Listen up, bloody fledglings! When I was first turned, I thought all blood was the same. Any mortal would do, right? WRONG! That’s like thinking all wine is the same because it’s red. What a fucking joke! It took me centuries—centuries—before I understood the complexity behind truly exceptional blood. So, if you don’t want to be stuck with the equivalent of burnt toast, listen up! Starting with the basics.
First off, emotion! Fear? Overrated. Stop romanticising it, you knuckleheads! If you want that perfect, smooth, rich, full-bodied flavour, you need contented, happy fucking Humans. Suffering? Forget it. The rush is tempting, but trust me, that bitter aftertaste will mess with your head as much as your palate. Find a calm, consenting donor, and you’re in for a proper, satisfying feed.
Next, diet! You are what you eat—or, more accurately, you are what they eat. Mortals living off fresh game, fruits, and hearty grains become delicacies. Blood rich in vitality and flavour. Heavy meat-havers—hunters, warriors—get you that robust, savoury taste. For a lighter, thinner taste, look for those peasants or monks eating nothing but greens and grains.
Age matters! And health! Mortals in their prime, thirties to forties, are where it’s at! Vitality, richness, everything balanced just right. Young blood is sweeter, but the effects collapse faster than an undercooked soufflé! Elderly blood has that mature, refined taste—but it lacks the vitality you bloody need! Keep track of your donors’ mortality if you don’t want to join them in the fucking grave! Above all, keep your donors free of diseases! We might be dead, but you don’t want that damn rotten taste in your mouth.
Lastly, genetics! No two bloodlines are equal. Find one with a solid arcane heredity, and you’ll get yourself a rare and unforgettable treat. However! Even a first-generation Life mage will blow all other legacy mages out of the water. If you come across one, you better hold onto them like they’re the fucking apple of your eye!
Remember: what you consume shapes you. Overfeed on one donor, and you’ll start turning into them! Balance is bloody key. So keep a variety of donors you find agreeable, or risk losing your mind and identity. Got it?
Now get out there and stop feeding like bloody amateurs.
–preface from “Blood and Butter: The Art of Perfect Flavour” by Gorgon Fangsay, Head Chef at the Black Sun Palace.
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Remembrance 2, 2497 AK, Radiant Empire, Cleft Isles, Greyport.
The Festival’s First Night only grew wilder after the grand opening ceremony.
The carcass of the Demon King’s effigy blazed high and bright in the heart of the Central Plaza—wood bones turned glorious bonfire. Its golden glow danced upon the looming face of the All Temple. The night was alive, vibrant with laughter, chatter, and jubilant tunes. Tireless bards played, and hundreds of feet struck the ground in rhythm, making the earth tremble.
As novelty stalls closed and little children were ushered to bed, the food courts redoubled their efforts. Wine, ales, and spirits flowed in great rivers. The revelry rose to a fever pitch. Tonight, the Radiant Empire citizens feasted. They buried the Dark Season and the torments of the past, dancing and raising their drinks to the hopeful days ahead. Toasts were pledged to the memory of legends, to the Founder Kayden, to Emperor Rasmar, and to the proud Nezir line. Hymns of worship rose into the night sky, carried by the smoke of the funeral pyre.
For this night, and thirteen more to follow, the people of Greyport surrendered to merriment. Whether at the bottom of a tankard, in frenzied jigs by the fire, or in tangled sheets reeking of cheap perfume, they sought to drown out the shadows of their lives.
All the while, in darkened alleyways, just out of sight, corpses wandered secretly, hoisting crates of crystalline red poison. In a deserted neighbourhood, a mad boy conjured flames that spiralled wildly out of control. Heedless of the fire that was slipping beyond his grasp, he gleefully tormented his victim, whose muffled pleas faded into the silent night, unheard. And on a rooftop, a stone’s throw above the oblivious revellers, a large figure cloaked in writhing darkness closed in on a petrified red-eyed woman.
