The crimson windows vanished.
One moment they were there. The next they weren't. No dramatic farewell. No final sarcastic comment. No promise that everything would be fine. Just silence.
For a long time, Wren sat beside the lake staring at the empty air where the System had been. The twin moons hung low above the water, their reflections fractured by gentle ripples into ribbons of silver that stretched across the surface. Around her, the forest continued exactly as it always had. Leaves shifted in the night breeze. Strange insects chirped from somewhere high in the canopy. A distant creature called out into the darkness only for another unseen thing to answer. Life continued with complete indifference.
Yet everything felt different.
The forest felt larger somehow. The spaces between the trees seemed deeper. The silence carried more weight than it had before.
For the first time since arriving in this world there was nobody left to talk to. No Occatus. No Earth System. No Personal System. No strange cosmic entity willing to answer questions or make her life significantly more confusing than it already was.
Just her.
Wren frowned.
She hadn't realized how much she'd grown used to having a voice around until it was gone.
The realization settled uncomfortably somewhere beneath her ribs.
Then she happened to glance upward.
And forgot all about it.
The moons were setting.
The horizon was brightening.
And a very important realization hit her with all the subtlety of a falling tree.
She was a vampire.
The sun was coming up.
"Oh."
A pause.
"Oh no."
Panic arrived immediately.
Wren launched herself to her feet and started running before she'd even consciously decided to move. Branches whipped past her face while roots and undergrowth blurred beneath her boots. She had absolutely no destination in mind. The only objective was getting away from what her brain had very helpfully labeled the giant burning death orb.
"Why wasn't this my first concern?!"
The forest declined to provide an answer.
"No seriously, this feels like something I should've thought about days ago!"
The horizon continued brightening.
Every vampire movie she'd ever watched suddenly stormed through her thoughts.
Fire.
Ash.
Burning.
Screaming.
More burning.
An unreasonable amount of screaming.
Wren ran faster. As she ran through the forest a root suddenly decided to introduce itself.
Her foot caught perfectly.
The world immediately rotated.
Several trees passed upside down.
Then she slid directly out of the shadows and into a patch of brilliant sunlight. Everything stopped.
Wren froze. The sunlight touched her skin. Nothing happened.
Several seconds passed. Still nothing happened.
No flames.
No smoke.
No horrible death.
The sunlight felt mildly uncomfortable. Not painful. Not dangerous. Just irritating. Like trying to function after staying awake all night or having someone continually shine a flashlight in her face. A faint weakness settled into her limbs, but nothing more.
That was it.
Wren blinked.
Waited.
Then blinked again.
"...I'm alive?"
The words came out barely above a whisper.
For several moments Wren remained lying exactly where she'd landed, half expecting reality to correct itself.
It didn't.
The sunlight continued touching her skin.
Nothing caught fire. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Nothing exploded.
No dramatic vampire death sequence arrived to claim her.
The horrible certainty she'd felt only moments ago slowly unraveled, replaced by confusion.
Then curiosity.
Then something else entirely.
Slowly Wren looked up.
And forgot what she was supposed to be worrying about.
The sun wasn't like Earth's.
At first glance it looked ordinary enough. A great sphere hanging low above the horizon, bathing the world in warm light.
Then she actually looked.
Soft bands of pastel gold drifted across its surface. Brilliant streams of light peeled away from the sun itself like ribbons caught in an endless wind, stretching across the sky before breaking apart into shimmering colors. Silver. Violet. Rose. Pale blue. Colors she thought she recognized and others she couldn't have named if someone had handed her a dictionary.
The entire horizon looked like a living watercolor painting.
The clouds glowed with impossible shades while distant mountain peaks reflected fragments of the iridescent light.
For several long moments Wren could only stare.
Somehow, despite everything that had happened since her death, despite becoming a vampire, despite waking up in another universe, she hadn't really stopped to appreciate where she was.
The sunrise was beautiful.
Beautiful enough that it made her chest ache.
