Erica learned very quickly that the ancestral home was not a house.
It was a mountain pretending to be a castle, or maybe a castle that had eaten a mountain and decided to keep growing. The halls were enormous, carved directly into black stone and reinforced with dark metal beams that disappeared into the ceiling far above her head. Narrow windows cut into the rock let in thin blades of red daylight, and everywhere she looked there were banners, etched sigils, old weapons mounted like religious relics, and long corridors that seemed to lead deeper into the mountain rather than through it.
She was walking again, which felt like a win, though Teresa had made it very clear that walking and being healed were not the same thing. The bandages around Erica’s middle pulled every time she turned too sharply, and beneath them the old wound sat like a bruise in her memory, quiet until she moved wrong. Her body had mostly recovered because the system said so, but that didn’t mean it had forgotten the claw punching through her stomach.
Teresa walked ahead of her with that same controlled stride, dressed again in her dark fitted hunter gear, the reinforced leather and metal plates cleaned enough to look presentable but still carrying the hard edge of recent battle. Erica followed close, trying not to stare too obviously at everything around them, which was difficult because everything in the ancestral home seemed designed to make staring feel appropriate.
Clergymen moved through the corridors in long black robes trimmed with silver, some carrying books chained to their belts, others murmuring prayers over bowls of dark liquid Erica was pretty sure was blood. Hunters passed them in pairs or small groups, all armed, all carrying themselves with the kind of confidence that came from either years of training or a lifetime of being told they were born for war. Every name that floated above them ended the same way.
Van Helsing.
Every single one.
There were no random players running around, no shouting strangers, no weird gamer tags like Bloodsucker67 or xXNoScopeNunXx. Just named NPCs with high levels and the same strange blue symbol she had seen above Lord Malrec, the little person’s head framed by two blue flags where a level should have been. Friendly boss, her brain had decided, even though that phrase felt less comforting each time she saw it.
She opened chat for half a second, mostly out of habit.
That was a mistake.
Her viewer count had climbed past sixty without her noticing, then two hundred, then five hundred, and by the time her eyes focused, it was already over twelve hundred and still moving. The chat was a wall of disbelief, accusations, and clipped links flying past faster than she could read. People were shouting about the first player inside the Van Helsing ancestral home, others were begging someone to clip everything, and more than a few insisted she had to be hacking or secretly an NPC. One message claimed they had already reported her three times and nothing had happened. Another said the devs had to be watching this live. Another just repeated, “NO WAY NO WAY NO WAY,” like that was a complete argument.
Erica closed the chat before it could swallow her attention.
“You okay,” Teresa asked without looking back.
“Yeah, I'm fine."
“I saw your face look uncomfortable.”
“How?,” Erica muttered. “Right, Forgot you people are terrifying.”
Teresa did not smile, but something about her shoulders shifted like she had heard the joke and chosen not to encourage it.
They continued through the castle until the hallway widened into a massive chamber that looked like a medieval courtroom built by people who thought intimidation was a form of interior design. The floor dropped slightly toward the center, polished black stone reflecting the dim light from braziers set along the walls. Above, arranged in a full circle, were twenty-four balconies, each with a single seat carved into the stone like a throne. Shadows filled every one of them. Figures sat there, mostly still, their faces hidden by the height and the low lighting.
Erica slowed.
Teresa did not.
She led her to the edge of the central floor, then stopped and stepped aside.
“You go forward,” Teresa said quietly.
Erica turned her head toward her. “Alone?”
“Yes.”
“That feels like something you should have mentioned before we got here.”
“You would have worried.”
“I’m worrying now.”
“Then worry while walking.”
Erica stared at her for half a second, then let out a tiny, humorless laugh and stepped forward into the middle of the room.
The lights dimmed.
Not gradually.
All at once.
The chamber fell into a heavy gloom, and then a single shaft of red daylight blazed down from above as the ceiling opened somewhere high overhead. The light landed directly on Erica, trapping her in the center of the floor like a bug under glass. She resisted the urge to look up.
A voice boomed from one of the balconies, deep enough to vibrate through the stone beneath her feet.
“Erica Van Helsing. The records of you and your claim to the Helsing bloodline are nowhere to be found. How is it you are standing here now?”
Erica’s mouth went dry.
So that was how this was going to go.
They had checked.
Of course they had checked.
“I’m…” She stopped, swallowed, and lowered her head slightly. “I’m not sure, sir.”
A sharp sound cracked through the chamber, not a gavel, but close enough in spirit that Erica flinched.
“Your lord. You shall speak with respect. Understood?”
“Yes,” Erica said quickly. “Yes, my lord.”
She could feel Teresa somewhere behind her, probably trying very hard not to react. Erica decided right then that shy, nervous, overwhelmed girl was her best chance of surviving this conversation, mostly because it was only half acting. Her heart was pounding, and the lie she was standing on suddenly felt very thin.