* * *
Kaydence scrutinised the Vampiress’s face.
Without her cowl, the undead woman looked young—in her early twenties, though that meant pretty much nothing. Even Vampires turned in their twilight years rapidly restored themselves to their prime. Her features—charming at first glance—were uncannily flawless, like a porcelain doll, lacking the comforting imperfections that marred natural flesh creatures. She had long, straight raven hair, with low bangs almost covering her gaze, an upturned button nose, and monolid almond-shaped eyes—reminiscent of the olive-skinned Southern mountain tribes. However, her skin had the pallor of death. Her eyes were the colour of fresh-spilt blood, and two viperous fangs peeked anxiously from behind her regular human teeth.
Seething hatred bled from her gaze as she was forced to kneel on the frozen roof, her free will ensnared by immaterial chains. Though she had killed her expression, breathing and heartbeat, and vowed to give nothing away to her captor, she ultimately failed to quell the overflowing wrath boiling at her core, letting it spill to the surface through her gleaming eyes.
Not that it would have changed a thing. Kaydence’s mana had wormed its way deep into the undead’s artificial soul. No matter her superficial efforts, she was an open book for the young mage—one packed with words of anger, disbelief, and despair scrawled in bold and violent strokes of blood-red ink that dripped between crumpled pages poorly bound in human skin.
The Vampire’s mind was a mess. Touching it felt like sinking her fingers into viscous, boiling tar, the sensation unnervingly familiar. Kaydence’s every instinct screamed at her to recoil. But she could not afford to. Seizing control of the reckless undead had been easy; maintaining it was the true ordeal. Already, the Vampiress’s mana was aggressively fighting back to purge Kaydence’s encroaching presence.
She could not afford to delay any longer.
“Bloodling.”
In her Wraith persona, Kaydence’s voice was a deep, echoing whisper, like the creaking of old stone and the eerie hiss of wind through pitch-black caves. She weaved motives from her past life’s dialect into her speech, lading it with mystery and archaic gravitas. Bloodling was actually something Zerina had called newborn vampires, usually using the exact same contemptuous tone Kaydence now mimicked. Although, the bookish necromancer-turned-undead-killing-machine always harboured a fondness for her bloodthirsty progeny that Seifer never shared.
“I have queries… You will provide answers.”
Kaydence was not asking, but she allowed the Vampiress a moment to nod reluctantly before releasing her paralysed vocal cords. The more the woman bought into her own helplessness, the less her subconscious struggled against Kaydence’s hold.
“Give me your name.”
Again, not a request. The very magic that held the undead together compelled her to obey. Yet, despite her show of compliance, the Vampiress tried to resist—in vain, of course. Her lips quivered, jaws clenching tight, as her fear and hatred briefly bolstered her defiance.
But it was all futile at this stage. An answer ineluctably spilt out, hissing through gritted teeth.
“Ha– Hawthorn.”
An obvious code name. Obvious and insulting. Kaydence’s temper flared, anger choking her thoughts. The night had been an endless mental grind: nothing was going her way; inescapable phantom pains wracked her body from a lifetime away; nightmarish memories lurked at the edge of her conscious mind, exacerbated by the ghastly festival ongoing a few steps below.
Her patience was spent.
“You dare…!” With a bestial snarl, barbs of her mana gouged deeper into the Vampiress’s soul-shade, wrenching out a pained whimper. The Shadow Cloak unfurled like an angry spectre, swallowing the moonlight and enclosing them both into a sphere of absolute, inky blackness that leeched even the warmth from the air. Frost crept onto the Vampiress’s cadaveric skin.
“Do not play games with me… Tanya.” Within the impenetrable darkness, Kaydence’s warped voice echoed from every direction at once. “The outcome will never favour you…”
Ripping the name from her captive’s mind unfortunately came at a cost. Precise mind magic required a finesse Kaydence was ill-suited for, and with each crude probe, she risked exposing the true frailty of her magical hold. With each incursion, the Vampiress’s subconscious resistance grew fiercer, like a body learning to fend off a virus.
