For more than a month since the last coordinated attack, the Lithaar had vanished completely.No signs. No deep vibrations. No responses from the Core.
An absence too perfect to be peace.
On the surface, life did not stop—it decayed. Skirmishes between carnivorous and herbivorous semi-humans flared almost daily, brief and bloody, like spasms of a body sensing something far worse approaching. No one declared war, yet no one slept with the certainty of seeing the dawn.
Meanwhile, the forest advanced.
Not as a violent invasion, but as a slow, irreversible decision. Roots claimed the land, canopies darkened the savanna, ancient mana seeped into the soil like both promise and threat. With every passing day, the world tilted further toward something that could not be undone.
In that tense, false calm, the chamber was plunged in absolute silence, broken only by the irregular crackle of a will-o'-the-wisp torch fixed to the wall. The greenish light made the shadows breathe.
Dayana stood before Lusian—not the proud warrior everyone knew, but something stripped bare. She had left her leather armor and cloak somewhere outside this moment. Only a thin silk covered her, almost indecent in its fragility, revealing pale, nearly translucent skin… as if life itself were slowly withdrawing from her.
"Lusian…" she whispered.
Her voice trembled—not with fear, but with hunger.
She sank to her knees before him, hands clutching the edges of his tunic like one grasping an anchor before drowning. Her red eyes were veiled, bloodshot, filled with a need that had long since transcended mere carnal desire.
"I feel empty. The echo of those bells… the light rising from the Lithaar…" She swallowed. "…It's withering me. Without you, I'm just a walking corpse."
Lusian watched from above, his calm imperturbable—sometimes exasperating even to allies.
"I've told you already, Dayana," he said, voice low. "I'm not a well you can drink from at will. And I don't like being bitten."
She let out a short, broken laugh, halfway between mockery and sob. Slowly, deliberately, she slid the silk from her shoulders until it fell to the floor.
She was naked.
Not as provocation—but as offering.
"It's not just thirst, idiot," she said, regaining a flash of her usual sharpness. "It's that your blood is the only thing that makes me feel I won't disappear. You know the mana here doesn't strengthen me… only your delicious blood."
She lifted her gaze to him, eyes aflame with a need she no longer bothered to hide.
"Please."
Lusian sighed.
Not irritation—but the sigh of someone who knows he has already lost the battle against his own compassion.
He seated himself on the edge of the bed and drew her up onto his lap. The contrast was immediate: Dayana's silken coldness against Lusian's dense, dark, unwavering presence, as if the night itself held her.
"Just a little," he warned, brushing fabric from her neck. "And no permanent marks. If Elizabeth sees another hole in my shirts…"
Dayana let out a soft, triumphant exclamation. She wrapped her slender arms around his neck, pressing her face into the curve of his shoulder. She did not bite immediately—first, she inhaled.The scent of contained storm.Of ancient void.Of something that shouldn't exist… yet did.
"You're grumpy," she murmured against his skin. "But the best taste I've ever known."
When her fangs finally pierced Lusian's skin, the sound that escaped her throat was not a scream of attack—it was a broken, almost reverent sigh. Her body reacted before her mind: accumulated tension found release, and her hips moved reflexively, seeking something real to anchor to as his essence poured into her.
It was not hunger.
It was communion.
The demigod's blood—charged with black mana and fragments of divinity—flowed into her, and the change was immediate. Her skin regained its glow, muscles tensed, her aura pulsed in visible waves. A crackling energy ran through them both, as if the world had contracted around that point.
Despite every complaint, Lusian wrapped his arms around her, holding her firmly while she drew a fragment of his essence. The war, the Eighteen Chosen, the Lithaar—all dissipated in a shared heartbeat.
There was only heat.And the silent pact.
Dayana pulled back just a fraction. Her lips were stained with a silver-red that belonged to no mortal world. She looked at him, playful and alive.
"You know?" she said, trailing a sharp nail across his chest. "Now that I've got energy… I think there are other ways to thank you that don't involve your veins."
Lusian arched an eyebrow. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Oh? I thought you were 'weak.'"
"I'm a vampire, Lusian," she replied, pushing him gently back onto the sheets as she settled atop him, predatory gaze locked. "We lie to get what we want."
She leaned in very slowly.
"And right now… I want you.All night."
The moans that followed spilled through the room without restraint, vibrating against the walls like a living echo. The sensation of surrender—of being claimed by something greater than herself—stretched her mind to the edge. For a dangerous instant, Dayana teetered on the brink of being utterly lost in that exquisite vertigo.