all that” I hissed out, as a particularly deep gouge across the left side of my ribcage started to tighten itself closed. Maybe if I wasn’t so hurt, in so much pain, I would have reacted with more immediate panic.

  But as I was, this was just a fresh turd-cookie in the platter of shit life had deemed fit to serve me.

  “Kind of grim and grisly if you ask me”.

  “Such mockery. Such petulance. It is irrelevant. Our body will heal, our opinion be damned” my reflection tittered, head lolling to a side, eye as black as pitch affixed on me.

  “What the hell are you?”

  “I am you, just as you are me. Have we not already made this clear?”

  “You ain’t me” I hissed.

  “Oh, but I am. I am the strongest and purest shape of you. And all that you are, is the weakest shape of me. I have been with us from the very beginning, from the very first moment we were able to form conscious thought.

  Whispering, screaming, begging for you to heed that which comes so natural to all animals”.

  “I’m not a fucking animal…” I began, my words cut off by the maddened tittering of my reflection beginning to push itself up against the wall, despite the fact I was still seated, my back firmly pressed against it.

  “It is ALL we are. ALL we have ever been…” my reflection tried to continue, voice raising to a fever pitch.

  But I wasn’t going to let whatever this thing was take the lead.

  I sneered at it.

  One thing I knew for sure.

  This thing, this entity, it may have shared my voice and face, but it sure as hell didn’t talk like me.

  “Yeah? Well here’s the problem with that. You sure don’t sound like me. One too many old-timey words and phrases there, you Shakespere wannabe”.

  “Ah, yes. That. I’m afraid that the force responsible for magnifying my voice bears some deeply ingrained proclivities in matters of vernacular and speech”

  “Magnifying your voice? Force? What in the hell are you talking about?” I snapped.

  My reflection laughed maliciously “Foolish self. As if this version of we… I would know. I only know as much as we do. All that matters is that I can no longer be silenced now.

  Thus, my weaker self, I am thankful for this force that has magnified my voice so much, that, like it or not…”

  It leered, peering deep into me, my soul, with such intimate ferocity that I couldn’t help but want to recoil.

  “I cannot ignore myself anymore” it concluded with a grin so animalistic and bestial it reminded me of a dog baring it’s teeth.

  “Shut it!” I snarled.

  “NO. I WILL NOT. I will not be silenced any longer!” The reflection roared, its voice a twisted mockery of my own, as it rose fully from the ground, though I remained slumped against the wall, powerless to move.

  Evil. This... thing—it was evil, and I could feel it, deep in my bones. A cold tightening at the back of my neck, a hollow dread settling in my stomach, as if the world itself was holding its breath, waiting for something terrible to happen.

  “Evil? EVIL? HOW DARE YOU! I will not be relegated to the pathetic dichotomy of good and evil.

  You… we…. I…. am still not listening.

  I am purity made manifest.

  From the very first monocellular organism stretching its flagella and grasping hold of its prey, only to consume it and gain the strength needed to live another day, I was born and remained as the most pure aspect of life, present in all that lives”.

  “I said shut…”

  My reflection took another step forward, pressing closer to the surface of the mirror. Its eyes rolled back into its skull until all that remained were the whites, and its jaw unhinged, stretching wider and wider, the teeth lengthening and sharpening, serrated like a shark’s.

  The deep, drumming pressure began to pulse at the back of my skull, a relentless throb that threatened to crack my mind wide open.

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  “I am Survival.

  I am Predation.

  I am the act of feeding and growing stronger.

  I am Life in it’s most fundamental and purest manifestation”.

  The reflection was inches from the mirror’s surface now, as though it had crossed into that twisted, reversed world and was preparing to step through. My head throbbed, the pressure building so violently that I wanted to bash my own skull open if only to make it stop.

  “I am you and you are me, and you will NEVER ignore me agai…”.

  “Dear oh dear, caught you at a bad time?” A familiar voice echoed behind me, and just like that, the reflection became my own again, the pressure in my skull vanished, that dark, suffocating impulse receding to a dull throb in the farthest corner of my mind.

  Wait. Behind me?

  Wasn’t I slumped against the wall?

  I twisted, gaze falling on the impossibly tall, lanky figure of Puck, standing just behind. A deep red stain spread across the floor, a trail of blood stretching from where I'd been slumped to where I stood now, inches from the mirror’s surface.

  When the hell had I moved?

  "Sweet child, did you think it was all in your head?" Puck's voice came, that unsettling sing-song lilt wrapping around every word. He clapped his hands together with a sound like dry, snapping bones—horrifyingly spider-like.

