"That's truly thoughtful, Father. A beautiful sentiment," Chadnorma rasped, his voice a dry, echoing mockery of filial piety. He tightened his colossal arms around Damaginos in an embrace that was less reconciliation and more execution.
Damaginos fragile, thousand-year-old bones began to strain and crack under the crushing, viral strength of his transformed son.
Damaginos thrashed within the grip, the terror of imminent, physical death overriding his usual aristocratic control. His ancient vampire strength—a formidable thing in its own right—was insignificant compared to the brute, augmented power of the R-variant.
Chadnorma lowered his massive, disfigured head, resting it against the Elder's shoulder. The contact sent a violent tremor of pure dread through Damaginos body, and Chadnorma's chest heaved with a low, choking, uncontrollable laugh.
"But tell me, Father," Chadnorma continued, the words sliding out like wet stones, "why does your voice tremble so terribly? After ruling for centuries, have you truly forgotten the art of the lie?"
The trap had sprung. Damaginos knew, with a fatal certainty, that Chadnorma had zero intention of letting him escape or rule alongside him. His son's singular, driving force was not partnership, but revenge—a revenge that demanded a singular, agonizing price.
Sensing Damaginos frantic, hopeless struggle, Chadnorma's ruined face widened into a grim, triumphant rictus. He pressed his head down sharply, and his teeth—elongated, needle-sharp, and driven by mutant jaw muscle—mercilessly tore into the Elder's neck.
This was not the subtle, siphoning kiss of a vampire, nor the contagious touch of the R-variant tongue. This was the pure, visceral violence of a primal beast claiming its kill. He bit deep into the carotid artery with calculated malice.
Thick, dark green blood—the highly concentrated Ichore of a thousand-year-old vampire king, rich with condensed life force and power—spewed forth.
"I give you true death, Father," Chadnorma growled, the ichore hot and viscous on his tongue. "No more of your planned, eternal existence. Thank you for this, Father. It is your son's justice, his vengeance, and his final gift to the Maginos line."
Damaginos immense life force began to drain away, not quickly, but with terrifying certainty. His hands flew to the gaping wound, pressing uselessly against the arterial flow. Yet, in his final, desperate moments, the Elder clung to a single, overriding instinct: survival at any cost.
With the last, ragged shred of his strength, he staggered toward his daughter, Nisha, who watched the horrific scene with the detachment of a seasoned spectator.
"Through the transference of blood, your life and mine shall pass…" Damaginos croaked, his dark green ichore, still potent even in death, gathering its final, concentrated strength.
As he muttered the ancient, forbidden vampiric words, the blood transformed, turning into complex, glowing scarlet glyphs that shimmered across his dying fingertips.
This was the oldest form of Maginos sorcery—a forbidden Essence Harvest, a spell created by elders facing extinction, allowing them to forcibly condense their millennia of life, will, and power into a single, deadly drop of emerald green essence.
This drop could be implanted into a servant or descendant, allowing the Elder's consciousness to lay dormant and eventually be reborn within the host body.
Damaschinos no longer cared for the laws of his ancient bloodline. He sought only the sanctuary of rebirth within his daughter's flawless, younger body.
The power of the spell culminated in that single drop of glowing essence on his fingertip. It was his final, singular hope. The moment that emerald essence touched Nisha's skin, his parasitic will would merge with hers, granting him a second life until the next full moon.
The dying Elder lunged, his movement slow and agonizing, his eyes glazed with the approach of certain death. But Nisha was ready. She took a single, controlled step back, avoiding the deadly touch.
Damaginos, gasping, sank to the hangar floor, forced to crawl. He dragged his massive, failing body forward, desperately trying to touch Nisha's shoe with his ichore-stained fingertips. But just as he was about to make contact, Nisha calmly retreated, pulling back her foot.
"Let's end this filthy lineage here, Father," Nisha said, her voice quiet and steady, utterly devoid of fear or regret. Her gaze drifted down to the dying form.
She reached up, slowly removing the heavy, intricately carved Obsidian Family Ring—the symbol of the Maginos name and dominion—from her finger. With a final gesture of absolute rejection, she tossed the ring. It landed with a soft clink in the pool of dirty, dark green blood flowing from her father's neck.
Damaginos parched throat made no sound. His cloudy, dying eyes stared at his daughter, filled not with sadness, but with pure, incandescent venom. His gaze slowly dimmed, turning from red to a lifeless, stone gray. The change was systemic.
Having expelled the final core of his concentrated life essence into the ritual—an essence Nisha had rejected—his already decaying body had nothing left to sustain its coherence. It collapsed completely, dissolving in the slightly cold air, crumbling into a pile of fine, chalky limestone dust. The Elder was no more.
