"A vampire."
I’ve heard the stories: the undead prowling rain-slicked curbs, teeth finding throats in the dark, travelers vanishing into the maw of an alleyway.
Urban legends.
Cinematic tropes.
Yet, the way he said it, made it sound like a cold, hard revelation.
“I’ve been looking for you for over three hundred years,” he says, his eyes fix on the unfolding road.
My brows shoot up. “But I’m only sixteen. And you don't look that old. ”
“Not you—your kind,” he corrects. A flicker of sorrow crosses his face. “I may age well, but I’m racing time, and I’m already on the last stretch. You’re the only hope I have of breaking the curse.”
“The curse?” I ask. A sudden, jarring sense of self-worth hits me. No one has ever treated me as this important. If I can help him, I want to.
His lips curve into a faint, knowing smile. “You don’t look alarmed.”
“I’m hard to rattle,” I counter, matching his gaze.
“That,” he says, a note of genuine approval warming his tone, “is going to be your greatest asset.”
He eases off the accelerator as the city lights blur into a smear of amber in the rearview. Buildings give way to the skeletal silhouettes of trees and open fields. He taps the steering wheel once, a restless, rhythmic gesture as he gathers his thoughts.
“Have you heard of Aetherion?”
I shake my head.
“You might know the modern label: Dark Energy.” He spits the term with mild contempt. “Humans still bicker over its existence, treating it like a ghost in their equations. But it is as ancient as the universe itself.”
I frown. The term rings a dull bell. One of my regular clients is a physics professor; I’ve siphoned shards of his jumbled thoughts.
“Actually, you are quite familiar with it.” He points out. “That's the energy you take from… .”
“My clients?” I finish for him. That's what I'm hungry for. That's what the feasts are.
He nods.
“The humans call it dark energy because they can't detect it.” He explains, voice taking on the cadence of a scholar. “It's a pair of particles, tightly coupled. They remain undetected, because near mass—near planets or people—one of the particle dominates. It curves space-time so tightly it hides their presence in plain sight.”
“If humans can't detect it, how do you know so much?” I ask. It isn't a challenge; it's admiration.
“Living long grants certain… advantages.” He offers a grim smile. “I studied under the greats. Einstein, Schr?dinger, Feynman, Hawking.”
His smile turned sour, that shadow of melancholy again crossing his face. “But I have an advantage they lacked. I can feel it working inside me. And I can feel what it's like to be deprived of it.”
A beat.
“An excruciating burn. That is the curse. The blood curse.”
He sees my curiosity spike and leans in, the car cabin shrinking around his words. “Aetherion is the breath of the universe. Whether they know it or not, every living form uses it. But we vampires are designed to be aware of it. When God carved our DNA, we were given a quantum frequency that resonates with Aetherion—vibrating it so intensely it splits the coupled particles into two distinct forces.”
“Khoury called them mass and force chameleons. We call them Virellum and Tenebris.”
He gestures to his pale skin. “In our bodies, Virellum stretches time. It slows the rot, suspending the ageing process. It’s woven into every chemical reaction in my blood.”
“So you live forever?” I whisper.
“Not forever. But a millennium is not that far-fetched.” His grip tightens on the wheel. “And then there is Tenebris—our guardian. It repels entropy. It deflects harm. When it flows freely, blades pass through us like whispers, and fire leaves no mark.”
His jaw works as if he’s biting back something bitter. “But the system is demanding. Every two moon cycles, the Sanguine Lattice—the quantum splitter—surges. It takes a concentrated dose of Aetherion to grow stronger and sustain its efficiency.”
“You get that from blood,” I realise.
“We did.” His voice drops. “That’s why we feasted on human blood. It was once a perfect conductor. But two thousand years ago, when the Lamb was slain, His sacrifice sanctified it. We can no longer extract what we need. For us, that was the beginning of the end.”
The Lamb. Dusty nursery Bibles. Stained glass in the parish on the corner. “You mean… Jesus? Those stories are real?”
“They certainly are,” he sighs. “Every word. My grandfather knew him. Before and after his resurrection.”
The car climbs a steep dirt track, stopping at the jagged edge of a forest. We abandon the vehicle in the shadows.
Without a word, he takes my hand. His grip is cool as marble—and terrifyingly strong.
Then he runs.
The world becomes a vertical smear. Trees whip past like afterimages. Wind roars in my ears. And to my own shock, my legs move with fluid, impossible grace. I’m not just keeping up.
I’m part of the blur.
We stop hard before a secluded, weathered cottage. I brace myself on the porch rail, gulping air.
“What do you want from me?” I ask, heart battering my ribs. “You said I’m your only hope.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“It’s a long story.” He leans beside me. “And you need to decide for yourself. So hear me out—carefully.”