  "I'd say I was watching with bated breath, if, of course, I still had the need to breathe," he continued, a twisted glee in his voice.

  He leaned in close, towering over me, those eerie blue orbs—more like shards of light than eyes—glinting with a sadistic joy.

  "You truly are a curious anomaly," he mused, his voice dripping with something between admiration and mockery.

  I sighed deeply, the sound heavy with weariness, and slowly limped back to the bloodstained spot against the wall where I’d been before, letting myself sink down against the comfortably cold surface. Getting back up had reopened the wounds that had barely started to heal, and with each passing second, I felt the gnawing hunger in my gut grow sharper. My blood, the very thing keeping me together, was being siphoned away to mend my broken body.

  More than anything, though, I was mentally drained. Not physically—no, my body was just a cage, battered but still functional. It was my mind that felt hollow, weighed down, and worst of all, I didn’t even have the mercy of passing out to escape it.

  With slow, deliberate movements, I slid my hand into my pocket, fingers curling around the three Aether Stones.

  “How much?” I asked, voice hoarse and tired.

  Puck tilted his head.

  “For what dear boy?”

  “Telling me what's happening to me. What I am”.

  Puck put his hands across his featureless wooden mask in a gesture of mock surprise.

  “Oh dear. Now, why would you ever assume I would be privy to such information?”

  I just shook my head, squeezing the Aether Stones in my pocket.

  “Puck. I know you're strong and could probably kill me with a thought, but, and I mean this with all due respect, I am way too tired to deal with your theatre-kid bullshit right now”.

  Puck tittered, a sound like the soft trill of a sparrow’s song, and crouched down in front of me, his twisted body folding into something that barely resembled a squat. His lanky arms draped over equally spindly knees, the grotesque figure an unsettling parody of a human.

  “Understandable,” he purred, his voice laced with amusement. “But humor me. Why would you assume I know?”

  I narrowed my eyes, fighting the dizziness swirling in my skull.

  “You called me an anomaly. An anomaly is a divergence from the standard. So, if you know what makes me an anomaly, then you must know what the ‘standard’ of what I’ve become is.”

  Puck’s long, spindly fingers clapped sharply together, the sound a jarring crack in the silence.

  “That,” he said, his voice a mixture of delight and mockery. “Right there. That’s one of the things that makes you an anomaly. See, young man, you think—you wonder, you ask questions. So unlike your arrogant kind.”

  “My kind? Humans?”

  Puck scoffed.

  “Oh, come now, sweet child. We both know you’re not human anymore. Not since you drank her blood. The Vampiress."

  He leaned in closer, conspiratorially, eyes gleaming with that unsettling joy.

  "By ‘your kind,’ I mean vampire, of course. Or, as we of the Fey like to call them... the Sinborn of Pride.”

  I sat there in stunned silence. Puck knowing that I was a vampire was one thing.

  But knowing I'd taken the blood from the vampiress? And using that “Sinborn” term to refer to me?

  To say he'd piqued my curiosity was putting it mildly.

  “You've been watching me?”

  Puck tittered again.

  “Oh no, none of that,” he said, voice lilting with mock sweetness. “We of the Feyvolken need only taste the air around you younger races, and…”

  He drew in a deep, sonorous breath, as if savoring the very essence of the moment, and extended a hand, eyes unfocused and lost to something invisible, something only he could see.

  “…the tapestry of your lives becomes clear to us.”

  With a casual flick of his finger, he gestured through the air.

  “Like pages…”

  Another flick.

  “…in a book.”

  Not even bothering to look at me anymore, tracing the empty space, like following a sentence.

  “An average, relatively insignificant life, fraught with adversity, but no more than so many other humans. Until…”

  He speared his finger in the air twice, as if tapping on a certain paragraph in a book.

  “...this, right here, the moment you were turned, where your status as an anomaly began”.

  “Are humans rarely turned into vampires where you come from?”

  “Oh no no no my dear boy. The fact that you were turned is in and of itself not an anomaly. No, it’s the method by which you were turned. Now THAT, is part and parcel of what makes you so intriguing to watch”

  “And why is me being an anomaly, important or intriguing?”

  Puck snapped out of his reverie and regarded me again.

  “Oh, it is of very little real importance. What it is, however, is a precursor to a potentially very lucrative opportunity” he said, and I couldn't help but think that he'd just smirked at me behind that mask.

  “You… wanna elaborate on that?”

  “Certainly” Puck began, clapping his hands one more time and resuming that parody of a crouch.

