The static of the duel lingered in the air, a metallic tang that tasted of ozone and spent malum.
Savier didn't rise with the grace of a warrior; he dragged himself from the dirt like a wounded animal, his fingers clawing into the dry earth for leverage. His breath came in shallow, jagged hitches, and as he finally found his feet, a low, guttural string of curses spilled from his lips. He didn't look at Hemlock. Instead, he stared at the ground, his face contorting as he began the grueling process of Blood Weave.
Underneath his shredded tunic, the skin around the puncture wounds in his back began to ripple. Crimson threads of magic, thin as spider silk, knit themselves across the torn muscle and ruptured veins. It was a slow, agonizing repair—a reminder that while vampires could defy death, they could never truly escape the bill it presented.
"Enjoy the view, Hemlock," Savier spat, his voice a rasping shadow of its usual arrogance. "One day, I'll take that smug look of yours and bury it under the stones of this compound. You won't be the one walking away next time."
Hemlock offered no retort. He merely watched as Savier limped toward the periphery, his pride trailing behind him like a tattered cloak. As the defeated vanguard passed a cluster of mid-level soldiers, a few muffled snickers broke the silence. Savier didn't turn back, but the violent flare of red light around his clenched fists was enough to silence them instantly.
Ezekiel watched it all from his corner, his gaze hollowed out and distant. The violence no longer shocked him; it had become the background noise of his existence. He leaned his head back against the cold stone wall, letting his eyes drift shut as he returned to the labyrinth of his own thoughts.
The days that followed in Fluxton were a blur of monotonous cruelty and cold, clinical observation.
Under the iron-fisted rule of the Abyssal Gang, Ezekiel became a ghost within the estate. He spent his hours in the training yards, watching the soldiers spar with a desperate, scavenging intensity. He learned the mechanics of the kill—the way a blade should tilt to bypass a ribcage, the specific footwork required to keep one's center of gravity during a heavy swing, the rhythm of a block-and-riposte.
He was learning the how, but the why was rotting inside him.
His powers remained stagnant, a dormant sun locked behind a ribcage of iron. The Voice in his head was a silent passenger, offering no guidance while the "vessel" remained unfilled. He knew the truth, even if he hated the taste of it: he was a predator that was desparate for the hunt. Without the harvest of a life, his yellow light was nothing more than a feeble candle.
Friendship was a concept that didn't exist within the walls of the Abyssal estate. To the soldiers, Ezekiel Graves was neither a brother nor a threat—he was a curiosity that had survived its initial beating. They had stopped the random acts of violence, yes, but they hadn't replaced them with kinship.
In the eyes of the Abyssal Gang, respect was not given; it was seized from the cold, dead hands of one's betters. Until Ezekiel proved he could stand on a pile of corpses and claim his place, he would remain what he was: a freakish dreg wearing the colors of the gang, waiting for a hunger he couldn't satisfy to finally consume him from the inside out.
The peace of Fluxton was a fragile, pressurized thing, and Ezekiel knew it was only a matter of time before the glass shattered once again.
............
The sky was a deep, unblinking darkness that dominated the outer compound.. Sleep in the Abyssal Gang was not a matter of comfort, but of survival. Raphael Night provided his men with the blood of the land and the meat of the kill, but he did not provide them with his roof. The estate, with its velvet drapes and vaulted ceilings, was a sanctuary for the bloodline of the Night brothers alone. The rest—the soldiers, the vanguards, the killers—slept where they fell, curled like dogs against the stone walls of the courtyard.
Ezekiel didn't know how many hours had bled into the dark. Slumber had taken him deeply, a heavy, dreamless fog fueled by the exhaustion of his shifting biology. His body was a battlefield, still reeling from the rejection of the bioluminescent blood, and he welcomed the darkness as a chance to knit his frayed nerves back together.
He was jolted awake by the sound of a collective, sharp intake of breath—the kind of silence that screams louder than a shout.
Rubbing the grit from his eyes, Ezekiel sat up. In the center of the tenebrous compound, the soldiers of the Abyssal Gang had formed a tight, trembling circle. Ezekiel felt the familiar prickle of apprehension. He stayed back, tucked into the shadows of a stone buttress; he had learned the hard way that curiosity in this place usually ended in a broken rib.
