"Allen, move! Get out of there!" Daisy's scream ripped through the stagnant air of the crypt.
Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. From her perspective at the threshold, her brother looked like a deer caught in high beams—slack-jawed, vacant, and utterly defenseless. She didn't see the subtle twitch of his fingers behind his back, the signal that he was perfectly aware and merely baiting the trap. To her, he was seconds away from having his life drained by a monster.
She lunged forward, her silver sword held awkwardly but firmly, but Allen didn't budge. He stood like a stone pillar, his eyes glazed and staring right through the Duke's horrific, scarred face.
The Duke of Night didn't even acknowledge Daisy's approach. To him, she was an afterthought, a side dish. His entire being was focused on the 'liquid starlight' he perceived in Allen's veins. He descended from the wall with a sickening, wet sound, his heavy velvet cloak settling around him like a shroud. A grotesque, triumphant smile tugged at his withered lips, revealing jagged, yellowed fangs that seemed to grow as he smelled the proximity of life.
"I can hear it..." the Duke rasped, his voice vibrating with a hunger that bordered on insanity. "The rhythm of your soul. It's been centuries since I tasted anything this pure."
He leaned in, his grey, leathery face inches from Allen's neck. He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring. To a vampire, the world was a dull, grey place, but the scent of blood was a siren song that pierced the veil of death.
"Delicious," the Duke hissed.
"I said get away from him!" Daisy roared. She swung the silver blade with everything she had, the enchanted metal humming as it sliced through the air.
The Duke's reflexes were supernatural. Without even looking, he leaned back, his body blurring as he skated across the floor, avoiding the silver edge by a hair's breadth. "Filthy silver," he spat, his eyes flashing a dangerous, metallic red. "A toy for a girl who doesn't understand the power she's facing."
His attention was entirely on Daisy now, his guard dropped as he prepared to swat her aside. That was the moment Allen stopped playing dead.
Before Daisy could blink, Allen's hand shot out. He didn't grab his wand—not yet. Instead, he ripped his heavy traveler's cloak off and threw it backward with a sharp flick of his wrist. The fabric sailed through the air, perfectly draping over Daisy's head and upper body, blinding her instantly.
"Allen?! What are you—"
"Eyes shut, Daisy! Now!" Allen roared.
He didn't wait for her to comply. He pointed his wand directly at the center of the room, between himself and the Duke. The air around the tip of the wand began to warp, the temperature in the room skyrocketing in a fraction of a second.
"Sunburst!"
It wasn't a flash; it was a birth. A miniature star ignited in the center of the grey room, a sphere of pure, agonizingly white holy light. The spell didn't just illuminate the room; it scoured it. Every shadow was incinerated, and the walls themselves seemed to groan under the sudden thermal expansion.
Even with the thick cloak over her head and her eyes squeezed shut, Daisy saw a world of white. It felt like standing too close to an open furnace.
The Duke of Night didn't have the luxury of a cloak.
A scream erupted from the vampire's throat—a high-pitched, glass-shattering wail that sounded more like a dying animal than a man. The holy light acted like an acidic bath on his undead flesh. Thick, greasy black smoke began to pour from his eyes and mouth as his skin bubbled and turned to grey ash in real-time. He collapsed to the floor, his purple robes catching fire as the positive energy sought to erase his very existence.
Allen stood his ground, though his own eyes were burning. Even with his lids shut tight, the sheer intensity of the Sunburst had left him seeing dancing red spots. He could smell the Duke—the scent of burning old parchment and something much more rancid.
As the light finally faded, leaving the room in a dim, purple-tinted haze, Allen let out a long, shaky breath. He felt drained, the high-tier spell having taken a significant chunk of his magical reserves.
Daisy ripped the cloak off her head, her hair a mess and her face flushed from the heat. She looked at the floor where the Duke had been. There was nothing left but a pile of blackened ash and some charred scraps of purple silk.
"Is he... is that it?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Did you just kill a Duke with one hit?"