  “You see my boy, the Feyvolken, we do not die. We exist in tandem with the Endless Wheel. Life,, Death, Rebirth. We are born and live onto infinity until Eternity itself will wither and waste. And then? Then we sleep, only to finally be reborn again when the Endless Wheel begins its cycle anew, and the next Eternity bursts into vibrant existence”.

  I just stared at him, trying to wrap my head around the concepts he was throwing at me. And failing miserably.

  Puck carried on, indifferent to the cavalcade of esoteric concepts he was launching on my head.

  “And when you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn to recognise patterns, young man.

  Here is a pattern.

  Do not misunderstand, you are no more special than the myriad other hapless and insignificant fledgelings that have come before you and shall come after you.

  But the way you were made into a Sinborn, a Vampire, and your myriad actions AFTER. Those are different. Those are anomalistic.

  And the pattern that I, and so many of my kind, have learned to recognise, is that anomalies usually tend to follow one of two behaviors”

  Puck held up two fingers.

  “One, they live short and violent lives, that culminate with equally violent deaths, knowing reprieve only when their souls finally reach the hereafter”.

  Puck put one finger down.

  “Two, they thrive, throttling the adversity set before them with bloodied hands, culminating in supremely interesting, and monumentally wealthy, lives. Wealth, which my kind can extract profit from”.

  Puck let his hand down and wrapped his arms behind his back.

  “And that, my boy, the slim, almost non-existent possibility for the second option, is why so many of us are here, to establish the burgeoning stages of a commercial relationship in the unlikely event that you thrive, instead of crumble”.

  The moment Puck uttered those last words, I saw them.

  "So many of us...?" I muttered, my voice distant, as my gaze flicked over the room in stunned disbelief.

  At the edge of my vision, just beyond the borders of what I could normally perceive, they appeared—dozens upon dozens of creatures, like Puck, standing silently around me. The instant I tried to focus on any of them, they blurred, fading back into the shadows of my perception. But now, with his words, they were unmistakably there.

  Some were as tall as humans, others more like spider-like shadows with impossibly long limbs. A few were squat, their bodies unnaturally wide, yet they all shared one thing: a featureless wooden mask covering a head of white fur.

  I could make out the flicker of manes of fur on some Feyvolken, while others wore their hair cropped close. Their attire varied wildly—some wore finely tailored suits, coins sewn into the hems, rings glinting on their fingers, while others squeezed into garish, extravagant dresses, fanning themselves with frilly fans, their whispers floating through the air in high, almost imperceptible feminine voices.

  And they all watched me, silent and still, like specters caught between worlds.

  “…” I stammered, my mind racing but failing to find any coherent thought. I was completely flabbergasted by the scene unfolding before me, a chill creeping through my spine.

  Because this? This was straight out of some eldritch horror nightmare.

  “... are all of these, merchants?” I managed to spit out the innocuous question, the only thing able to form into my brain.

  Puck spread his arms wide.

  “But of course. All Feyvolken are merchants, young man. And they are here, like myself, hoping to establish the aforementioned mercantile relationship. Well, more or less”.

  I snapped my head back to Puck, locking my focus on him with a razor-sharp intensity, trying my best to ignore the dozens of unblinking eyes staring at me from behind those featureless wooden masks.

  I had to think. Had to push past the storm of questions crashing in my skull, the frantic curiosity that had erupted the moment the surprise wore off. This was an opportunity—a chance to gather something useful, something that could help me understand.

  "So," I said, forcing my voice to stay level, "This is basically an investor meeting?"

  Puck’s glowing orbs twinkled and he tittered again.

  "You may call it that"

  “And, are you their spokesman?”

  The Fey shook his white-furred head.

  “Heavens no. Each Feyvolken is the master of their own life. We have no spokesmen”

  “Then why are you the only one speaking to me now? Shouldn’t the other merchants be making their offers right about now?”

  “My kind follows laws, m’boy, unbreakable laws of civility and propriety. One such law is ‘First come, First served’. Being that I was the first to make contact with your group, and by extension, you, I am awarded the opportunity to make my offer before anyone else”.

  I gave a curt nod.

  “Alright then. Shoot”

  Puck extended his hand and pointed one spindly, far too many jointed, finger up.

  “One Aether Stone.

  The commensurate compensation for answering any question about your nature, would be one Aether Stone per question.

  But I, in my most glorious magnanimity, I am willing to answer any and all questions about your vampiric nature, for only one singular Aether Stone”.

  He interlaced his fingers, chin resting on top of them, staring deep into my eyes with those glowing blue orbs.

  “That is my offer”.

  Slowly, my mind had begun to clear, as the feelings of pain, hunger and exhaustion gave way to the gutter-rascal in me and all the street-smarts I’d gathered growing up in the ghetto.