He continues.
“Every two months, the Lattice within us reaches its breaking point. It devours the Virellum and Tenebris in a desperate vacuum, trying to spin the fabric that keeps us from crumbling.” His voice roughens. “It isn’t just pain, child. It is dissolution. My body doesn’t just ache; it unspools—trying to return to the dust it should have been centuries ago.”
He looks at me, eyes dark with a plea he won’t allow himself to speak. “In our prime, we fed to stop the unravelling. When that stopped working, our elders bled themselves dry to keep the young from vanishing. But now… we are dying out.”
He pauses. When he speaks again, it’s a jagged whisper. “To make things worse, we can no longer reproduce. For our females… the cycle is a death sentence. To carry a child is to invite the Lattice to consume both mother and babe. Pregnancy is not life for us. It is an accelerated execution.”
I look into his sorrowful eyes and feel a pang of sadness for him, for his race. “But… what can I do?”
He turns and opens the cottage door.
Inside, it isn’t a home. It’s a medical ward.
White tiles gleam, scrubbed to a sterile shine. The air stings of alcohol and iodine, so clean it almost tastes bitter. A harsh fluorescent strip hums overhead, bleaching the room of warmth.
Two hospital beds on wheels sit against the wall, sheets folded crisp as paper. Metal trays wait on wheeled stands, instruments lined up with obsessive precision: clamps, forceps, scalpels sealed in plastic sleeves, glass syringes gleaming under the light.
But it’s the transfusion set-up that makes my scalp prickle.
Two IV stands, hooks empty but ready. Sterile tubing coiled into careful loops—paired lines meant to run from one arm to another. Filters. Clamps. Needle hubs laid out like jewellery. A compact pump beneath the stands, silent and poised to keep the flow steady—draw, return, draw, return.
This cottage was built for one purpose: to open a vein, to trade what is living for what is starving, to keep something undead pretending at life.
“You want my blood.” The words tear out of me as I stagger back.
“Quite the contrary.” His voice turns gentle. “I want to give you mine.”
I retreat another step, ready to bolt.
But his voice is sincere. “If I wanted to take your blood, I would have done it last night. We don’t need medical equipment to feed.”
He’s right. They feasted long before there were IV lines and pumps.
If he isn’t trying to take Aetherion from me, there’s only one answer.
“You want to turn me into a vampire?”
“Yes.” He nods once. “But I won’t force you. It’s your decision.”
I lower my head, thoughts racing.
“Look. You have ways to obtain Aetherion. It strengthens your body, but you can’t use it as efficiently as we do,” he says. “A vampire-succubus hybrid. That’s a perfect combination.”
“Are you sure this will work?” My eyes sweep the equipment—too clean, too prepared.
“I’ve never done this.” The honesty lands like a blow. “But as a race, we’ve turned countless humans by injecting our blood. I wanted to understand the principle behind it. I studied under Professor Ishino, and realised it’s a form of gene therapy.”
A martyr’s resolve hardens his face. “It works in theory. As I said, it’s the last hope of our race.”
Then, softer: “It’s risky for you. It’s certain death for me.”
“Then why do you want to do this?”
He gives a bitter laugh. “It’s written into my DNA: survival. That’s the ultimate goal of every gene.”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “And I’ve lived for five hundred years. Every two months, I endure a torture so intense it makes me want to die. That’s not a life worth living.”
“If I turn into you… a vampire. Will I experience the same torture?”
“Perhaps. At least at first. Your way of extracting Aetherion is far less efficient than taking directly from blood. In the beginning, the Sanguine Lattice will need a great deal of it to maintain its growth curve.”
He swallows. “But it will demand less as you grow older. If my calculation is correct, you’ll reach equilibrium at fifty. By then, you’ll be able to accumulate more Aetherion than the Lattice needs to take.”
… …
That’s the last of his words I still remember.
He didn’t lie. But I was gullible. I was young. I was moved—by his sacrifice, by his coolness, by the ecstasy he brought me the night before. I was full of hope for a life that could last a millennium.
And the curse. The cycle of pain. I had no way of knowing what it was really like. Language can never describe it.
I curl into myself, naked on the marble floor. Every organ pulses wrong, like it's forgotten its purpose. My heart stutters—not from weakness, but from confusion. My lungs fill with air that tastes like rust. My stomach clenches. My liver, my kidneys, my glands—everything inside me tries to flee, as if it no longer belongs.
Muscles twitch, seize, then go slack. Tendons stretch too far, then snap back like broken wires. My skin burns and chills at once, betraying every law it used to obey.
I feel every cell—every microscopic unit of me—crying out, not in pain, but in panic. They are starving. Not for food.
For structure.
For meaning.