“Do you understand…?” the Wraith demanded, pressing her advantage.
Magic was no mere tool. It was a symbiotic existence, feeding on, magnifying and refining the user’s self. A mage shaped reality by projecting their will through mana; but in doing so, they exposed themselves to magic’s influence, allowing it to subtly reshape them in return. Nowhere was this self-assertion stronger than within the mage’s own body. Foreign magic naturally clashed with a living being’s inner mana—their metaphysical immune system, so to speak. It made casting any spells within another’s body an uphill battle, rarely worth the effort.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
A Vampire’s sire could bypass this resistance because their mana formed the foundation of their scion’s soul-shade during the turning. But Kaydence was a usurper, appropriating that bond to her own means, and her mana was being rejected like a faulty organ transplant. She needed to resolve this situation quickly, before her prey wised up to that fact.
“I said… Do you understand?”
“Y-Yes!”
Kaydence let the undead writhe in pain a little longer before abating her magical assault. “Why did you attack me?”
“You know why!” Tanya snarled before dropping with a strangled cry. “Ahh-ah-aaAAArgh!”
“I am asking nonetheless,” Kaydence drawled coldly, heedless of the undead’s agony. She had her theories, but too many details failed to add up. What intrigued her now was why the Vampiress believed she should already know. Kaydence watched her convulse helplessly on the roof, gasping for breath she no longer needed, then sighed. “I see you understood nothing at all… Now, answer me!”
“Is… Is this all a game to you?!” The Vampiress’ red eyes cried tears of blood.
“You are testing my patience–”
“You took her! Bastard!” Tanya’s strident shriek dripped with venom, her rage spilling out in bloody foam at her mouth. “You stole her from me! You wretched lot ruined us, destroyed everything—did the unthinkable, to a child! And now– now you demand I explain myself?! You dare ask why I came for you?!” Her will strained against Kaydence’s, almost enough to stand. “Curse you! Curse all of you! I will make you pay. Now that I have your blood, I’ll hunt you down. I’ll tear you rats screaming from your hiding holes, bite your throats out, and rip your hearts from your chests with my bare hands! I WILL BATHE IN YOUR BLOOD AND ENJOY EVERY M–”
“Enough.” Kaydence’s voice cut through the tirade, brimming with barely contained fury. “This is too mortifying to behold…” A forceful flick of her magic tossed the Vampiress back down, reducing her to a spasming, whimpering heap. Kaydence was glad for the sound-cancelling ward she had erected earlier, around when she started her interrogation. It had been a risk to split her focus, but now it was paying off.
Disgust twisted her features as she gripped her stomach. The woman’s rant had stirred unwelcome memories. Today, of all days. Now, Kaydence recognised the source of her unpleasant familiarity with the Vampiress’s state of mind. This vile mixture of desperate urgency, helplessness, and unsurmountable loathing aimed both outward and in—it mirrored the chaotic emotions that had once fuelled Seifer’s rise to power and descent into madness. And beneath it all, Kaydence sensed fear: a raw, curdled, festering anguish that gnawed at the dead woman’s mind like a parasite, nourishing every other foul emotion with its rot.
In the broken, writhing creature at her feet, Kaydence saw a reflection of her former self.
And it revolted her.
“Give… her… back…”
With feeble movements, Tanya had managed to crawl across the frozen shingles, almost to Kaydence, though the Vampiress should not be able to sense her in the omnipresent darkness.
“You little idiot!”
Kaydence’s fury lashed out through her mana, twisting violently inside the undead woman and forcing her body into a painful arch. Wails of agony were swallowed by the darkness. But the girl cared not. The Founder’s Festival always tortured her mind, but her current headache was different. “You thought… You thought I was associated with that… reprehensible… contemptible… vermin! You believed I would debase myself… raising such crude carrion puppets!” Her displeasure echoed around them like an eldritch choir.
