The vampire’s thralls lifted their streamlined bodies and bore down on the survivors.
When the woman tried to block them with her staff, the thralls shifted form and devoured those attempting to flee.
She abandoned any attempt to shepherd the villagers to safety.
Semi gritted her teeth and, following the woman’s decision, faced the vampire herself.
Semi slashed her razor-sharp dagger, disrupting the vampire’s advance but barely slowing it.
To Semi, it felt like a child squaring off against an adult.
Just as on the night she first left the village, this was a fight she could only avoid and escape from.
She crouched low, lifted her head, and scanned upward.
A crystallized shard of congealed blood passed above her, stirring a violent gust of wind.
The crimson spear scraped the earth, scattering droplets of blood. There was scarcely an inch of her shoulders left unmarred by red.
Yet the vampire showed no sign of blood on its gleaming eyes or skeletal arms.
“It’s entertaining in its own way, but a rather tedious feast. At this rate, even the final course will end without satisfaction.”
Crack.
The ominous sound rang in Semi’s ear.
Another villager had fallen. She hid her agitation behind a mask of calm that had been tested countless times before.
She glanced aside and counted the living.
Twenty-one. Twenty more to go.
Semi spotted the woman preparing a ritual. She held a glinting stone and muttered incantations in a tongue Semi did not recognize. The blood-thrall rushed toward Semi’s back.
The vampire vaulted over the spot where Semi had rolled away, crushing its thrall and leaving a pool of gore behind. The spray of blood leapt into the air and, instead of falling, fused into a spear of dripping flesh.
The vampire guided the scarlet fluid along the ground, reinforcing the blood-spear until it glowed deeper, its edge razor-sharp. Yet it still recoiled at Semi’s desperate cuts—only just—forcing her to move, to stay alive.
“Do you plan to stay still? You’ll be swallowed whole!”
The vampire thrust the massive spear down at Semi’s position. It pursued her with relentless ferocity—an eternal hunt that would never end.
One victim after another.
Bodies were consumed, blood pooled on the earth, the spears grew stronger, and the vampire’s once-thin arms filled out with robust muscle. Amid the mist of sprayed blood, Semi continued to weave and dodge.
She sliced at spears with her dagger, parried each blow, her legs pumping, her body writhing through the gore as the crimson shockwaves whirled past her ankles.
The vampire laughed softly and raised its empty hand. Blood pulsed like veins in a rotating sphere cradled in its palm. The sphere drew everything inward without shrinking, its mirrored surface reflecting the chaos around it.
Semi lunged forward, dagger raised. The vampire gently blocked her with the tip of a spear. Semi’s blade couldn’t sever even a single spike.
“Tired already? Out of stamina?”
Semi doubled down, darting behind the vampire and driving her dagger home. The vampire yawned in boredom, evaded her strikes, and Semi thrust and slashed in succession.
Breathing hard, the vampire sighed as its spear arm faltered.
It swung the spear with renewed force, hurling Semi backward. Then with a sickening twist, the spear snapped into a handful of droplets and merged into the pulsing sphere. The pool under its feet—and its collapsed thrall—flowed away like a dark rivulet.
The vampire held the throbbing blood-sphere in its palm and spoke.
“Witness our kind’s lifeblood, the ceaseless flow of this sanguine current.”
Semi recognized the woman’s ritual for what it was.
“To all who set foot in our homeland…”
Semi planted both feet, steadied her dagger, and charged.
A faint ripple of blood marked shallow wounds across her body.
“Follow it. Join the endless hunt.”
The blood grew thicker, like a creeping fog, filling Semi’s path.
Her dagger swung through the haze but slowed as if underwater, failing to break the blood curtain.
She refused to relent, striking again and again. Each pulse of the blood-sphere left fresh gashes, but she kept attacking.
Then her blade—and two stout wooden stakes—pierced the blood veil.
“Finally sent the tools. I’ll take payment in this life you save. Try whatever you will!”
Semi looked at the stakes—carved wood, simple and unremarkable.
The blood that drenched them had turned them entirely red.
They bore no arcane symbols, no special charm she could see. Yet they succeeded where her dagger could not.
They were ordinary stakes, but if they could pierce this horror, they would do.
Semi stepped back to gather momentum.
Within the storm of blood, most of the villagers’ forms had dissolved, leaving only dark stains.
The coagulated blood lingered like a shadow. Corpses lay devoured by the mist, and the few survivors were covered in wounds.
Only the woman and her ritual assistant remained unscathed, separated by the repulsion of their opposing magics.
With eyes closed, the woman held aloft the shining onyx-gold stone and spoke.
“The preparation is complete. Break through it, and you shall pierce the veil.”
Semi heard her words and sprang forward.
Like a small boat braving a storm, Semi ran through the pulsing waves of blood.
Just as when she first fled the village.
Her breath was a scream, her heart a leaden stone.
Her lungs burned with each intake, her throat scorched as though aflame.
Her vision turned not toward the vampire but to the man whose memory drove her.
The village she once fled. The hunter she once evaded. The friend she left behind.
Semi sprinted to the stakes, raised her fist, and slammed them home.
The stakes struck the blood curtain, shattering it, and the force threw her backward.
A blinding shaft of light pierced the vampire’s form.
“So that’s the ritual and the ceremony… You’ve cast not a spell but a curse upon me…!”
The vampire’s final cry rippled like a lament. Semi’s eyes still saw another place.
The village she had saved, the people she could claim she protected. The one who had aided her to this point.
Looking back, it was a chaotic tale of desperate adventure.
She’d have quite the story to tell her friend later.
And the ending wasn’t exactly uplifting—her friend might scold her instead.
Semi, would you have done differently?
“Why are you closing your eyes as if dead? You startled me.”
