Five Years Later
Five years had passed since Arthur came into this world, and in those five years he had done his best to make sense of it.
The world was called Threnodia.
It was a vast and dangerous place, home to three races. Vampires, humans and monsters all sharing the same world and all capable of wielding magic through something called mana. It was not a peaceful arrangement. It never had been.
Threnodia was divided into two kingdoms
The the two kingdoms were the Vampyrous Kingdom, which was the domain of Vampires and Sun Kingdom , which belonged to the humans. And the Losra Kingdom, which was the stronghold of the dwarves.
Of the two, the Vampyrous Kingdom was the most powerful kingdom by a significant margin. That was not a matter of opinion. It was simply a fact that everyone in Threnodia operated around.
Both of these kingdoms sat at the same table as the empires, the vampires were smaller in size compared to humans who were the largest kingdom and there was a very diabolical reason for that. The vampires had a different problem entirely. They killed each other. Deliberately, repeatedly, generation after generation, their own traditions carving their numbers down from the inside. And yet neither kingdom had ever fallen behind.
Arthur had spent a long time turning that over in his head when he first read about it.
How did they manage it? How did one kingdoms with shrinking populations hold their ground against force many times its size?
The reason was simple.
They wielded magic and were almost immortal.
In this world there was two paths in magic: The martial arts path and mage's path.
Every living being, smart enough can walk any two of those paths.
But the very reason why Vampires were above all , it was because they could naturally choose both paths while humans were limited to the martial path only. Making Vampires to be very dangerous creatures.
It wasn't that humans couldn't be a mage, it was that just their bodies were not fit for it most of the time compare to vampires who were naturally born for it. However, there some exceptions were a human could also be a mage making them terrifying opponents.
And just because most humans couldn't be mages didn't mean that they were weak, no. In fact, martial arts humans were strong enough to hold against the vampires who deemed them as food.
It just showed that even in this world humans were creatures of adaptability and change..
Arthur had found that interesting. In every story he had ever read back on earth, humans were always the underdogs, the weakest race, the ones who survived through stubbornness and cleverness while everyone else towered above them. He had expected to find the same pattern here.
He had not. Humans in Threnodia were not weak. They had no great ancestor like Vampires of their own bloodline, but they had earned the their strength through sheer will and adpatability over the centuries, mastering their physical and brains gifts to the peak which had pushed them to a level that made other race take them seriously.
Arthur had found it quietly funny the first time he understood it. Not funny in a lighthearted way. Just funny in the way that the world consistently refused to be what you assumed it would be.
But none of that changed what he actually was.
He was not human. He was not an elf. He was not a dragon.
He was a vampire. Born into the race that was infamous, above all else, for killing its own.
The Vampyrous Kingdom was ruled not by a single family but by three. The Morgan family. The Salvatore family. And the Mikaelson family. These three had been competing for the throne since further back than the history books in his room could accurately record. Only one family could hold the kingdom at a time, and the process of deciding which one was not handled through elections or diplomacy.
It was handled through blood.
Whoever killed their way to the top ruled. That was the tradition. That was what it had always been. The families murdered their way through each other's lines, cousins and siblings and distant relatives all equally valid targets, until one family stood over the rest and placed someone on the throne.
Arthur had read about it with the specific feeling of a person learning that the building they are already inside is on fire.
The Morgan family was the current ruling family. His family. Which meant his father was king and he was a prince.
Vladimir had been on the throne for a thousand years, holding it after his own father before him. And now his time was running out, because new Originals had been born and the cycle was beginning again.
Arthur was one of them.
This was where things became particularly inconvenient.
To hold the throne, a vampire had to be an Original. That was not a preference or a tradition. It was a hard requirement, because only an Original could wield the full range of a bloodline's abilities. Each family had their own. The Morgans could manipulate blood by using swords, they were a sword family but also had battle mages . The Salvatores were spear family, they chose spear as their best weapons. While The Mikaelsons chose to not wield a weapon but just use spells with the help of a staff.
An Original could use abilities from two of those bloodlines at minimum. Three was rare. So rare that it had not happened in thousands of years, not within living memory even for vampires whose memory stretched back further than most civilisations.