Chadnorma stood over the pile of dust, his body heaving. He roared—a sound that was part triumph, part despair, like a wounded animal realizing its life's single purpose had just vanished. In his vengeance, he had become utterly purposeless.
All that remained was the final, inevitable release. He turned silently, never glancing at the pathetic dust that had once been his father, and began to walk toward the massive hangar roof, driven by a sudden, desperate craving to see the forbidden sun.
"Wait a moment, Brother," Nisha called out. Her tone was like still water, perfectly flat and devoid of emotion, yet possessing a profound, final authority.
Chadnorma stopped, turning his monstrous bulk. His white, blurred eyes regarded his vastly more fortunate sister with confused curiosity.
"Kill me, Brother," Nisha said simply. She tossed her long, black hair over one shoulder, deliberately exposing the snow-white, perfect skin of her neck to the monster.
Chadnorma let out a dry, rattling chuckle. "Our Father longed to live forever, to protect his dominion. You, who inherited the potential for everything he ever desired, simply wish to end it here?"
"That foul blood still courses through my veins," Nisha countered, her composure absolute. "The tragedy is not over until the last vessel is broken. You cannot end the fate of the Maginos family without ending me."
Chadnorma paused, his monstrous form radiating an intense, viral heat. "Are you truly certain, Sister? Is there truly nothing you feel you are leaving undone? No small, human regret?"
"When everything my Father had woven for me turned out to be a false, gilded illusion, I made my decision," Nisha stated, closing her eyes. "I should never have existed in the first place. The continued existence of vampires in this world is an unnecessary tragedy."
Chadnorma lumbered closer. He reached out, his thick, viral fingers gently touching the side of her beautiful face, a fleeting moment of lost humanity shining through his eyes.
"You look so much like our mother, Nisha. Perhaps you are right. It is time to end this filthy bloodline and return you to her embrace."
Seeing Nisha nod in silent acceptance, Chadnorma opened his maw. He did not use his teeth, but his deadly tongue—the carrier of the full, unfiltered R-variant virus—shot out and bit deep into Nisha's neck.
The sensation was not merely pain; it was like a searing plasma fire coursing through her veins. The immense, agonizing intensity of the transformation process—a sudden rush of viral enzymes and nanomachines—rendered her instantly immobile. She collapsed onto the cold metal floor.
Chadnorma did not stay. He looked down at his sister, his gaze unexpectedly sad.
"You have approximately six hours, Sister. Six hours before the viral process is complete and you become… something else. Six hours before the Knight arrives to clean up the mess. Think about it. Think about every single regret of your life."
He turned quietly and began his scramble toward the hangar's skylight, still determined to greet the light of the sun on his own terms.
Nisha lay on the hangar floor, stiff and paralyzed, staring blankly at the silent, black ceiling. The searing pain, a relentless, internal conflagration, forced her mind into a desperate attempt to disassociate. She used aimless, fantastical imagination to push back against the unbearable torture.
In that strange, liminal state, she realized the devastating truth: her life was a void of regrets. She had never experienced the mundane, beautiful existence of a normal woman—never shopped for the simple sake of pleasure, never nurtured a true friendship, never fallen in love, never married, never conceived a child.
Looking back, she had spent her entire existence in a dark, ancient prison of blood, duty, and intrigue. It was all Damaginos fault, yes, but the root problem was her own, unnatural identity. Vampires truly were a curse on this world.
A distinct, sharp thud of heavy boot on metal rang in her ears, followed by the soft crunch of limestone dust. Nisha turned her head, a slight, almost invisible motion. What she saw was a figure of absolute wreckage.
Zhou Yi stood over her, his silhouette framed by the harsh emergency lights. He was infinitely more battered than he had been moments ago. His black suit—the nanometal armor that had stabilized an airliner—was twisted, deformed, and riddled with large, irreparable cracks.
The specialized cloak was indeed gone. Though the armor attempted constant self-repair, the damage was overwhelming. The sheer strain of the flight, the high-altitude psychic shielding, and the battle against the R-variant had left him utterly depleted.
"Is my Father's final method truly so potent?" Nisha asked, the words forced out, brittle and light. "How did he manage to bring you to this state?"
"Your father's methods shattered a whole plane and tested the absolute limits of my reality, yes," Zhou Yi admitted, his voice rough but controlled. He sounded brash, perhaps more so than usual, a conscious attempt to inject levity into the tragic finality of the scene. "A real shame he didn't survive long enough for me to explain my profound shock to him personally."
Nisha managed a faint, blood-spattered smile, as if discussing someone completely indifferent. She displayed the utter grace and composure of a woman who had finally shed all masks and identity, now approaching the end with calm acceptance.
"It's a genuine pity I won't get the chance to witness all of this. It's rare to see the great Dawn Knight utterly… embarrassed," she said, her breathing shallow.