She thought perhaps the ending was still unwritten.
“I’m in pain. Terrible pain.”
“Of course you are. Anyone left wounded and bleeding would hurt. But soon the pain will dull once the blood drains. You barely feel it then.”
“Then… I’ll die, won’t I…?”
“Yes. So you must endure as much pain as it takes to feel like you’ll die—then we’ll treat you.”
Semi thought again inwardly.
Words can be too comforting for their own good.
**
Even within the dim warehouse, the stench of battle and coppery blood faded until it vanished.
“See? I told you the vampire would be stopped.”
“Indeed.”
Erael lifted the ex-chief’s son—still bound to the stake—and carried him outside.
The scene of the fight on the way out was undeniably gruesome.
Only one person suffered minor injuries; the rest were too traumatized even to move.
From their moans and fading screams, the boy remained silent, bound to the stake.
“How does vengeance feel?”
“Not like a revenge drama, not cathartic. I feel nothing.”
“That’s normal. And those people over there?”
“I feel relief, want to ask if they’re hurt, want to demand why they killed my father. But I’m too close to death myself. Still, I won’t help them—they’d kill me if I did.”
Erael watched the woman singing an elegy over the vampire’s corpse.
“May you find peace as you journey to the blooded shores of the Tigach.”
Erael nodded and approached the gathering woman and Semi.
A merchant seated among them recognized him and called out.
“Oh, you’re out. I wondered if you were stuck too tight.”
“It hurt.”
“So that boy was the culprit?”
“Yes. He avenged the vampire for his father’s death.”
“Unusual. I don’t mean that oddly—just hard to watch. Why the look?”
Semi spat out a curt reply.
“I never had parents either, so I don’t know. But if a friend dies, I’d probably avenge them.”
The woman fell silent at her words.
Given the wounds in this small village, they had narrowly escaped death.
It was a miracle Semi survived under the woman and Erael’s care.
She sat, her wounds packed with herbs, listening to Erael’s story.
“So in the end, you’re alive.”
“Who’s alive? Want to hear? You faced death too.”
Semi replied primly.
“The ex-chief’s son. The merchant took him away. He’s not cast out—he lives.”
“I’ll relay what the merchant said.”
In hindsight, sparing the villagers and their willing entanglement with the vampire’s curse was the right choice. She was young but capable—she must strive to save others.
“So the outcome saved lives?”
“Yes. Oh, and he asked me to pass on a message. I was busy treating you when you woke.”
Erael smiled softly.
“Thank you for living. May your days be happy.”
Semi made an odd face at those words.
Once she recovered, Semi said she would return with the woman to her home village.
“Every tale must reach someone, and the first to hear mine is already chosen.”
“I must return and report to my Director. We’re on the right path.”
As they parted, Semi turned back.
“Oh, right. Jo, about my name—it’s an alias.”
“I knew. When the Beast fight by the river, Semi mentioned it excitedly. Only then I realized it was a pseudonym.”
“…Really? My real name is Tidel! It means ‘one who has a home.’ Remember that!”
“I’m Erael. Understood.”
Tidel smiled brightly and departed.
When she returned to her village, the owner of her courage-giving name was already dead.
It turned out the man who failed to find her confronted the chief, and the chief, annoyed, sent him into the alleys to seize any child.
The Preserver refused to tell what happened next.
But seeing her sink into sleep with eyes and ears closed, it could not have been good.
The world went on with many events.
The Priestess’s creature coalesced in Originium into a higher lifeform.
The first Originium catastrophe struck the land, erasing forest ecosystems.
The primordial species gathered and founded Kazdel.
One among them mastered Originium, sustaining civilization.
The Elders, the Priestess’s design, and the primordial species warred on.
In the end, they razed Kazdel, and the falling calamity transformed Tigach into Salkaz.
Under the Law’s blessing, Salkaz ascended to Sankta and founded a new monarchy in Kazdel.
The Behemoths slaughtered each other, fracturing into shards and spawning the Crimson Legions.
Countless civilizations rose.
I witnessed life amidst it all.
Civilization sprang from biological instinct, survival of the fittest.
The strong consumed the weak, the cycle unbroken.
Yet…
The cold mountain wind brushed my fingertips. A hunter knelt before me, arms outstretched, as a wounded Burdenbeast whimpered.
The Burdenbeast, trapped beneath ice, lifted its cub with its head. Once on the surface, it neared the bait the hunter had set.
“Here it comes. Ready yourself.”
He and I lowered our stances, watching the cub.
The hunter seized the cub before the ice cracked.
“Thank goodness. At least one lives.”
Betrayal. A chance for civilization to defy instinct.
And curiosity.
Burning life to climb the ladder of progress.
On the stony earth, the exhausted pioneer carried the corpse of a comrade who chased a meteor and pressed onward.
“Ha…ha… damn, one more day and we’d have made it!”
I did not answer; he spoke only to himself.
“They said it wasn’t a meteor but the Wrights’ crashed plane in the papers. Yet you insisted till the end! What worth did you find in a fallen failure to risk your life?”
He spoke as if questioning both me and himself, staring at a distant hill.
“Were you trying to show me the stones scattered on the earth? What did you want to prove?”
Before him was the flame of civilization, a light in the darkness.
“But it’s so dark! It feels like the sun itself will die!”
“Ugh, the dying sun lasts too long… We must save it! If the sun dies, our slender tail debate will never resolve, will it?”
“How do we save it?”
“We climb the highest peak and relight it with torches. If our arms tire, we carve statues in its image!”
“Great idea! I’ll make a statue so I can hold another torch beside yours. When your flame goes out, mine will relight it.”
I saw all that was to come—the future wrought by civilization’s stride.
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