Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 120: The Sentence of the Primordial Vampire

Chapter 120: The Sentence of the Primordial Vampire

She looked at me.

Her.

The girl with porcelain skin. The entity of shadow and silence. The creature whose mere touch had undone reality, shattered will, vaporized resistance. She had no crown, no scepter, no loud voice. And yet, no gaze had ever weighed so heavily on me.

Her black eyes pierced through me.

They weren’t human eyes. Nor were they divine. They were openings, living abysses. Bottomless mirrors in which all intent dissolved.

— You... stay.

Her voice was flat. Unassailable. She wasn’t asking. She wasn’t suggesting. She was stating.

And that’s when the pain caught up to me. Not a new pain, but the one my body had held back for too long. A tidal wave of torn nerves, lacerated flesh, strength ripped from its foundations. I couldn’t utter a word. My breath caught in my throat. My legs, emptied of their grounding, collapsed beneath me as if I had never been made to stand before her.

I fell.

One knee, then the other.

And in a murmur of blood, unable to hold her gaze any longer or bear the wounds I carried, I lost consciousness.

Plunged into darkness.

Far from their retreating steps.

And alone, abandoned to the dull burn of another judgment to come.

I woke slowly.

Everything was still blurry, numb, as if my mind was rising from the depths of an ancient sleep. There was no pain. Not yet. Just a diffuse warmth, almost pleasant, and that strange taste already coating my mouth even before I opened my eyes.

A divine taste.

Sweeter than anything I had ever tasted. Richer than gold, thicker than honey, denser than pleasure itself. It wasn’t food. It wasn’t a remedy.

It was blood.

And not just any blood.

I didn’t move. I waited. I let that density seep into me, anchor itself. Every beat of my heart seemed to adjust to this new flavor, as if my own body had to attune to a higher frequency.

A scarlet drop fell.

Slowly. With almost ceremonial slowness. It slid from the tip of her fingers — her fingers — and splashed against my parted lips. A tiny contact. But when it touched my tongue, it burst.

Like a forbidden fruit.

Like a revelation.

And then... I understood.

Ah... so that’s it, I thought.

Anarael’s blood.

Older than the world. Purer than truth itself. Heavier than oaths. Vaster than all memory. It was an essence. A principle. Liquid knowledge. And it entered me without violence, without fire, but with the quiet intensity of things that don’t ask permission.

I didn’t yet know what it would trigger.

But I already knew I would never be the same again.

— Awake?

Her voice sliced the air with that sharp neutrality she wore like a second skin. There was no emotion. Not even irony. Just an observation hurled like a blade at point-blank range.

I slowly lifted my eyes to her.

She was there, motionless, gaze fixed on me like someone examining an object that might still work. Nothing in her face betrayed particular interest. Just that sovereign calm, that authority with no visible weight but utterly unshakable.

— Get up.

Her voice was lower, almost weary. As if the command didn’t even need to be spoken anymore. As if disobedience didn’t exist in the language she spoke.

I half-raised myself. My body still screamed in the silences between my movements, but I didn’t need to ask any questions.

— Next time you pass out...

She paused. Her gaze sank deeper into mine. It wasn’t a threat. It was a promise.

— ... I’ll kill you.

I nodded. Slowly. Without looking away.

I didn’t need words.

I understood.

She didn’t expect an answer either.

— Now.

She took a step, almost imperceptible.

— Attack.

She hadn’t even finished speaking when the blood on the ground rose.

My blood.

It responded before I did. As if it understood the language before I could form it. It rose, trembling, vibrating, thick, stretched toward her like a raging sea — a red echo to the shiver of her presence.

The world began to pulse.

My breath aligned with a rhythm no longer mine.

And it all started again.

My body was pushed past its peak. It no longer belonged to me. Every nerve was on fire, every bone rumbled, every organ beat like a caged beast. I was no longer a vampire. I was a living reactor, a vessel too weak to contain the substance of a forbidden pact. I had drunk her blood. Hers. One of the Twelve. An entity made of absolute. And this blood, this essence, this scarlet miracle... consumed me from the inside like a sun placed in a cage of shadow.

My wounds, instead of closing, opened even deeper. Flesh cracked, tore, as if something wanted to get out. My bones split silently. The pain was no longer sharp. It was omnipresent. Total. An atmosphere. And yet I laughed, in this nameless agony. I laughed until my throat tore, because I could no longer cry.

I took all the blood around me — mine, the blood that oozed from the walls, that stuck to the ground — and I transmuted it into spikes, shards, darts. Tens of thousands. They trembled in the air like so many frozen screams. And I hurled them. A red rain, dense, unstoppable.

And I advanced, in the howl.

My vampiric claws deployed, my swords abandoned — I didn’t want to lose them in this madness. This battle wouldn’t be won with weapons. It wouldn’t be won at all. It had to be endured.

I ran.

I screamed.

But even before my claws brushed her, before the blood rain touched her skin...