This half-witted assassin had mistaken her for whatever arrogant fool of a necromancer worked with the drug smugglers! The very thought sent a wave of indignation coursing through Kaydence. She constricted her mana around the Vampiress’s soul-shade, smothering her mind as she yanked at her strings. She forced the undead woman into a pathetic prostration, face crushed into the cold shingles beneath them.
Kaydence’s voice dropped to a chilling whisper.
“You have no idea what I am…”
An unnatural silence stretched out as Kaydence endeavoured to rein in her temper. Calm down… Calm down, damn it! Torturing her prey was hardly constructive, and she knew remorse and self-loathing would catch up to her once she had time to cool off.
Eventually, she let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Count yourself fortunate… I was not your intended quarry… They would have shown no such mercy… had you attempted to subdue them as you did with me… What madness overtook you… to initiate a direct aetheric confrontation with a master of Darkness… little bloodling…? How woefully young and inexperienced can you be…?” She suddenly realised her shivering captive was on the verge of passing out and pulled back with another frustrated sigh.
“Have you heard anything I just said…?”
The Vampiress took a gasping breath—a vestigial reflex from her time with the living—then started hacking and retching, as if to expunge something especially vile stuck in her throat. “It’s– ugh. It’s never failed before.” Her raspy tone was filled with confusion and disbelief.
“Then it was chance… Or you crossed paths only with incompetent novices… Listen... I know not what sires teach their scions in these times… but regardless of how flawless or superior you deem your race… you are undead… nothing more… nothing less… Exposing your essence to one whose craft is dominion over your kind… that is the pinnacle of folly… If you must seek to enthral another, use your fangs… They were designed as magical catalysts for a reason… serving as check valves for your aether… preventing counterflux…
“Why, by the Void, am I giving you a lesson…?”
No longer attempting to puke her soul out, Tanya gaped blindly in Kaydence’s general direction. “No one’s ever told me.”
“Then your sire is a buffoon…”
“Don’t insult my master!” The Vampiress started hissing but cut herself off and mellowed surprisingly fast. From Kaydence’s front-row seat on her emotions, it was unnerving to see the Vampiress consciously pull back her madness and lock it behind bars of iron will. This was not right. Her mind should not have been this fragmented. Her very nature should not allow it. But soon, of the all-consuming hatred, there remained only a simmer of hostile suspicion mixed in with reluctant awe. “You, how do you know these things? Who are you?”
“That… is none of your concern… Just know we are tracking the same quarry…” Kaydence’s gaze turned towards the harbour. Though darkness enclosed her and the Vampiress, she kept the ability to see her surroundings. It would have been foolish to blind herself along with her foe. “They must have moved the drug by now… Vermin as they may be… if the necromancer set up any wards at all… they could not have missed our aethers clashing by the warehouse…” She was not about to admit her little stunt at the smugglers’ ship might have tipped them off as well.
“The Ruby Dust,” Tanya mulled over the response. “Why should I believe you?”
“You are not dead… er…”
“You could be after information.”
“I am…” Kaydence saw no reason to deny it. “However… holding you captive serves me not… Instead…” Kaydence had to think fast. “I may be inclined toward… cooperation… I know this town… You do not… Your movements within the noble district have already drawn… notice…” She recalled Edon’s inquiries about a suspicious figure lurking in Southern Greyport.
Teaming up with an unstable undead was far from ideal, but Kaydence was running out of time and options—short of killing her. And that came with its own risks: chiefly, what would happen when the woman’s sire lost contact permanently. There was a chance the sire would not care or investigate, but Kaydence was not a gambling woman.
Additionally, any Vampire would require an entourage of blood donors—thralls or otherwise—who would raise the alarm if she did not return. Kaydence had initially suspected Tanya might be behind the recent string of murders and disappearances in town. However, after seeing how quickly the Vampiress regained control over her bloodlust, Kaydence no longer saw her as the culprit. Had Tanya been responsible, there would have been far fewer bodies—or far more. Moreover, while Kaydence recently found a woman dead in an alley with her throat torn open, the wounds had not matched Vampire fangs, and too much of her blood had been wasted, spilt freely onto her clothes.
