Darkness. The kind that swallows everything whole - light, warmth, hope. This wasn't just your average blackout; it was a void with attitude, a black hole for souls, a pit so deep you’d need a headlamp and a grappling hook just to imagine the bottom. And I wanted nothing more than to let it drag me under, to sink into the absolute nothing, let it consume every thought, every pain, every memory. It sounded almost... peaceful.

If oblivion offered a one-way ticket out of here, I was game. At least then, maybe I’d stop seeing Rachel’s face - stop replaying that last look she gave me, the way she needed me, and I let her down. I’d failed her. And that failure stuck to me like tar, thick and suffocating, eating away at whatever was left of my so-called soul. I deserved whatever I got. Especially if it meant a sweet escape from this endless guilt, a chance to throw myself into the river of Lethe and finally forget.

But then... no. That would be too easy. A clean getaway - I didn't deserve that. Oblivion might be bliss, but there was no way I'd let myself off the hook like that. The memory of her deserved better than some coward’s exit. And if I wanted to avoid a free fall into the eternal void, it was time to fight.

It wasn’t easy. Whatever this void was, it didn’t like being told “no.” It held onto me, clawing, digging in like a tick that wouldn’t let go. The weight was so crushing that every second felt like pushing through concrete with my bare hands. But inch by inch, fighting with every last drop of willpower I had left, I scraped my way back. I could feel my way toward the dim, faded edges of awareness, clinging to scraps of something like pain, like heat.

Coming back to life... it hurt like hell.

***

And that’s when the system notification showed up - not that I saw it with my actual eyes. No, it was more like a glitchy HUD overlay on the inside of my eyelids. The darkness clung to me, thick and sticky, like six-day-old gym shorts that hadn’t seen a wash in weeks.

New Notification

Condition: Critical

Life Force: Minimal

Status: Pending Transformation - Initiate Self-Preservation Protocol?

Accept? Yes/No

Error. Host is…Bloodline Detected… Error. Recalibrating… Recalibration: complete.

Updated Notification

New Objective

Survive the pit.

Rewards: ???

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Well, well, how thoughtful. A user manual for my own survival. Nifty. Only, I was still lying in the dark, half-dead, and feeling like roadkill on the edge of a dumpster fire.

The sensation of something feeding on me was enough to snap me out of any half-baked existential ponderings. I could feel it - some parasite, latched onto my neck, trying to suck the last scraps of life from me before I was even good and dead. I was barely more than a warm corpse, practically worm food. And this thing was trying to get first dibs on the feast.

Screw that.

A jolt of survival instinct kicked in. I clawed back to awareness, just enough to feel my hand jerk up, fingers fumbling across my own face. Eyes sealed shut, lids scarred and mangled, split across from temple to cheekbone. Vision? Yeah, not happening. But there was something attached to my neck, and whatever it was, it wasn’t letting go.

With a feral snarl - yes, a full-on, horror-movie snarl - I reached up and latched onto whatever was gnawing on me. Felt like a neck. I gripped, twisted, and pulled, tearing it from me, the sound of ripping flesh nearly drowned out by my own heartbeat thundering in my ears. My fingers came away soaked, dripping in something hot, rich... and delicious.

The smell of blood hit me like a sucker punch, igniting something primal, something insatiable. It wasn’t rational. It was hunger, pure and unadulterated, a need as deep as the void itself. My fangs - and let’s not kid ourselves, they were fangs now - sank into the torn-up thing in my hands, and I drained it dry before I even had a chance to think.

And that was just the beginning. Fragments of what followed blur together, broken scenes of tearing through body after body, gorging on blood that barely kept the hunger at bay. Each warm, pulsing vein was a fleeting oasis in a desert of ravenous thirst, but it was never enough, never satisfying, always leaving me clawing for more.

I wasn’t alone. Others were down here, waking up, scratching and snarling as they tore into the only source of food around - the still-warm bodies that littered the pit. Occasionally, they fought back, the weaker ones barely mustering more than a startled gasp before I ended them, while the stronger ones came at me with every last ounce of their strength, clawing to stay alive. It didn’t matter. Every time, I was the last one standing - the victor, the survivor, the one with the blood still smeared across his face.

I don’t know how long it went on. Time had no meaning down here; it was just kill, feed, kill again, rinse and repeat until the last straggler lay motionless in the dirt, and there was no one left to fight.

Eventually, the hunger dulled, dimming like the last embers of a dying fire. Exhausted, I felt my grip on reality slipping, the darkness creeping in, but this time, it was the kind of sleep that had a strange, torporous peace to it. As I sank back, somewhere in that black haze, I realized the hunger was finally… gone.

The system notification glowed in the empty darkness, repeating with a smug insistence as if it knew something I didn’t.

Updated Notification: Objective complete. Survive the pit.

Rewards: Race Evolution

Adult human male upgraded to Undead Vampire.

Clan choices available are:

Error, unknown bloodline detected. Scanning for anomaly.

Primordial Lineage, Pandora bloodline, detected. Recalculating results.

New Expanded Options are available. Choose your evolution.

New options? Bloodline evolutions? A slight understatement - that list had more variety than a vampire version of Netflix. Options filled my vision with the flicker of some very unsettling names. Over seventy-seven bloodlines, each with its own mix of powers and problems. The bloodsucking buffet.

I took a closer look. My criteria? Simple. If I was going to be a vampire, I wanted one that fit my style. Yeah, I know - we’re talking about my impending transformation into an undead creature of the night, and I’m browsing like it’s a car dealership. Don’t judge. My body, my choice, okay?