Flash started the engine.
The motor purred quietly, almost tenderly.
"Well then," he said, steering out of the courtyard.
"We just pushed the first domino."
Ethan stared at the windows where shadows and flashes still flickered inside.
"I hope it keeps falling," he replied quietly.
"We only removed the brace."
The van melted into the night traffic.
Anna Corvin
Inside the building, the Corvin family had,for the first time in decades,split openly, right in front of the entire world.
The service door closed behind them almost soundlessly, but that soft click rang louder than any scream.
In the hall everything exploded.
Corvin was the first to break.
It was a barely perceptible motion,a slight tension in the shoulder, a short breath through clenched teeth. And in the next second his body simply… collapsed inward.
Not with an explosion, not even a flash.
He crumbled into himself as though flesh and bone had suddenly lost all cohesion. Suit, skin,everything merged into a thick, uniform black mass devoid of form or light.
The air around the stage turned instantly cold, as though someone had opened a door into a vacuum.
Luft.
The black mass surged upward in a swift, purposeful stream,not smoke, but something alive, hungry, sentient.
It stretched into a thin, predatory thread and vanished—not into the air, but as though slipping between layers of reality, becoming a concentrated knot of energy.
Guests recoiled.
Someone cried out; people instinctively raised hands to shield their faces.
"He's using Luft…" one of the elder vampires breathed, voice trembling.
Anna didn't move.
She knew what came next.
Behind her the air shivered, compressed into a point,and Corvin materialized directly at her back. His fingers were already reaching for her temples, sharp as claws.
"You decided to become queen too soon," he hissed straight into her ear.
But Anna was already gone.
Her body dissolved into the same black smoke,only not chaotic, but dense, fluid, full of will.
Two dark masses collided above the stage with a dull, wet clap, intertwining like twin living whirlwinds. They circled, bit into each other, pulled, tore, devoured.
The hall screamed.
Cameras kept rolling, capturing every second.
Black smoke began pouring from their mouths,thick, viscous, like living oil. It spread across the stage, rose upward, coiled around columns, filled the space between chandeliers.
Two streams reached toward each other, touched, and began to consume one another.
From outside it looked like a battle of shadows.
The mass swelled, pulsed, changed shape,now stretching upward into a sharp spike, now contracting into a trembling sphere, now splintering into hundreds of thin threads only to reform into a single whole.
But inside…
Inside was an entirely different space.
Anna stood in absolute black void.
Only mist woven from memories and pure power.
From the darkness before her stepped Corvin.
Here he looked younger,face smooth, eyes brighter, smile sharper.
He was exactly as he wished to see himself.
"Do you really think you can break me?" His voice came from everywhere at once,multilayered, enveloping.
Anna slowly straightened, squaring her shoulders.
"No," she answered calmly.
"I think I can consume you."
Corvin flinched at the audacity.
He took a step,and the space flared with his memories.
Catacombs. Experiments. Signatures on documents.
Screams of people,he hurled them at her like white-hot blades.
"All of it was for survival," he hissed.
"You're too soft, Anna.
We don't forgive softness." He saw her begin to shield herself with her arms from the memories.
She raised her hand.
Around her unfolded other images,crowds of vampires tired of hiding. People who could be released.
A new order without fear and lies.
"The world is changing," she said quietly, without a trace of doubt.
"And you are not."
Corvin lunged closer.
Their foreheads almost touched.
Mental pressure struck like a storm wave. He tried to smash through her defenses, invade her mind, rip out fear, doubt, guilt,everything that could weaken her.
Outside, the black mass on stage swelled as though lightning had detonated inside it.
In the hall Elizabeth took a step forward, already beginning to dissolve into Luft.
"He'll crush her," she whispered.
"He's stronger in mental projection."
A cold hand closed around her wrist.
Gérard clearly wanted to watch this spectacle,vampires fighting for the right to become the new mayor.
"No," he said calmly, almost indifferently.
"He might die. And so might she."
"Just watch and don't interfere…" Gérard said, eyes fixed on the two swirling masses of energy.
"Then…" Elizabeth began, then faltered. She looked at him with disbelief.
"You'll let them destroy each other?"
Gérard never took his eyes from the spinning black orb.
"This is their battle," he said.
"Interference would make the winner a weak leader.
We need the one who can endure this fight alone."
The mass on stage began to spin faster.
From within came a dull, inhuman roar.
Inside the mental space Corvin intensified the pressure.
"Do you think they'll choose you?" he whispered, his voice turning into a chorus of hundreds.
"When you can't do what they demand, they'll find a replacement.
Like always…" he said through gritted teeth.
Anna felt her defenses begin to crack. Pain flared in her temples like sharp needles.