Ethan's eyes flew open, only to find himself floating gently on the surface of water, surrounded on all sides by an endless expanse of pitch-black darkness.
It felt like he had been here before.
Hadn't he?
But when was it?
For some reason, Ethan's mind was gradually becoming blank. He could no longer remember who he was, where this place was, or why he had come here.
But did any of that really matter?
Ethan slowly closed his eyes. In a place this dark, there was little difference between keeping them open and shutting them. In fact, with his eyes closed, he could sense his surroundings more clearly through his other senses.
Well…
This place was actually quite nice.
The temperature was neither too hot nor too cold. The air was dry and fresh. It was exactly the kind of climate Ethan had always wished he could live in forever.
And beneath his body, cool waves drifted gently through his fingers. They carried away the burning pain his skin had suffered when he struggled to escape from something - but what had it been again?
Oh.
Right.
Ethan instinctively touched his neck.
He let out a relieved sigh when he realized his throat had been freed from that deadly weapon.
And the wound…
A pleasant tingling sensation began spreading through every fiber of flesh around the cut on his chest. The bleeding had stopped, and the wound was slowly closing.
Not only that, but the muscles and joints throughout Ethan's body no longer felt numb from exhaustion.
Instead, a strange sense of weightless bliss filled him, and he simply let himself drift along the current within the eternal darkness.
"Ethan!"
"Wake up!"
"Please… keep fighting!"
From somewhere far away, someone kept calling his name.
That clear, crystal-like voice sounded so familiar.
Whose voice could it be?
Ethan narrowed his eyes slightly. One of his shoulders twitched as a sharp pain suddenly stabbed through his ear.
Why did his ear hurt so much?
The cause certainly couldn't be the owner of that angelic voice. Her voice was far too gentle and soothing for that.
It must have been someone else - someone with a seductive voice filled with supernatural charm. But Ethan couldn't remember who she was anymore.
"Ethan! Don't go. Stay here!"
That cry, sounding as though it came through tears, startled Ethan. His heart sank at the pain woven into that desperate voice calling out to him from somewhere beyond.
Then…
A few raindrops suddenly fell onto Ethan's face.
But how strange.
Rainwater was usually cold and almost tasteless. It wasn't supposed to be warm and salty like tears.
Could these really be tears?
But why was she crying?
A flash of memory suddenly flickered through Ethan's mind.
That night - the night he became a Bloodbound - it had been raining too, hadn't it?
Wait.
But what exactly was a Bloodbound?
Ethan had the vague feeling it had something to do with Vampires…
Vampires?
Autumn?
The moment he remembered that name, countless memories came flooding back, one after another, crashing into Ethan's mind like a raging flood and nearly making his head explode from the sheer volume of information.
Autumn had arrived at the most critical moment. By then, Ethan could no longer help Kai escape from the cocoon his own body had created around him.
Descending lightly from above like a wild cat, Autumn landed gracefully atop the writhing cocoon of tentacles. She couldn't hide the disgust written across her face.
To Ethan's astonishment, Autumn immediately extended her claws and sliced a long cut across her pale arm. Then she drenched the face of the creature inside the cocoon with her own so-called "Cursed Blood."
The next moment, with the elegance of a professional acrobat, Autumn sprang away from the cocoon before Ethan could even understand what she was trying to do.
Then a horrifying scream erupted.
Layer after layer of tentacles began peeling away from Kai's cocoon. The room filled with the sizzling sound of flesh dissolving and Kai's agonized cries of pain.
(There were also the sounds Autumn made every time she felt like throwing up. Poor girl.)
Only after the floor had become covered in heaps of mangled flesh and pools of blood did Kai's almost intact human body finally emerge. That pale, lifeless, exhausted body looked remarkably similar to the one he had before transforming into the 230-centimeter-tall monster - except for the spiked tail, which remained completely intact.
While Kai lay there, motionless, with no way of telling whether he was alive or dead, his spiked tail was still writhing and twisting like a cobra.
Despite being a Vampire, Autumn hated long, slimy creatures such as snakes, centipedes, worms, maggots, and tentacles just as much as most human girls did.
And her fear of those ugly things not only reduced her fighting ability but also robbed her of her tactical thinking. The petite Vampire girl could only tremble as she awkwardly stepped toward Kai's fallen body and the monstrous tail beside it. Ethan had no idea what she was planning to do.
Hiss!
As Autumn approached, the tip of Kai's tail suddenly split into five nearly equal sections. With raw, blood-red flesh exposed inside, the tail now looked exactly like one of those man-eating flowers from old horror movies.
Even though it had no eyes, somehow the tail could still pinpoint Ethan's location. It hissed at him, revealing layer upon layer of white teeth emerging from the red flesh. As always, Ethan immediately understood its objective. It only wanted him. And his BLOOD.
As a result, even though Autumn was standing nearby, she had no chance to react when Kai's tail suddenly detached from his body and shot toward Ethan…
And that was why Ethan was here now - lost within this world of darkness.
The moment he remembered everything, his body suddenly felt as heavy as lead.
The weightless sensation was gone.
The healing had stopped.
The peace and comfort vanished.
At the same time, every ache, burn, pain, and exhaustion returned all at once, making it impossible for Ethan to keep floating along the cool water.
And beneath the surface, something was pulling him downward, dragging him deeper and deeper no matter how hard he struggled.
Then…
…a warm breath carrying the fragrance of lilies poured into Ethan's lungs, driving away the cold that was steadily consuming his body.
Fresh life continued flowing into him, breath after breath, until he finally had enough strength to break free from whatever was holding him and rise back to the surface.
But the moment he did, he had to shield his eyes with his hand. The darkness around him was gone, replaced by a blinding light.
"Hmph. So you're finally awake, Ethan? How are you feeling?"
Right in front of him stood Felix, wearing an expression of utter boredom.
Why was this kid here?
Ethan stared at Felix with wide eyes. He slowly raised a hand to his lips. They still carried the lingering warmth of someone else's lips. Someone whose breath smelled of lilies, not sweet milk coffee like the mischievous boy grinning darkly in front of him.
No way.
Nooooo!
Don't tell…
Don't tell him Felix was the one who had given Ethan oxygen - and "woken him up" - in exactly the way Ethan was thinking right now!