Regardless, this was not how Kaydence had hoped her night would go. She hoped she could at least salvage something from this entire mess.
“In return… You shall provide me with the information I seek… willingly…” Implying she could easily take what she desired by force, though that claim became more of a bluff with every passing moment. “Also… see that you exercise more discernment in the future… Do not allow your little personal vendetta to cloud your judgment anymore… A two-bit necromancer already believes they can use my city as a playground… I do not care for a crazed bloodling making matters worse…”
“It’s not.”
Kaydence waited for the Vampiress to elaborate.
“It’s not a vendetta.”
Again, Kaydence let the oppressive silence carry her scepticism.
“It’s not,” Tanya insisted, though the brooding anger in her eyes belied her words.
The Vampiress hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. With deliberate, unthreatening movements, she reached inside her midnight-black cloak—thus inadvertently demonstrating her returning autonomy. Kaydence tensed, but she should not have. What emerged from the Vampiress’s cloak was no weapon or artefact, but something far more unsettling. Dangling from a delicate silver chain, the round medallion was emblazoned with the imperial phoenix perched triumphantly atop a skull, with a snake coiled through its hollowed eyes and mouth.
The symbol of the Imperial Inquisition.
“This is an imperial investigation.”
Kaydence had not expected that.
She was still processing this new development when something else caught her eye that chilled her to the bone. In the street below, where the festivities were rapidly degenerating into drunken debauchery, a flash of long platinum hair, tinged with an unmistakable green sheen, flickered through the crowd, trailing behind a tall, running man. Her brief glimpse of Lenril’s face, usually so placid, showed it twisted in abject terror. Then, just as quickly, he disappeared from view.
One thing only could cause the stoic elf to run around in blind panic like a headless chicken.
Something had happened to Sarmin.
* * *
The stench of burnt flesh, spilt beer, and piss choked up the draughty, circular room. A tiny Half-Elf hung limp from a rusted hook on the wall, like a slab of meat in a butcher’s cellar. His fair skin was scorched and mottled with bruises. Patches of his curly blond hair were singed off. His left eye was swollen shut. His breathing was wet and shallow, and only sheer stubbornness kept him tethered to consciousness.
But now, his bullies’ drunken cheer had given way to horror and confusion. The young teens huddled against the incurved stone wall, their faces ghastly pale, their eyes nailed to the centre of the room. One passed-out boy lay forgotten in a puddle of his own vomit, while another crouched behind a cracked wooden pillar, gripping his head and rocking back and forth, muttering frantically, “It’s not my fault. I told him he was taking too many. I told him. It’s not my fault!”
Shrill cries of agony echoed in the once cold, dark tower, rattling the ancient rafters and cogs up high near the shadowy ceiling. Their source was also the object of the teen boys’ terror.
Curled on his knees in the centre of the room, Thomas wailed as his arms burned.
The flames blazed unnaturally bright and fierce, the heat so intense it warped the air around him. “No! Nooo! Stop it! You’re mine! I command you! Stooooop!” His voice cracked with anguish as he flailed, trying to smother the fire—but only succeeding in igniting his clothes. Already, the flesh of his hands was bubbling and blackening. “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!”
Like a ravenous animal fed by the updraught in the room, the fire soon spread to the old, dried-up floorboards and started licking at the pillars. Thomas reached out as if to pull it back, but the flames ignored him. His dazed, bloodshot eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m going to the magic academy…” he whispered in a brittle voice.
The roaring flames engulfed his head, and he collapsed to the floor. The other teens screamed and ran out, dragging their muttering friend behind.
Trapped in the burning room, unable to move, Sarmin could only murmur a trembling prayer between ragged, shallow breaths.
“Kay…”
* * * * *