Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 106: The Meeting of the Vampire Lords (2)

Chapter 106: The Meeting of the Vampire Lords (2)

The names began to fall, one by one, carried by measured, cautious voices — sometimes laced with barely veiled pride, often weighed with the care of a chess move where each word meant more than just a name.

Some spoke with military clarity, others with feigned detachment, but all knew that behind the nomination lay more than a tournament — it was a maneuver, a gamble, a message cast across the entire table.

Then came Anarael’s turn. She did not rise. She looked at no one. She didn’t even need to breathe differently.

In a calm, even, implacable voice, she pronounced her choice like a sentence, something decided long before the meeting began, as if the words merely formalized a truth sealed in another age.

— I choose Lukaris.

A shiver ran through the assembly. Not a sound, but a dull ripple, a discreet shock, almost physical, that seemed to spread through the air like a restrained vibration.

Eyes froze, some widened ever so slightly, and for a second... everything seemed suspended.

Only Cassandre didn’t react. She remained still, her gaze lost in a distant thought, detached from the silent tumult her name had just stirred.

And Yaris, slumped in his chair, barely blinked — halfway between sleep and a detachment so deep it bordered on cruelty.

The confirmation that Noctis had spoken to her about me, in one way or another, became more and more obvious. It was no longer a hypothesis. He had done it. Definitely. He had whispered something to her. Enough for her to know. To see beyond appearances, beyond even what I was beginning to understand about myself.

She knew. She knew I was the thirteenth.

The anomaly.

The flaw in the perfect structure of this world — the one that, sooner or later, would cause it to collapse. She knew I was the one Noctis had chosen... or condemned. The one through whom the rupture would come. The one who had no place in ordinary cycles, because he wasn’t made to obey them.

She knew I was the one around whom everything would bend, twist, explode.

The one who, soon, would stand at the center of the greatest conflict this world had ever known — a war so ancient at its root it seemed carved into the bones of reality itself.

A war between mortals... and the gods and their faithful.

A war we were going to lose.

In fact, it was already lost. And yet... it was still going to happen.

Because some things must burn, even when we know they will lead only to ash.

I had resigned myself.

Not out of weakness. Not out of surrender. But in that kind of lucid calm one reaches when there is no gentle outcome left, no neutral path, no room for detours.

If this world wanted to bring me to face the gods...

If it marked me as the number one enemy of its fragile balance, as the living fracture to be smothered before it took shape...

Then so be it.

I would become merciless. I would ask for nothing. I would beg no longer for my place. I would stop trying to understand the rules. I would break them. And in that revolt, in that war they seemed eager to trigger through me, I would see only a confirmation.

The confirmation that my choice was right. The choice to move forward. To kill, if needed. To grow, no matter the cost.

To become stronger than anyone in this world, until even their gods would be forced to see me... not as a mistake.

But as a threat.

As if to tear me brutally from my thoughts, a voice rose. Hesitant. A little high-pitched. A little too clear in the silence.

— One must be below level one hundred, Madam... Mikaem timidly dared to remind.

I stood up.

Without haste. Without show. Just the body rising, slowly, like closing a page.

My voice, when it came, was steady. Measured. Devoid of provocation, but charged with a quiet firmness I didn’t need to emphasize.

— If I may... I am indeed level ninety-one.

Not a word more. Just that bare truth, clear, but undeniable.

A murmur of disbelief rippled through the room, like a breath poorly controlled, impossible to hold back. Subtle, but heavy. One of those collective shudders no one acknowledges out loud, but everyone feels in their flesh.

Then, without warning, it was Nymphael who reacted.

She stood up abruptly, her slender fingers trembling with anger or confusion — perhaps both — as she pointed her magical scarecrow at me, still sealed, but charged with an obvious tension.

— Impossible!

She stared at me.

But it wasn’t a look of hostility. It was astonishment. Dizziness.

As if, in that precise instant, I had overturned something she believed immutable. As if my existence contradicted a truth she had carried for centuries.

