The guild hall to the Arcanian Brotherhood was barely waking when a well-dressed page arrived, his boots echoing sharply in the quiet foyer.
He didn’t speak to the sleepy clerk, only held up a scroll secured with wax the color of dried blood, stamped with the royal crest.
Moments later, Grandmaster General Rykker Eunbyeol1 appeared, walking with a brisk, unnatural efficiency.
He claimed the scroll without a word, his gloved hand closing over it tightly.
A silver star coin appeared, finding its way into the boy’s palm, and before the clerk could even blink, he had retreated into the shadows of his office.
The Grand Elementalist tiredly entered his oversized office with the scroll.
He wearily sank into the high-backed chair behind a burnished ironwood desk, his eyes stinging from a night spent under the flickering glow of dying candles.
Before him lay a chaotic spread: complex political treatises, trade maps marked with jagged red ink, and scrolls that remained stubbornly blank.
Across the border in Cayrion1, the beastmen of the Maw Clan were tightening their grip on the trade routes, their selective taxes sparking skirmishes that threatened to ignite the entire frontier.
Rykker rubbed his temples, feeling the faint hum of elemental energy beneath his skin—a power that could level a fortress, yet was useless against a ledger of unfair coin.
A heavy sigh escaped him as he snapped the imperial seal, the sound loud in the quiet room.
Inside, the command was stark, jarring against the parchment:
“By the King.
To our loyal and trusted Grandmaster General Rykker Eunbyeol.
You are hereby summoned to appear in front of Emperor Xarxes1.
Urgent matters of state require your counsel and presence.
Discretion is mandated.”
The words were commanding and direct, yet the handwriting was graceful and elegant—a careful, almost artistic calligraphy, each letter formed by a steady, yet delicate, hand in long, elegant loops.
It was a beautiful script that hid a terrifying demand.
He stared at the summons, then moved with slow, deliberate purpose toward the cold stone hearth.
With a flick of his wrist, a violent blast of blue flame erupted, incinerating the paper into nothingness.
The message was gone, dissolved in an instant of intense, magical heat.
***
Before leaving, he took a moment to look around his office, his gaze lingering on the trophy case filled with weapons from fallen foes and his collection of medals.
The first medal he ever received was the Elemental Star Medal, awarded for successfully closing an elemental rift in Cayrion.
It had been a brutal battle, requiring him to first destroy the wave of monsters protecting the rift and ending with a fight against a Legendary Level beast—a creature surpassed only by those of the Divine Level.
Rykker’s reputation was solidified by his second major feat, in which he resolved a crisis caused by reckless necromancers attempting to create potions from dragon eggs.
By rescuing the endangered eggs and returning them to the mother dragon—a task resulting in the death of a subordinate dragon in the crossfire—Rykker established a rare trust between species.
This achievement earned him the Scale-Bond Medal.
Having mastered eight distinct elemental abilities, he was honored with a special sash and medal.
Yet, his crowning achievement was the esteemed Medal of the Archmage General, awarded for extraordinary feats and unwavering service to the Emperor.
Forged from the purest electrum, (a metal ten times more valuable than platinum), this honor was accompanied by the General’s War Staff, a weapon designed to amplify his already immense magical power.
Reflecting fondly on his accomplishments, he proudly walked out of the office to find his wife, Serana, and his second-in-command and best friend, Gorem.
***
Rykker sighed contentedly when he found Serana in the guild’s library.
As a vampire in a world of nocturnal creatures, Serana was a daylight anomaly.
Rykker watched her from the doorway of the library, the sun streaming through the windows to illuminate her ink-black hair she was mindlessly twisting—a nervous habit inherited from her father, the Emperor.
She was entirely absorbed in a book, her lips slightly pouted, navigating some intense, dramatic plot point while sitting in a plush, forest-green chair.
The first time he saw her, she was surrounded by a chaotic, sun-lit fortress of books, studying for finals with the same fierce intensity she held now.
Lejla1 Academy was far different from the vampire academy in Duskhaven, where she should have been studying vampire lore while drinking blood-rich cocktails.