I try to move, but motion is betrayal. My limbs are heavy, foreign. My spine is a column of glass. My fingers tremble with no rhythm, no grace.
A marionette with severed strings.
And through it all, my mind stays lucid.
That’s the cruelty.
I know what’s happening. I feel the collapse in exquisite detail. I am the witness and the victim. The temple and the ruin.
There is no scream.
Only breath—shallow, ragged, sacred.
This is what it feels like when the body fails. Not as a wound.
As a truth.
My reflection in the mirror begins to change. Eyes glowing violet. Veins like silver threads beneath translucent skin.
I look divine.
I look dead.
But I can’t die.
I will live.
I’ve been looking forward to this day—his words resounding. By my calculations, you’ll reach equilibrium at fifty.
Maybe he lied. Maybe he hoped. Maybe it was just a wild guess. But I passed my fiftieth birthday two weeks ago.
So this is the test.
I will sustain myself.
I will survive today.
Willpower. No one can explain it. Not even the ancients. But it works.
And it is working for me.
Every breath is a struggle. Every heartbeat is a fight. Yet I remain.
The twitching grows violent. The pain becomes visceral. But I refuse to break.
Not tonight.
Not yet.
And then—VOOM.
It hits like a thunderclap inside my bones.
The vibration returns—not timid, not tentative, but roaring back to life with a force I’ve never felt before. It doesn’t hum.
It sings.
Aetherion stirs. The Sanguine Lattice ignites. The rhythm that once devoured me now floods me with power.
I feel it instantly. Virellum and Tenebris surge—tenfold, maybe more—pouring through me like a tidal wave of light and shadow, saturating every cell, every strand of DNA, every breath.
My organs recalibrate. My muscles tighten, then relax with perfect precision. Warmth flushes my skin, a faint glow under moonlight. The sour taste in my lungs vanishes—replaced by something sweet, electric.
Every cell is drinking—no, gulping—this divine nectar. They don’t just revive.
They rejoice.
My spine straightens. My limbs lengthen with grace. My fingers, once trembling, now move like silk.
I rise from the marble floor, no longer broken.
No longer afraid.
I am not healed.
I am reborn.
Even now, the life-force continues to flood through me—but the flow is no longer wild, no longer involuntary. It answers my will. I can shape it. I can move it.
Then I feel them.
Vaults.
Twelve of them. Hidden chambers within me, dormant until now.
They open like petals, one by one, and I understand their purpose: I can channel concentrated Aetherion into each vault, and when released, it will split—effortlessly—into Virellum and Tenebris.
No more scrambling for survival.
No more dread of the fifty-nine-day collapse.
I have reserves now.
I have sovereignty.
Excitement surges through me—electric, pure. I close my eyes and sink into meditation, letting the Lattice hum, letting the rhythm build.
The process is arduous, slow. Like drawing nectar from stone.
Three hours pass.
I fill only one vault.
But it is enough.
I rise, light-headed but steady. I reach for a chair, intending to sit—
—and the moment my fingers touch the wooden back, it disintegrates.
Turns to powder.
I freeze.
Then I notice the cracks: hairline fractures spidering across the marble tiles beneath me.
The floor itself is reacting.
To my presence.
To the energy I now carry.
What just happened?
I move carefully, like a patient relearning how to walk. Every gesture feels amplified, every breath calibrated.
My body is no longer what it was.
I’ve changed—profoundly.
Not just healed.
Not just empowered.
Ascended.
Later, I will call this moment the beginning. The threshold. The First Realm.
But now, I simply stand in the quiet aftermath, trembling with awe, knowing that something ancient has awakened inside me—
—and it will never sleep again.
The chameleon particle theory explains dark energy with a hypothetical scalar field whose properties change with its surroundings.
It's based on the chameleon effect:
- In high-density regions (like Earth), the particle's mass is heavy, making its associated force extremely short-range and therefore undetectable, successfully "hiding" it.
- In the low-density vacuum of space, the particle's mass becomes light. This allows its force to act over vast, cosmological distances as a repulsive force, which is what we observe as the accelerated expansion driven by dark energy.
Vampires are endowed with a natural Quantum Resonance Separator (QRS)—the Sanguine Lattice—that splits the chameleon particle into two distinct particles operating on different fundamental quantum "frequencies."
- The mass chameleon particle alters the fabric of space-time at the quantum level, suspending time and local physics similar to black holes on a quantum scale. This grants vampires their longevity and perpetual youth.
- The force chameleon carries dark energy's repulsive force, giving vampires a subtle protective field that pushes away incoming matter—such as atoms from bullets or blades—from their vital cellular structures, granting vampires kinetic resilience and near-invulnerability.
Upon ascending to the First Realm, vampires gain conscious control over this repulsive field—wielding it both internally and externally as a weapon, shield, and signature of power.