Seeing the woman who, however briefly, had offered him a moment of genuine human connection wither like a scorched flower, Zhou Yi felt a deep current of pity. The entire, grotesque saga had nothing to do with her. Her only mistake was a twist of biological fate.
He leaned down, carefully placing his helmet—dented and cracked—on the ground beside her. He used the flat of his hand to gently support her head.
"If you could wait around for a few more hours," he murmured, his voice softening, "I think you'd be able to catch the whole debacle on the London morning news. I fought the photographers pretty hard, but I doubt I stopped them from getting some footage of me looking like a fool."
"Really? They are lucky," Nisha replied, her gentle smile fading as her already pale skin began to take on the translucent quality of death. "It seems I don't have much time for luck, though. Can you tell me what time it is, my friend?"
Zhou Yi raised his head, feeling the immense, rejuvenating power of the sun begin to flow into him, even through the castle's ceiling. It was the precise moment of New York sunrise.
From above, Chadnorma's final, visceral roar of liberation echoed down the shaft, a primal sound of vengeance fulfilled and a race annihilated. He had kept his promise, ending everything with his own hands.
"Well," Zhou Yi said, looking back at her, his eyes focused and clear despite the exhaustion. "It looks like it isn't a good day for a vampire. Your brother is quite literally shouting his fury at the sky."
Nisha tried to smile fully, but the viral pain radiating throughout her body prevented it. She could only manage a faint, knowing curve of her lips as she spoke. "It sounds utterly ridiculous, Zhou Yi, but I've just realized you are truly the only friend I ever had."
"My standards for friends are dangerously high, but congratulations," Zhou Yi replied, meeting her gaze. His tone was not one of forced sentimentality, but of genuine, heavy affection. "I accept you as my friend. I wish I had better news for you, though."
"Truly? Excellent," Nisha whispered, blinking once, a single, crystalline tear tracking down her cheek. "Then, my heroic friend, promise me one last thing?"
"Let's be clear," Zhou Yi said, the indifference gone, replaced by a deep burden of duty. "I can't do anything to stop this process. I can only offer what little I have left."
"I want to see the sun in a beautiful place while I am still… beautiful," Nisha requested, her voice barely a breath. "Can you grant me this one selfish wish?"
Zhou Yi could not refuse. The simple, human nature of the request, stripped of all vampiric grandeur, cut through his exhaustion. He carefully scooped Nisha into his arms, carrying her in a princess embrace. He looked up at the closing metal canopy and then simply phased through it, ignoring the physical barrier.
He ascended rapidly into the pre-dawn sky. He activated a vast psychic shield, a perfect dome of concentrated mental energy surrounding them, capable of bending and diffusing light to protect Nisha's fragile, viral-sensitive body from the first lethal rays of the sun.
The effort of maintaining such a powerful, light-diffusing field at extreme altitude was a monumental test for his depleted reserves, but he did not falter.
Higher and higher they rose, vanishing through the layers of clouds. The thin, biting air of the high atmosphere turned to the cold vacuum of the exosphere.
Millions of meters high in the sky, well above the final wisps of atmosphere, Zhou Yi stopped. Below him lay the magnificent, curving deep blue Earth, a swirling marble of color and light.
In the distance, the colossal, golden orb of the Sun was rising, embracing everything in its glorious, terrifying light. He stood there, holding her, his energy screaming in protest, fueled only by pure, protective will.
"How beautiful!" Nisha gasped, her voice now a faint, reverent whisper, gazing at the golden sun and the profound blue curve of their home. "The most beautiful place I could have ever imagined. That is enough, thank you, my friend."
She looked up at him, her eyes closing slowly. "If there is an afterlife, I hope I can meet you as a human woman. And now… you can let go."
Looking down at Nisha, whose transformation was minutes from completion and whose eyes were already sealed, Zhou Yi slowly, agonizingly, loosened his hands. Her soft, light body drifted out of his embrace, floating in the boundless, silent void of space.
The sunlight streamed down upon her unshielded form, and in response, a dark blue flame—the consuming fire of her own vampiric essence and the viral backlash—enveloped her like a long, final robe. The flame was silent, hot, and consuming, a majestic final act. Gradually, her form became thinner, lighter, until it simply dissipated into the void.
Zhou Yi watched it all—the majestic death, the silent consumption—until the woman was completely gone. He didn't know what he was feeling—grief, exhaustion, or simply the crushing weight of fate that made him feel utterly powerless for the first time in his life.
He composed himself, letting the full flood of the rising sun's power wash over him, forcing his armor to repair, forcing his energy to stabilize. The judgment was far from over.
He turned and dropped back toward the illuminated Earth. At the dawn of a new day, the reckoning still awaited. If only for the sake of his fallen friend, he would finish this tragedy once and for all.