“I don’t know why,” Erica continued, letting her voice tremble a little. It wasn’t hard. “My parents died in a fire, my lord. Vampires did it. I thought my life would be better used as a hunter, and I wanted revenge at the same time.”
A low murmur moved around the balconies, soft enough that she couldn’t make out words but loud enough to know she had not won them over.
“Hm,” the voice said. “We have no record of you graduating from the training program either. Yet we are told you graduated.”
Erica went cold.
Fuck.
That was the problem with lies. They had friends. One lie invited another, and then suddenly everyone expected you to know what building you graduated from and probably your instructor’s favorite soup.
She took a breath.
“Sorry, my lord,” she said, dropping her gaze lower. “I was actually kicked out.”
That did it.
A chorus of disapproving sounds rolled through the chamber, groans, scoffs, whispered remarks sharpened by disgust. Somewhere above her, a woman laughed once under her breath, the sound short and cruel.
“So you lied,” the lord said. “In the ancestral home, no less.”
“No, wait,” Erica said quickly, then forced herself to slow down before she sounded too desperate. “Sorry, my lord. Teresa was only trying to protect me. I was thrown out for being clumsy and unlucky.”
The reaction was immediate. More sounds came from the seats above, incredulous this time, like she had confessed to showing up to battle with a spoon.
“And yet you were present during Doctor Gan’s escort,” another voice said, colder than the first. “A mission of significant importance. A mission that ended in the death of a man working toward the cure.”
Erica’s mouth opened, then closed again.
“I didn’t know,” she said carefully. “I was running from vampires, my lord. Teresa saved me. I only stayed because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“That may explain your presence,” the voice replied, “but it does not erase its consequence. Teresa’s attention was divided. Doctor Gan is dead. His work is diminished. Whether by intention or ignorance, you became another burden in a mission that could not afford one.”
The words hit harder than she expected because part of her couldn’t fully argue with them. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. She hadn’t even understood what the mission was. But Dr. Gan was still dead, and she had still been there, alive because Teresa had chosen to drag her along instead of leaving her behind.
Erica lowered her head. “I’m sorry, my lord.”
A murmur moved around the balconies again, less mocking this time, but no kinder.
“Pathetic,” another voice snapped from a different balcony. “And you promised her sponsorship, Malrec?”
A more familiar voice answered, calm but carrying across the chamber with ease.
“She saved my daughter.”
Erica’s eyes flicked upward, though she couldn’t tell which shadow belonged to Lord Malrec.
“I was not aware of the full circumstances of her life,” he continued. “But her merits speak more clearly of a hunter than the record of a training hall. It is true I knew not of the deception. I will have words with Teresa later.”
Behind Erica, somewhere near the edge of the room, she could practically feel Teresa shrinking.
“…sorry,” Erica mumbled under her breath.
That probably counted as throwing her under the wagon. Or carriage. Whatever this world used.
“You are a fool, Malrec,” another lord said. His voice was older and sharper, cutting through the room like a blade drawn slowly from a sheath. “An offshoot washout has no business carrying the bloodline’s name. If anything, we should banish her for her lies and let the fangs have her for dinner.”
“No!”
Teresa’s voice shattered the chamber.
Erica turned just as Teresa ran into the light beside her, her face controlled in shape but not in emotion. Her eyes were bright with fury, her hands clenched at her sides, and for the first time since Erica had known her, Teresa looked like she had decided discipline could go to hell.
“You dare interrupt council proceedings?” the booming voice roared.
“She is not some washout, my lord,” Teresa shouted back. “She saved my life. She stood against an Elite Vampire and held her ground while surrounded by Alpine vampires. How many graduated cadets can say the same?”
The chamber erupted in murmurs. Not agreement exactly, but something close to uncertainty. Erica stood frozen beside her, unable to decide whether to stop her or hug her or crawl under the nearest stone bench.
“I lied,” Teresa continued, her voice rising, not cracking, just sharpening with every word. “I lied because I knew exactly what all of you would do. Sit above her in your comfortable chairs, weigh her name against your records, and decide she was worth less than a dead man’s paperwork.”
“Teresa,” Malrec’s voice warned, but it did not cut her off.
She didn’t stop anyway.
“You speak of the bloodline like it is sacred, but what is the point of sacred blood if it makes us blind? We are supposed to end the vampire curse. We are supposed to protect people. Yet the first thing we do when someone bleeds for us is ask whether she came from the right branch of the family tree.”
“How dare you,” the main lord boomed.
“How dare I what?” Teresa snapped, stepping forward. “Speak the truth? Speak against arrogance? We demand loyalty from hunters who die beyond these walls, but when one stands here wounded after surviving what should have killed her, you call her pathetic because she was unlucky and clumsy as a cadet.”