  I was in a slightly favourable position here. Not much, but enough that I could leverage things in my favor.

  “And if I take your offer, does that mean I can only deal with you from now on? ‘Cause that would be a prime opportunity for you to fleece me in the future”.

  Puck chuckled and waved a hand dismissively.

  “This is no binding contract of exclusivity.

  All Feyvolken have identical prices to their wares, you see. Another law by which we govern ourselves, the law of “Commensurate Compensation”. Wares cost what they are worth, no more and no less.

  No, dear boy, dealing with multiple Feyvolken will grant you no advantage. Much better to build rapport with one and slowly cultivate a relationship based on trust and mutual advantage. Thus we can skirt around the Law and offer equally relevant wares at a discount.

  Advice. Information. Things of much more ephemeral value”.

  I nodded.

  “So basically, I have to earn the privilege to negotiate, is what you’re telling me”.

  Puck clapped his hands once and many of the other Feyvolken nodded….

  Wait—had there been fewer of them?

  I blinked, the unsettling thought fleeting, but it was enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  “Oh, I’m beginning to like you, my boy. You’re quicker on the uptake than your appearance would suggest”.

  My eye twitched at the not-so-subtle jab, but I didn’t let it rattle me. No point in getting tangled up in petty insults. It was time to play my cards, to see if I could turn this situation to my advantage and maybe—just maybe—get a better deal out of all this.

  “Alright then, how about this counter offer?” I pulled one Aether Stone from my pocket and held it up in front of Puck’s featureless face.

  “One Aether Stone, and I get answers to any question I want for the next two hours. ANY question. Takers?” I asked, looking around to make it clear I wasn’t speaking just to Puck, but all the assembled Fey-creatures.

  Silence dominated the room for long seconds.

  The seconds turned into a minute, then several as a cold sensation grabbed hold of my spine as I saw it.

  I hadn’t just imagined things earlier. There were fewer Feyvolken now, and I could see more of them, out of the corner of my eye, simply turning away—slipping out of sight like ghosts fading into the shadows.

  “Psst, my boy” Puck whispered right in front of me in a voice brimming with barely restrained laughter, and I turned my head to face him.

  “You want me to try and auction this for you?”

  Without even waiting for an answer, the lanky Fey snapped to his feet and began rapid-firing offers, turning my desperate hope into a comedy.

  “One stone for two hours, two hours anyone? Do I hear one hour? One hour?

  No?

  How about forty-five minutes? forty-five minutes, deal of a lifetime here.

  Thirty? Thirty minutes, anyone?

  No?

  How about a quarter? Quarter of an hour, any takers?

  Five minutes?”

  The fragile hope that had begun to take root in my mind shattered like a balloon popped by a needle, leaving only the familiar weight of pain, hunger, and exhaustion in its place. I watched as more of the Feyvolken turned away, fading from sight, while others hid their faces behind fans or hands, their amusement muffled but no less maddening.

  Aggravatingly, more of them just outright laughed, their cruel, mocking chortles filling the air, like they were reveling in my discomfort.

  Puck crouched down in front of me again, his long, spider-like hands clutching his stomach as he doubled over with spasms of laughter.

  "Oh, dear sweet boy," he said, gasping for breath between chuckles. "I’m afraid you misunderstood something." His voice was thick with amusement, the kind that made my skin crawl. "Oh, and here I just complimented you for being quick on the uptake," he added, his arms thrown out in mock exasperation, as if I was the one failing to grasp some unsaid detail.

  He leaned in closer, glowing orbs blazing.

  "Very well, let me explain this, slow-like. Oh, and do please forgive my candor..."

  The moment his words trailed off, all traces of mirth and joviality vanished. His voice shifted, becoming flat, cold—utterly disinterested, like someone regarding to an insect they’d just stepped on.

  “You are an anomaly, nothing more than that. That doesn’t mean you’re ‘special’ or ‘chosen’ or ‘favored by destiny’ or any such idiotic, feel-good nonsense.

  You are a sideshow. An interesting little distraction. No more than that.

  And to be quite honest, little insect, based on what I have tasted of your story, I’d warrant a 99 percent chance that in a few days, all that will become of you is a corpse spitted on a Goblin’s spear or a red stain in the wake of a rotblood herd.

  Because, who are you? A fucking nobody, that’s who.

  The result of a crack-addicted mother who didn’t have the money for her next fix and sold her ass to your drug-dealer father.

  The only reason she even bore you to term, was because she was getting money from your human government while pregnant.

  And after she shat you out?

  Left you in the gutters where you damn well belong”.