The doors of the estate groaned open. A scout rushed out, followed closely by the rhythmic, heavy tread of Raphael Night. Raphael moved with the terrifying grace of a predator who knew he was at the top of the food chain, his presence a physical weight that flattened the air.
As he stepped into the courtyard, the circle of soldiers parted like a wound opening. They bowed low, their eyes fixed on the dirt, clearing a path so their leader could see the centerpiece of their horror.
Raphael stopped. His face, usually a mask of aristocratic boredom, shattered into a dark, jagged scowl.
At his feet lay a corpse. It was recognizably Savier, the vanguard who had fought with such fire only days prior. But the man was gone. In his place was a shriveled, leathery husk, as if every drop of moisture and *malum* had been sucked from his marrow by a monstrous straw. His skin was pulled tight over his bones, grey and translucent like old parchment.
"Who," Raphael began, his voice a low, vibrating hum that made the stones beneath Ezekiel's feet shiver, "is responsible for this?"
"Lord Raphael," Jarul stammered, his usual bravado evaporated. His eyes were wide, darting toward the other soldiers for a lifeline. "We... we don't know. We were asleep. The night was quiet. We woke to find him... like this."
The soldiers behind Jarul nodded fervently, their fear of Raphael momentarily outweighing their fear of Jarul's hierarchy. Hemlock and Kales stood nearby, their faces pale. Hemlock, who had just bested Savier in a duel, looked particularly shaken, his daggers hanging limp at his belt.
Raphael didn't speak. The air around him began to crackle. Malevolent sparks of crimson blood magic danced along his forearms, and his hair began to lift, caught in an invisible, rising heat. His eyes ignited—not the glow of a lantern, but the violent, drowning red of a slaughterhouse.
To Raphael, Savier wasn't just a man; he was a resource. A high-level soldier lost to a phantom in the night was an insult to his sovereignty.
"You were asleep?" Raphael whispered, the sparks intensifying. "You let a vanguard be harvested in the heart of my own compound?"
He took a step forward, the ground cracking beneath his boot. The soldiers recoiled, smelling the ozone and the coming execution.
"Raphael! Stop!"
The voice belonged to Darion. He surged out from the estate, placing his massive frame between his brother and the terrified rank-and-file. Darion's eyes fell upon Savier's shriveled remains, and for a moment, the brute's face softened into something resembling genuine hauntedness.
The sight pulled a memory from the dark for everyone present. Before the last Rumbling, before the hundred-fold massacre, there had been Rachel. Darion had claimed her as his prize, a tailor's daughter whose life he had shattered to possess. He had found her just like this—a hollowed-out shell amidst a pile of dry corpses. It was that discovery that had sent Darion into the blood-frenzy that nearly razed Fluxton.
"It's the same, Brother," Darion said, his hand resting cautiously on Raphael's shoulder. "The same as Rachel. The same as the others. This isn't a failure of the watch. This is something else."
Raphael's breath was a jagged hiss. Usually, Jay would be the one to provide the cold logic to temper Raphael's heat, but Jay was still confined to the estate, broken by the punishment Raphael had dealt him for failing Ezekiel. The duty of restraint fell to Darion alone.
Slowly, the crimson sparks died down.
The violent glow in Raphael's eyes receded to a simmer, though the malice remained. He looked at the husk of Savier, then at the trembling men, and finally at Darion.
"I do not believe in ghosts," Raphael spat, his voice cold enough to freeze the blood in Savier's empty veins. "I believe in enemies. Someone—or something—is feeding in my house."
He turned back toward the estate, his cape billowing like a shroud.
"Find out who did this," he threw back over his shoulder. "When I find the perpetrator, I will not just kill them. I will make them pray for the void."
Ezekiel watched them go, his heart thudding against his ribs. In the corner of his mind, the Voice remained deathly silent, but Ezekiel could feel a strange, phantom taste in the back of his throat—a cold, dry sensation that felt hauntingly like Savier looked.