Erica’s chest tightened.
Teresa looked around at the balconies, at the silhouettes above them, and her voice grew colder.
“Erica is a hunter. More than that, she is family. If you exile her, then you will have to exile me as well. And if I go, I can promise you I have more than enough friends who would happily leave with me. Losing multiple hunters in one day would be a setback you should not be willing to take.”
The silence after that was enormous.
Teresa lifted her chin.
“My lords.”
The words landed like a blade being sheathed.
For several long seconds, no one spoke.
Then one of the silhouettes leaned forward slightly, enough that Erica caught the faint outline of an older man’s face.
“Malrec,” he said, voice calmer now, though still edged with warning. “Your daughter is very spirited. I will give her that.”
Lord Malrec answered without missing a beat.
“She gets it from her mother.”
A few small sounds moved through the chamber. Not laughter exactly. Too restrained for that. But something shifted.
“Fine,” the first lord said at last. “Step forward.”
Teresa stepped forward.
“Not you.”
Teresa stopped, then turned her head slightly toward Erica. Her expression softened for half a second, just enough to tell her she would be okay, or at least that Teresa wanted her to believe it. Then Teresa stepped back into the edge of the light, leaving Erica alone again.
Erica moved forward.
The spotlight felt hotter now.
“It seems you are spoken highly of,” the lord said. “And while I may be, as Lady Teresa so boldly suggested, a pigheaded fool too attached to my chair, I am not blind.”
Erica kept her eyes lowered, because looking up felt dangerous.
“A word of a Van Helsing lord is final. You have been granted rights to the bloodline by Lord Malrec, but formal recognition requires accountability.” His voice shifted slightly, becoming ceremonial. “Lord Malrec Van Helsing, do you sponsor this girl and take her as your ward? All actions and achievements made by this girl will reflect upon your house.”
The chamber went quiet again.
Erica held her breath.
She had no idea what Lord Malrec was thinking. All she had done was shove Teresa out of the way. She wasn’t worth a political fight. She wasn’t worth a house taking responsibility for her. She was a glitch with a bat and a bad habit of jumping into things she did not understand.
Then Malrec answered.
“I do.”
The words moved through the room like a stone dropped into deep water.
“All those in favor,” the lord said.
One by one, silhouettes lifted their hands in the darkness.
Not all of them.
Erica counted without meaning to.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
Maybe fourteen, depending on whether one hand had lifted late or she imagined it.
Enough.
“In that case,” the lord said, his voice filling the courtroom again, “Erica Van Helsing, from this day onward you are no longer an offshoot member of uncertain standing. You are accepted as the ward and daughter of Lord Malrec Van Helsing, permitted to enter the ancestral home, and granted the protections and responsibilities of this bloodline.”
Erica’s throat tightened.
“Do not make us regret this.”
She bowed quickly, because it felt safer than trying to figure out what her face was doing.
“Thank you, my lord.”
The skylight above her closed, cutting off the red daylight, and the room’s lamps brightened again one by one. For the first time, Erica could see more of the council above her. Faces emerged from the darkness, old, young, severe, beautiful, scarred, all carrying names she couldn’t quite make out from below, all marked with that same blue friendly boss icon that felt less friendly the longer she looked at it. Most of them did not look pleased.
But enough had voted.
That mattered.
The meeting adjourned with no further ceremony, which somehow made it feel more intimidating. The lords remained seated as Erica bowed again, then turned and walked out as calmly as she could manage. She grabbed Teresa by the sleeve on the way out, partly because she wanted support and partly because if she didn’t, Teresa might decide to start yelling again.
They made it into the hall before Erica finally breathed.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” she said.
Teresa gave a short laugh, sharp and strained, then elbowed her lightly in the stomach.
Except it landed directly on the wound.
Erica’s knees buckled.
Pain flared through her abdomen so hard and sudden that the whole hallway tilted, and she dropped to the floor with a strangled sound, one hand clutching at the bandages as her vision blurred at the edges.
“Fuck,” Teresa said instantly, the anger vanishing into panic. She dropped beside her and reached for her carefully this time, wrapping Erica’s arm around her shoulders as she helped hold her up. “I’m sorry. That was supposed to be for ratting me out.”
Erica tried to laugh, but all that came out was a wheeze.
“Deserved,” she managed.
Teresa’s expression tightened. “No, it wasn’t. I was just trying to help." She pursed her lips.
Erica caught her breath slowly, the pain still pulsing in deep, ugly waves through her stomach. Most games let injuries vanish when the health bar refilled. This one, apparently, liked to keep receipts.
“Sorry,” Erica mumbled once she could speak again. “I panicked. They were very balcony and judgmental.”
Teresa stared at her for one long second.
Then, despite everything, she laughed.