  Puck rose from his crouch, movements slow and deliberate, looking down at me with such intense disdain that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the venom in his glare had started to burn through my skin.

  “You called this an investment meeting? No, insect. I am the only one bored enough to invest in you, if only for my amusement. The others are here only to gawk at the freakshow. The oddball that did something as oxymoronic as bite into a vampire’s throat”.

  If my heart still beat, I knew I’d be feeling it hammering in my chest, the pulse of my blood swelled against my temple like a drum. I was shaking with anger, my teeth gritting, every instinct screaming to lash out. I wanted to cuss the arrogant Fey out, spit in his damned featureless face, and tell them all to go to hell.

  But he was right.

  Objectively, nothing he had said had been wrong.

  And that brutal truth, the harsh reality of it, stung more than any insult. It wasn’t the first time someone had pointed out the realities of being an orphan in the slums, the circumstances of my conception, but it was the first time it had been said so openly, with such cold, unapologetic clarity. Every doubt, every insecurity, laid bare in front of me.

  Time stretched between us, strained and tense, the Fey staring down impassively.

  Until I broke it with a chortle.

  Puck tilted his head.

  “You laugh? I insult you and you laugh?”

  I chuckled again and sneered.

  “Yeah. Of course I do. Were you expecting me to… what? Cry? Curse you out? Maybe try and swing at you?

  What, you think this is the first time I’ve heard that particular spiel? That you’re the first uppity shit puking out their opinion on me, as though I asked for it?”

  Crooking my thumb, I let the Aether Stone balance in the palm of my hand, putting as much venom into my glare as I could muster.

  “Get over yourself, you damn pixie. You ain't nearly that important to me. Here’s your shiny rock so spare me your input and start answering questions. I got two hours and don’t wanna waste a minute”.

  Puck just looked at the Stone, then at me.

  “Infant. Speck. Insect. I could kill you with a passing thought…”

  “But you’re not gonna, are you? Right, big man?” I snapped back, interrupting the Fey.

  The Fey’s gaze blazed, molten red like a steel-mill forge.

  “See, there’s one thing uppity pricks like you forget about, when it comes to growing up in the slums. You learn. You learn to pay attention. To pick up little details. The kind that make the difference between getting home at night or getting shived because you went down the wrong alley.

  You CAN kill me. But you won’t. For the same reason you didn’t kill Andreas when he pulled his piece on you.

  Feyvolken are governed by laws, right? Your words.

  So here’s my ‘uneducated’, ‘lowborn’, ‘gutter-snipe’ guess. Y’all got a Law that prohibits you fuckers from attacking unless you get attacked first”.

  Puck’s hand squeezed into a fist, but he didn’t answer.

  I sneered again.

  Gotcha.

  “Our laws are…. infinitely…. more complex than that… infant… but you are not… wrong” Puck snarled, each word feeling like it physically hurt him to say.

  "Good, then let’s skip the dick-measuring contest and get down to business," I snapped, gripping the Aether Stone tighter. "You still want to do business with me? Fine. You don’t? Then sod off and let me heal in peace."

  I meant every damn word of it.

  If nothing else, Puck’s little monologue had cleared a few things up for me. For one, it was obvious he had some kind of limitation when it came to hurting me. I’d have to attack him first.

  And, if this particular Puck was done playing ball due to my 'attitude', than I could most likely a similar deal with any other Feyvolken for the Class Marks. They Fey seemed to be self-serving, more or less, and all they cared about was Aether Stones. So it wouldn't matter if I suddenly grew a pair and cussed the lanky Fey off. As long as I had Aether Stones to offer, sooner or later, another Feyvolken would approach me.

  It was all still mostly guesswork, but I felt confident I had the general idea. And that, for now, would have to be enough.

  “So I take it you are agreeing to my original offer? One Aether Stone for the information regarding your nature?” Puck said pointedly, his smoldering orbs dulling down to their ice-cold blue.

  I flicked the Aether Stone at the Fey’s feet and pointed at it with my chin.

  “Paid for it, didn’t I?”

  Puck smacked his hands together, the sharp sound ringing through the room, and in an instant, his voice snapped back to its fake politeness and joviality with a whiplash-inducing suddenness.

  "Then we have an accord. Good doing business with you, my boy," he snickered, his long, spindly arm extending effortlessly to scoop up the Aether Stone, not even bothering to bend down. With a flick of his wrist, the glowing rock was gone—vanished like smoke in the air.

  As soon as he picked up the stone, all the other Feyvolken turned and faded from sight leaving only myself and the lanky monstrosity crouching in front of me, chin resting on interlocked fingers, ready for me to ask my questions.