The blood turned.

Mine.

It slowed.

Contracted.

And in an instant, it rebelled.

The blades I had forged to strike turned against their creator. The needles assailed me mercilessly, piercing my muscles, my eyes, my temples, under my nails. They shredded my tendons, sliced my skin from within, severed my nerves like strings. I felt my liver puncture. My spine crack.

My blood was flaying me alive.

Every millisecond of that storm was torment. But I kept going.

I advanced, even as my calves tore with each step. I fell, crawled, got back up in a surge of cursed energy. My body collapsed, and my power patched it back together on the fly, in an infernal loop of destruction and regeneration.

I lived through a mechanical crucifixion, repeated, relentless.

And I laughed again, vomiting blood, spitting out fragments of teeth. Because that pain... that horror... was taking me somewhere. Bringing me closer to her. To a place where nothing made sense anymore, but everything was true.

I reached her.

Trembling.

Broken.

Torn apart.

I raised my hand.

My arm was in shreds, stitched together by filaments of power that vibrated like burning nerves.

She lifted a finger.

Nothing else.

And the world... split.

I wasn’t thrown. I wasn’t crushed. I was opened. Literally. My body split from head to pelvis, vertically, perfectly, cleanly, like a ripe fruit sliced in a single stroke.

I felt my tongue split. My eyes detach. My ribs separate one by one, my guts unravel, and my knees part silently. I was separated from myself with an excruciating, surgical slowness.

And I stayed conscious until the end.

I fell, two perfectly distinct halves. I didn’t even scream anymore. There was no air. No breath. Just that silence... that immense, cold, burning silence that said nothing.

And said everything.

Then she stepped forward.

Without haste. Without tension. As if nothing had happened. As if I wasn’t there, split in two on the ground. Her step didn’t stir the dust, carried no threat. It carried continuity. A calm slowness that erased all trace of violence — as if reality itself bowed under her will.

And without a word, she let another drop fall into my mouth.

Just one. No more.

The blood brushed my lips, slid onto my tongue, and flowed down my gaping throat. It didn’t vibrate. It didn’t burn. It was smooth, deep, vast. And it entered me like an unalterable command.

I felt my being reform. Slowly. Bone by bone. Nerve by nerve. My split body re-stitched itself in an almost shameful silence. But this time... it wasn’t healing. It wasn’t a master tending to a disciple, nor the rescue of a fallen warrior.

It was something else.

Something colder.

Older.

I understood.

This blood didn’t grant me regeneration.

It denied me death.

It was an invisible barrier, a law written into my very flesh. I wasn’t saved. I was condemned to not be able to die. To remain. To endure. Again and again. Whatever she decided, whatever I tried. The end would not come. It had been held at bay, banished from my future.

I had become an eternal toy. A sacred test subject. A privileged damned.

An honor no vampire desires.

This wasn’t training.

It was endless torment.

An eternal trial circle. A forge where pain replaces fire, where repetition becomes doctrine, where will is slowly disintegrated — with elegance.

And this circle...

It would only end when she decided.

— So that’s it... The being from another world thought he could bend this one to his will.

Her voice, at first calm, already held a dull tension, a restrained rumble, like the vibration of a cliff about to crack. She wasn’t yelling. Not yet. She was accusing. Stating. But each word already carried the promise of a storm.

— You thought you could manipulate the vampires as you pleased? Like pawns? Variables? Creatures to shape according to your whim?

On her usually impassive face, something cracked. The perfect surface twisted. Her features deepened, her eyelids lifted halfway, revealing a gaze filled with shadow and fire. Anger slowly took form, majestically, like a crack in a millennia-old glacier. It wasn’t an explosion. It was an outpouring. A wounded authority.

— You thought you had my support, unconditional, indefinite... You really thought all this would come without a price?

Her face tightened further, jaw clenched, temples marked by dark veins. Her lips curled back, not into a grimace, but into a mask of revealed truth. Her anger wasn’t human. It was structural. It didn’t express a mood, but a disruption in the order. And in her eyes now, there was everything: betrayal, fury, disappointment, hurt. The world burned in them.

Her voice changed too. It was no longer a tone. It was a wave. A vibration. As if the earth itself spoke through her mouth, as if each word she uttered resonated in the deep layers of matter. Her throat became the echo of the ages. She spoke, and the air trembled.

— You thought you could use me? Me, Anarael, First Vampire, the one who witnessed this world’s dawn, who saw the breath of the ancients, who walked the first ashes, who crossed every age... and buried them, one by one?

Her hair rose suddenly, lifted to the sky as if drawn by an opposing force. A red aura, bright, soaked in black at the edges, spread around her, pulsing, rumbling, too vast to be contained. The air began to vibrate, to tighten, to heat. Every breath became harder. There was no space around her anymore — only pressure, a new, intolerable gravity.

And her voice burst.

— YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD USE ME?!

It was no longer a question.

It was a sentence.

A fracture in the world’s order.

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