Beautiful enough that it made Earth feel very far away.
A soft breeze stirred the treetops around her.
Birds she'd never seen before crossed the sky overhead, their feathers catching the light and flashing with metallic colors.
The forest woke alongside the sunrise.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, Wren simply sat there and watched.
No panic.
No hunger.
No existential crisis.
Just wonder.
Eventually the irritation across her skin reminded her why she'd been sprinting through the forest in the first place.
"Oh right."
She looked down at her hands.
Then back at the sun.
Then back at her hands again.
"I spent ten minutes running for my life."
The sunrise remained unsympathetic.
"I genuinely thought I was about to explode."
Silence.
"So either every story got this wrong..."
She pointed upward.
"Or this place has terrible vampire quality control."
The universe remained silent.
Wren sighed.
Then laughed.
A small one.
Mostly from relief.
"So sunlight doesn't kill me."
The realization felt strange. Every story she'd ever read. Every movie she'd ever watched. Every game she'd ever played. Sunlight was always somewhere near the top of the list of vampire weaknesses. Yet here she was, standing directly beneath an alien sunrise with all her limbs still attached and her continued existence completely intact.
Yes, it slightly irritated her, and she felt a bit fatigued standing beneath it, but for the most part she could shrug it off. The discovery should have been comforting. Instead, it mostly left her wondering what else she'd gotten wrong.
"If the sunlight bit isn't real..."
She looked thoughtfully at the nearest tree.
"...what else is fake?"
The rest of the morning became dedicated to science.
Terrible science.
The sort generally discouraged by educational institutions everywhere.
Her first experiment involved a nearby stream. Wren spent several minutes staring at her reflection from different angles, moving her head back and forth while the pale-faced vampire in the water copied her perfectly. Red eyes. Dark hair. Fangs. Still there.
"Huh."
She crouched lower.
The reflection crouched lower. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Still there.
"Okay."
Wren pointed accusingly at the stream.
"That's one myth down."
The stream continued being a stream.
In many myths she'd read about vampires couldn't cross running water, so experiment two consisted of stepping directly into the stream. Nothing happened. No burning. No sizzling. No mysterious divine intervention. Just cold water soaking her boots. She took another step. Then another. Still alive.
"Running water is apparently just water."
That felt mildly disappointing.
By this point her confidence had grown enough that she started considering other weaknesses. Unfortunately the forest proved deeply uncooperative with scientific progress. There was no garlic nearby.
"Actually..."
Wren paused.
"I don't even know if garlic exists in this universe."
That realization somehow made the experiment more complicated.
There were also no churches nearby to test holy water. Not that she knew whether churches existed here either. And unfortunately, there weren't any houses around to test the whole invitation thing.
Wren looked around.
Trees.
More trees.
An excessive amount of trees.
"No houses."
A pause.
"No civilization."
Another pause.
"No way to see if I spontaneously bounce off somebody's front door."
The forest offered no solutions.
Eventually her attention shifted toward a reasonably sturdy stick lying on the ground.
Wren picked it up.
Then stared at it.
The stick remained committed to its chosen profession.
"What about wooden stakes?"
Silence.
The stick declined comment.
Wren continued staring.
The stick continued existing.
"You know somebody had to discover that."
The thought genuinely disturbed her.
"Imagine being the first vampire."
A pause.
Then she immediately pointed at herself.
"Wait."
She frowned.
"I'm the first vampire..."
The stick was beginning to concern her.
"I mean anyone would die from a wooden stake to the heart."
The stick offered no counterargument.
Which Wren found deeply suspicious.
After another few moments she tossed it away.
"I'm going to assume the answer is yes and continue valuing my continued existence."
At that point she declared vampire science temporarily complete. There were only so many experiments she could perform before the process started requiring either civilization or an alarming willingness to impale herself.
Both options seemed equally undesirable.
With the important mysteries of vampirism momentarily exhausted, Wren turned her attention toward something significantly more practical.
Shelter.
And after shelter?
Civilization.