But even a pureblood with only two bloodline abilities was something most enemies were not equipped to handle. Add to that the natural physical capabilities that came with a pureblood body, the strength and speed and agility that exceeded what any normal vampire could develop, and the result was something formidable.
In theory.
In theory, Arthur was formidable.
In practice, his bloodline was sealed. His father had pressed one finger to his forehead on the night he was born and locked everything away, and five years later it was still locked, and Arthur walked around in a pureblood body with none of the abilities that were supposed to come with it. But he at least had the physical strength and agility.
He understood why it had been done. The moment it became known that a new pureblood had been born, every other family with ambitions toward the throne would want that pureblood dead before they became a problem. Keeping his bloodline sealed meant keeping him off the list of threats worth eliminating. It was protection, even if it felt like a leash.
But it still meant that when the time came and his bloodline was revealed, he would have nothing to show for it. People would look at him and see a vampire with no bloodline abilities and call him a failure. The greatest failure in vampire history, probably, given the expectations attached to his bloodline.
He had ten years before any of it came to a head. Ten years until he came of age and faced the awakening trial, where he would receive a magical affinity or receive nothing. Ten years felt like a long time until he remembered what happened at ten years old.
The trial of blood.
Children of the vampire families were placed together and left to survive. Killing was permitted. Expected, even. And Arthur, at that point, would be walking in with a sealed bloodline and whatever he could build between now and then.
He took a sip of his tea.
I am so cooked.
He flipped to the next page of the book on his lap. It covered the awakening trial in more detail. The process was straightforward in principle. You went through the trial. The Ancestors considered you. If the Ancestors found you worthy, they granted you an affinity. What you received depended entirely on your luck, which meant the whole thing was essentially a gamble with no reliable way to influence the outcome.
So I have to pray that the Ancestors feel generous and bless me with something good. He closed the book. Outstanding system.
He stood up and carried his empty teacup to the windowsill, then set it down and stood looking out at the grounds below.
The garden was full of red roses. Hundreds of them, arranged in neat rows between paths of dark stone. Beyond the garden the buildings of the estate rose in sharp angles, all black, all heavy, all built from a kind of stone that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. There was not a single warm color anywhere he could see. No wood that had not been stained dark, no fabric that was not crimson or black or some shade in between, no stone that had not been chosen specifically for how little it resembled anything cheerful.
They really committed to this, he thought, studying the view. Gothic to their core. Every single one of them.
He turned away from the window.
Today was the first day of theory classes. All children of the household were required to attend, main family and extended family alike, which meant today was also the first day he would be in the same room as his siblings and his cousins.
Nine siblings. He had nine of them, all older, none of whom he had met. He knew their existence the way you know about weather that hasn't arrived yet. Theoretical. Coming.
His intuition was making noise again. That same quiet, persistent pressure at the back of his awareness that had never once been wrong. It was telling him that today was not going to go smoothly.
He put it aside. Panicking before he even walked in the door served no purpose.
Whatever is coming, I'll face it when it gets here.
Knock. Knock.
He let the thought leave his face before he answered. The calm, unreadable expression settled into place on its own by now, automatic, like a door closing.
"Come in."
The door opened. A tall dark-skinned man in a black and white suit entered the room and crossed it in long, measured strides, stopping three meters behind Arthur and bowing with his hands folded behind his back. His white hair moved just slightly with the gesture.
Noah. His mother's personal shadow, reassigned to him in her absence and functioning, in practical terms, as his babysitter. Arthur had no complaints about the arrangement. Noah was quiet, unobtrusive, and did not attempt to hold him for extended periods without warning, which put him considerably ahead of Artoria in terms of day-to-day livability.
"Good morning, young master." Noah's voice had no inflection at all. It never did. "It is time for your class."
Arthur turned from the window.
"I see." He held Noah's gaze for a moment. "Take me there."
"As you wish."
Noah moved first. He walked to the door and opened it, stepped to the side and waited. Arthur walked through, and Noah pulled it shut behind him without a sound.
The corridor ahead was long and dark, black stone stretching in both directions under low, cold light.
Arthur fell into step.
Right then, he thought, following Noah into the hall. Let's see if I can survive my first class.
He was not entirely joking.
***
I changed some stuff, this is why I am re uploading it again.