Instead, Serana was an expert in building multiracial political alliances, philosophy, and diverse cultures—subjects the vampire schools dismissed as “a waste of time”.
***
Looking back, Rykker was convinced it was love at first sight.
He was immediately drawn to Serana’s milky white skin, her ruby red lips, and her big black eyes so dark it was like looking into the cosmos.
For days, Rykker did little more than breathe in Serana’s presence from afar, letting the anticipation turn into a desperate need to know her.
On the last day of finals, with nerves buzzing under his skin, he finally crossed the room and claimed the seat opposite hers.
One innocent question turned into hours of shared secrets, erasing the rest of the world.
That afternoon wasn’t just a meeting—it was the moment everything shifted, turning two strangers into an inseparable force.
***
Rykker, an elemental mage, and Serana, a vampire princess, were considered an impossible pair.
Yet, despite predictions that they wouldn’t last a week, their vast differences actually helped them thrive.
While Rykker’s parents eagerly accepted Serana—unbothered by the genetic impossibility of grandchildren— Serana’s family was another story.
Emperor Xarxes was furious, forbidding the relationship not out of disdain for Rykker, but out of necessity; as the last royal pureblood heir, Serana was duty-bound to continue the Xarxes bloodline.
The Emperor forbade the union, demanding an heir to continue the pureblood lineage.
For Serana, it was a choice between love and duty, as her father refused to accept a future without a royal heir.
***
Unlike vampires in fantasy novels on Earth, Bartuii vampires diverged from traditional lore.
Instead of turning humans, they reproduced biologically.
Conception required a specialized, four-full-moon ritual involving copulation and a mutual exchange of blood and other fluids that pooled together, creating an embryo in the abdomen of the female.
In many ways, the process mirrored human reproduction, including a gestation period, birth, and the necessity of joint child-rearing.
Because of this, mated pairs were expected to raise their offspring together.
This societal structure created a direct conflict for Serana: she couldn’t be with Rykker, as she was expected to stay with her mated partner to raise their child.
Ultimately, Serana chose love over the cold immortality of her heritage.
She told her father that there were other ways to ensure the continuation of the bloodline.
She suggested utilizing the Royal Chalice of Ancestors, a potent artifact filled with the consecrated blood of all the past monarchs.
By consuming this vitae and conducting a treacherous ritual under the alignment of all four full moons, Serana believed she could temporarily force her undead body to ‘come to life,’ allowing the ancestral blood within her to converge into a viable embryo.
However, she knew the ritual was a dangerous gamble fraught with fatal peril.
Transmuting a vampire back to a living state required monumental magical effort, and failure meant permanent death, not mere unlife.
Furthermore, the ritual offered no guarantee of implantation, risking the wastage of the priceless ancestral blood.
It was a ‘one-and-done’ ultimatum: success meant a new life, but failure meant the end of Serana, and the permanent loss of the accumulated powers inherited from the ancient bloodline.
Serana’s defiance sparked an immediate uproar within the vampire community, splitting the court between those who supported Serana’s pursuit of love and those who demanded the Emperor take aggressive action against her rebellion.
The Emperor decided that the best way to handle the issue was to sit down and discuss solutions with both families.
Following a grueling, four-hour confrontation between Serana, Rykker, and their families, a shaky truce was finally brokered and a decision was made.
It was mandated that in three years—on the first four-full-moon cycle of that year—Serana would perform the perilous ritual using the Chalice of Ancestors artifact with the intention of getting pregnant.
This way, Serana could be with Rykker, the one she loved, rather than be duty bound to another.
The stakes were absolute: Should she survive and succeed, Serana would ascend the throne as Queen.
And from there, she would be tasked with the responsibility of raising and preparing the heir to rule upon reaching maturity, cementing the dynasty’s survival.
***
Shaking off the past and returning to the present, Rykker quietly cleared his throat then said, “Serana, my heart, your progenitor1desires council.
Don your finest ceremonial raiment2 and await me at the ancient clearing.
Once I have secured Gorem, we depart with all haste.”
zar-zeeskay-ree-on(Lay-Lah)direct biological founder of the royal family bloodlineformal clothingoon-by-yool