Allen leaned against the cold stone wall, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. "Subdued? No, Daisy. He's gone. Permanently."
He looked at his sister, noticing her stunned expression. "Don't look at me like that. Vampires are complicated, but they have a massive, glaring weakness. They are creatures of negative energy—essentially walking corpses held together by a curse. Sunburst doesn't just 'hit' them; it overwrites their existence with the exact opposite energy. It's like throwing a bucket of water into a vat of boiling oil."
He walked toward the ashes, prodding them with his boot. "Normally, killing a vampire is a nightmare. They heal almost instantly. You can cut their limbs off, and they'll just stitch themselves back together. If you manage to 'kill' them physically, they turn into gas and fly back to their coffin to regenerate. To finish one off, you usually need a wooden stake through the heart while they're sleeping, or you have to immerse them in a fast-moving river."
Daisy was listening intently now, her fear being replaced by the Ravenclaw urge to categorize information. "What about fire?"
"Fire works, but it's slow," Allen explained, his voice regaining its steady, clinical tone. "But positive energy—the stuff of life and the sun—is their true nemesis. If you hit them with a spell like Sunburst, you don't just damage the body; you burn the soul out of the shell. And whatever you do, never use Dark Arts on them. Stuff like the Cruciatus or standard hexes can actually be absorbed or ignored. Some of the older ones even feed on the negative emotions of the caster."
He paused, looking around the room as the smoke began to settle. The smell was unbearable—a mix of sulfur and rot.
"Cyclone Sweep! Scourgify!"
With a two-fold wave of his wand, a mini-tornado whirled through the room, sucking up the smoke and the vampire's remains, while the cleaning charm scrubbed the floor until the stone gleamed. The air suddenly became breathable again.
"Look," Daisy pointed, her voice sharp with discovery.
On the wall where the Duke had previously been clinging like a bat, the stone had shifted. A square, seamless door had appeared, standing slightly ajar.
"Must have been a blood-locked concealment charm," Allen mused. "With the Duke's heart no longer beating, the magic holding the secret door shut evaporated. Typical 'boss room' design."
Despite the joke, his hand was tight on his wand as they approached. They pushed the door open, expecting another trap, but what they found was a laboratory of horrors.
The room was smaller, lit by flickering, green-flamed candles that didn't seem to consume any wax. In the center stood a heavy stone altar, its surface stained dark with centuries of sacrificial blood. Skulls—some human, some decidedly not—were arranged in a geometric pattern around a central ritual circle drawn in a thick, brownish crust.
Allen's eyes were immediately drawn to a small, unassuming booklet sitting on the altar's edge. It was bound in a brownish-tan leather that had a strange, oily sheen to it.
He stepped forward and picked it up. The moment his skin touched the cover, he felt a jolt of revulsion. The texture was too soft, too supple. It felt like...
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Allen hissed, his face contorting in disgust.
"What is it?" Daisy asked, reaching out.
"Don't touch it," Allen snapped, pulling it away. "It's human skin. And judging by the grain... it was taken from the back. Somewhere the skin is thin and clear."
Daisy gagged, taking a hurried step back. "That's... that's sick. Why would anyone write in a book like that?"
"Because the Tremere are obsessed with the 'purity' of the vessel," Allen replied, his eyes scanning the first few pages. His disgust was quickly being overtaken by professional curiosity. "This is it, Daisy. This is the origin. It's the ritual the Tremere Clan used to transition from Wizards into Vampires."
He flipped the pages, his eyes darting across the cramped, archaic Latin script. "There are notes here on blood alchemy, unique hexes that use the caster's own life force, and... experiments."
He turned to the back of the book, where several loose sheets of parchment had been tucked. These were newer, the ink still dark and sharp.
"This Duke was a real piece of work," Allen muttered, his voice cold. "He wasn't just hiding here; he was trying to refine the process. He has data here on the blood quality of various wizarding families. These pages... he harvested them from young women. He thought the 'vitality' of the skin would help preserve the ink's magical potency."