"In the name of Lord Vilucious!"
The voice sliced through the dark. Cassis froze. It was over. Either his plan had completely gone to hell, or some unpredictable flaw in these ’Miracle’ vampires was about to buy him a few extra seconds of life.
Panic seized him. Sweat poured down his temples, stinging his eyes.
Right in front of him, the shadows of the void began to twist. It was coming out of his own pitch-black, bottomless vampire eyes, moving faster than a human possibly could. Overall, the freezing, razor-sharp edge pressed into his shoulder. The cold metal bit into his skin, slick with his own cold sweat.
"One zero two?..." the voice added.
As soon as Cassius turned, his eyes met the vampire’s directly. It was the general. Fire, red eyes of the general.
"OH MY, MY... Don’t you think you’ve wandered into the wrong place?"
The general leaned in close. His gaze dropped to Cassius, who was crouching in the dirt behind a massive heap of charcoal. Shivering right beside him were the unconscious female vampire slaves he had tried to protect.
The general’s eyes burned like a wildfire. He looked entirely unhinged- like a psychopath fresh out of a maximum-security cell. The rusted, razor-sharp edge of his knife remained pressed firmly into Cassius’s shoulder. Still, his skin was muscular enough to handle the edge there without a new wound being formed.
Cassius bared his fangs. A low feral growl vibrated in his throat. Fearing nothing but the failure of his mission, he glared back with pure fury.
"They were bleeding out because of your stupid slave chains!" Cassius spat.
The general stared for a beat, then threw his head back. A loud, violent laugh echoed off the walls of the chamber.
"Ahaha... hahahaha!"
He finally choked back the laughter, a sadistic grin plastering his face. "Haha... So what? You want to feel the chains too? Sounds to me like you’re begging for it, One Zero..."
The general paused, his eyes drifting down to the cold serial number stamped onto Cassius’s uniform coat, which he had been grasping in his hands. Slow. Deliberate. He dragged the point of the blade up Cassius’s cheek, stopping right underneath his eye. Then, he began to press. The sharp tip sank slowly into the flesh, drawing a thin line of wound.
A single drop of purple, glittery blood welled up, spilling down Cassius’s cheek.
He gritted his teeth. He was completely blind here. He hadn’t formed a single hypothesis about what a creature like him would do next. A vampire with pitch-black void slave eyes, yet harboring the shimmering purple blood of a completely unknown rank? It made no sense. Cassius had no clue where he truly stood in the hierarchy of this ruthless world.
Yet, fear for his own life never came. His chest only burned for the innocent women beside him- souls dragged into this cruel realm without a shred of consent. It was pure, unadulterated agony.
Then, the general saw the purple stain.
His face froze instantly. For a split second, a flash of genuine terror pierced through his desperate, psychotic rage. He was hiding something. It seemed like a truth hidden not just from Cassius but likely kept secret from the entire Vampirian Empire.
"By Lord Vilucious’s sake!" The general screamed, his voice cracking with sudden explosive fury. "Chains! Lock this slave up! I refuse to look at this trash for another second!"
Outside the chamber, the electric-blue rays of the moon cut through the night. Two vampires with dark, blood-red eyes, basically the assistant generals, came rushing in, their twisted shadows stretching across the floorboards. In their grip, the heaviest iron links clanked together with a deafening, metallic ring.
Cassius seized the split second of hesitation.
He lunged upward, throwing his weight into the movement. With a violent wrench, he slammed his hands against the general’s wrist, breaking the monster’s grip and ripping the knife straight from his fingers.
Cassius already had a weapon hidden away- a yellow fire lighter smuggled from the human realm. But he knew the math. If he tried to spark that flame against the charcoal heap again, the toxic fumes would knock him out cold long before they suffocated the general and his battalion. He couldn’t risk it.
So, he chose blood.
He brought the stolen blade up, pointing the jagged knife straight at the general’s throat.
"YOU AND YOUR BASTARD VILUCIOUS!"
The words ripped from Cassius’s throat in a deafening, monstrous roar. He was panting heavily, his chest heaving as he stared down the tyrant with lethal intent. His lips twitched violently, peeling back over fangs he could no longer suppress. Starvation tore his gut. Exhaustion weighed down his limbs. Yet, beneath the dirt and sweat, his very veins screamed for freedom, radiating nothing but pure, unadulterated fury.
Cassius roared, his voice vibrating with a feral, dangerous intensity as he glared right into the general’s eyes.
"Me? A slave?" he screamed, spitting the words. "That is your delusion! The power of healing resides within me! Not like you idiots, dragging yourselves around with the rotting wounds of your past!"
The general didn’t move. He simply stared, his frozen expression locking onto Cassius, absorbing every single syllable with a dead, fire-red, continuous glaze.
But why had Cassius played such a risky card?
Because he had kept his eyes open. Earlier, when he first crossed over into this nightmare realm, he had studied the line of vampires chained alongside him. Every single one of them was covered in horrific gashes, broken skin, and fresh welts- stark of evidence of a traumatizing journey. Even the dark red-eyed vampire officials guarding them bore deep, jagged scars, looking as though they had been brutally tortured a few days ago.
Yet, when Cassius had first opened his eyes in this world, he was completely unblemished. No deep gashes tore at his back. No cracked skulls. No bleeding head injuries. Nothing. His body had reset itself to absolute perfection.
As the words left his mouth, Cassius watched the general’s face closely, calculating the impact. He was so focused on reading the tyrant’s reaction that he missed the shifting shadows behind him.
Suddenly, a heavy, blinding force struck the back of his skull. The two assistant generals had slipped through the dark, ruthlessly catching him off-guard while he was running on empty.
They grabbed him by both of his arms, lifting him off his feet and dragging him backwards across the stone floor. But Cassius didn’t break. His fury only burned hotter. With a sudden, violent burst of adrenaline, he lashed out. His arms whipped across their faces, tearing through the air like a flash of lightning. The stolen blade hissed through the dark, slicing clean through their flesh.
The assistants collapsed to the floor, howling in agony.
Then, something inside Cassius snapped. His bat wings erupted from his back, leathery and massive. The black void of his eyes suddenly liquefied, overflowing down his cheeks in thick, dark stems. The moment that back fluid met the shimmering, purple blood on his skin, reality itself seemed to bend.
The atmosphere choked with pure, suffocating dark magic.
The purple gloss of his royal bloodline ignited, boiling as it fused with the void fluid. The mixture detached from his skin, coming alive in mid-air. It twisted and coiled, manifesting into the shape of a gnarled, ancient witch’s hand. With an eerie, unnatural grace, the liquid appendage shot straight toward the general.
The general’s eyes stripped of their fiery, psychotic red, reverting to a pale, terrified human state. He stumbled backward, his boots skidding across the dirt as he screamed Vilucious’s name in sheer, unadulterated panic.
The shadowy purple hand swelled, casting a massive predatory silhouette as it prepared to swallow the tyrant whole.
But suddenly, a voice emerged at the scene, loud and bold, with a dramatic accent-
"FABULOSA! What a pity, slaverian vampire and a foolish vampire general"