— Your aura is that of a noble vampire... You exude power. How could you still be below level one hundred?

I didn’t flinch.

I answered without raising my voice, without pushing the tone. A faint smile touched my lips — not arrogant, not mocking. Almost playful. Almost peaceful.

— And yet, I am.

And that’s when... for the very first time since the beginning of the assembly, Aranael rose.

She made no sound. She didn’t speak.

But her movement alone was enough to tilt the room’s balance.

That simple gesture, almost graceful, almost slow, was a silent explosion. A scream without sound. A crushing wave.

An invisible pressure fell upon us like a slab of steel. Implacable. Without violence... but without escape.

The weight of her power filled every corner of the space, as if the air itself became too heavy to breathe.

Even here, even in this circle of elders, of monsters, of beings shaped in war and memory... even they suffocated. Without understanding. Fever. Dizziness. Cold sweat.

The entire room became a sanctuary of absolute silence — and contained fear.

— I believe I said that Lukaris would be accepted at this table, she finally declared, in a voice so smooth, so calm, it seemed carved from ice.

A spectral whisper. Without anger. Without raising her tone. But saturated with absolute truth. Indisputable. Irrefutable.

— And yet, tonight, twice, my words have been questioned. Twice, someone did not listen.

She did not shout. She did not scold. But each syllable carried with it a vertigo. A frozen tension, suspended between the beats of the world.

Then she paused. And in that pause, there was nothing.

Nothing but that feeling of eternity coiled in a breath. The sense that time itself hesitated to continue without her permission.

— I don’t like that, she resumed. Her voice hadn’t shifted a single inch. I really don’t like that.

Then, lower. Slower. Heavier:

— The third time... will be the last.

And the silence that followed was not mere silence. It was a tomb. A total stop. Visceral. Inevitable.

Each of us lowered our eyes. Soaked in sweat. Breathless. Our gaze nailed to the ground as if that ground, suddenly, held our only salvation.

Even Yaris, who had been dozing moments earlier, slowly bent forward, in a motion so slow, so unconscious — an ancestral reflex, carved into his bones.

It was not a warning. It wasn’t even a threat.

It was a cosmic truth. Spoken by an entity who, for a long time, no longer lived within the laws of this world.

Then, in a discreet rustle, almost unreal, Aranael sat down again. And it was only in that instant... that we could breathe again.

It was Nymphael who spoke first, her voice distorted, broken by a dread that pierced each syllable, as if speaking them tore something from her.

— I... I offer my apologies, madam. Never... never will I commit such a sin again.

She stammered, the words colliding in her throat, suddenly stripped of all poise, all certainty, as if the pride that inhabited her minutes earlier had dissolved, washed away in raw fear. She was nothing more than a frightened creature, curled up before something beyond all she had ever conceived.

I watched her for a long time, saying nothing, unable to speak before the naked truth that passed through me.

I understood now, without detour, without concealment, without softening.

I saw what she was — what she had always been.

And I saw, too, what she, Aranael, truly embodied.

For despite her childlike appearance, despite the feigned gentleness of her gestures, despite that face frozen in porcelain perfection, she could no longer be perceived as a vulnerable or adorable figure, not even as a vampiric being in the sense we still understood, by tradition or habit.

She was not a figure of authority.

She was not an entity to be respected.

She was not an interlocutor.

She was beyond.

A sacred entity. An ancient monster. A remnant from before the rules. Perhaps before the gods themselves.

Something that had been, that still was, and that would remain long after we were gone.

A force so vast it needed not to defend itself, nor to threaten, nor even to justify its existence.

She could have, had she wished it, erased every being present in that tent — with a breath, a glance, a mere flicker of intent. And yet, she remained there, seated, still, peaceful, almost weary, as if what we were experiencing was nothing to her but a ritual formality, another repetition in eternity.

But we all knew, with a visceral certainty, a truth inscribed in our flesh and in our silences: one does not raise their voice to Aranael, one does not contradict her, one does not question her.

One listens.

One bows.

Or one dies.