Teclos knelt there with Saldia in his arms for a long moment, unmoving.

The ruined machines groaned around him, and the blue mana was still dripping into the cracked basins.

His gaze was fixed on Saldia, the same way his gaze had been fixed on Gillard back then.

Her body rested in his embrace, fragile enough that it felt as if she might crumble if he held her too tightly. Her face was twisted by the fear and pain she had endured. He tried to smooth her hair back with trembling fingers.

"No..." he whispered again.

His world was gone. What he had taken for granted had been taken away.

Pitch-black tears fell onto her face, one after another, sliding down his cheeks like ink. The shadows around him trembled, reacting to every heartbeat, and his grief no longer had anywhere to go.

That was when something snapped inside him, and a strange calm settled over him.

He wanted revenge.

His fury did not lessen under that strange calm, and his bloodlust was still ever-present. All of it combined into calm and logical thoughts of how he could screw over the Count.

Teclos lowered his forehead to Saldia’s, and the darkness around him embraced them together until the lantern light could no longer reach them.

The sphere that formed siphoned all the mana around him, and from himself, toward his heart, surging so violently that he could barely contain the powerful flow.

For a heartbeat, Teclos did not understand what was happening. His body felt like it was splitting open from the inside, but the pain did not compare to what he had just lost.

The sheer willpower to screw over the Count and kill him in the most brutal way he could imagine oddly helped calm the violent flow of mana.

All eight of his circles started resonating and forming a new one in his heart.

The ninth circle was being shaped into existence.

The floor beneath him cracked as the mana from the room gathered into one single point. A shockwave exploded outward with Teclos at its center, slamming into the broken machines and throwing loose pieces of metal across the room. The remaining basins shattered. Blue liquid spilled across the floor, hissing as darkness greedily swallowed it.

Then the mana of the dead stirred and reacted to Teclos’s hatred.

All around him, from corpses, cages, tables, and chains, faint remnants of power began to rise like black smoke.

All of it flowed toward him.

The darkness wrapped around him and Saldia, forming a cocoon so deep and absolute that even sound seemed to die inside it. Every time his heart beat, the cocoon pulsed with power.

The circle started spinning once it was formed, releasing massive amounts of mana.

Then it exploded outward.

Black lightning ripped through the room, striking walls, machines, and iron beams. It carved deep grooves into the walls, machinery, and ground.

The circle was in place, and a new power surged through him.

When the darkness slowly faded, Teclos stood.

Saldia was gone.

He had placed her carefully inside his dark dimension, somewhere safe. Somewhere untouched by the filth of this place.

His face was still wet with black tears, and his eyes looked like two black holes ready to swallow this filthy world.

Teclos turned toward the door and slowly walked forward.

Every torture device he passed was destroyed.

Aside from a few research documents and a key, everything else was ripped to shreds. Torture devices were crushed between dark hands, every tool was broken, and the machinery was slashed apart.

When he reached the cells, he stopped only long enough to tear the locks off and then continued walking forward.

A few lifted their heads weakly, just staring at him because they no longer understood what freedom meant.

The rare few who still had remnants of a sane mind tried to escape, though it was painfully slow because they simply had no strength left and had to crawl out of the cages.

At the iron door leading back to the stairs, he stopped because he noticed that a guard was coming.

His footsteps were unhurried. It seemed like just a normal patrol. They had not noticed the commotion down here yet.

Black spider legs shot out of Teclos, and his body rose into the shadows on the ceiling.

The guard reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped when he saw the open door.

"What the..."

Then a dark hand wrapped around his head and twisted it 180°, killing him instantly.

After that, he killed the next knight at the next checkpoint with a dark spike suddenly bursting through his chest. Teclos was so silent the guard did not even notice he had died until it was too late.

Then he threw the body into the wall, and a sharp clang rang out before he disappeared again.

Knights came rushing down moments later, alarmed by the commotion.

"What happened?"

When they saw one of their own pinned to the wall with a hole in his chest, they pulled out their swords and entered a formation.

"Door’s been opened!" shouted one of them when they finally reached the entrance to the dungeon.

"Check every room in twos, move!"

Teclos clung to the ceiling above them, wrapped in darkness so perfect that not one of them looked up.

He watched them enter the dungeon and watched them see the corpses.

The atrocities that had happened here.

For one moment, some small, dying part of him hoped they would react like normal people.

Horror.

Disgust.

Shock.

Anything.

But they only cursed at the damage done to the facilities.

One knight kicked a broken basin.

"Damn it. The Count will be furious."

Another looked at the freed prisoners, who were slowly moving toward them, with annoyance.

"Round up the ones still breathing."

Teclos’s heart went cold. So it was not only the Count. The rot had spread through the whole castle.

His new Heart circle pulsed, and the darkness answered his call. One moment, he was above them in the shadows. The next, he appeared above the stairs leading into the dungeon.

It was not true teleportation, but close enough.

He rushed through the castle, silent and unseen, searching for the door that would be opened with the key from one of the men he had killed in the extraction chamber.

There had to be a records room.

A place where the Count kept more proof with his stamps on it.

The castle was slowly waking to the commotion now.

The air had changed. Knights moved around the hallways, patrolling for the intruder. Servants whispered and ran to their quarters in panic. Patrols doubled near stairways and corridors.

Teclos passed them all with ease, slipping by them without being seen in the slightest.

For ten minutes, he searched like a ghost.

Then he finally found it.

A locked room near the inner wing, guarded by two runes and a heavy door. The key fit.

Teclos slipped inside and saw that the room was filled with documents.

Shelves upon shelves. Ledgers. Contracts. Sealed letters. Research notes. Lists of names. Deliveries. Payment records. Noble seals. Medical supplies. Inventories.

The sight should have made him feel victory, but instead, it only made him feel sick.

He began taking everything he could. Stacks vanished into his dark dimension.

Then more.

He would bring this to the church, to Pella. Let’s see if he can turn away from this, he thought.

Let the Count try to deny them.

"I don’t think those are yours, young man."

Teclos froze.

The voice came from behind him. It was calm and pleasant, and it sounded amused.

His blood turned cold, and at first, he thought of one person who could do this.

Axel.

But this was different. He did not feel anything. Even now, when he was concentrating all of his mana to search for the threat.

Slowly, Teclos turned around and saw a man leaning against the doorframe.

He was beautiful in a way that felt... wrong. Silver hair fell neatly around a youthful face, smooth and pale, his skin so white it looked untouched by the sun. His eyes were red, narrow, and catlike, glowing faintly in the dim light. But the biggest reason Teclos’s blood ran cold was that when he smiled, fangs showed beneath his upper lip.

He also wore fine clothing, dark in color and elegant, not the kind suited for combat, yet Teclos did not dare attack.

The next eerie thing was that Teclos’s shadows were still wrapped around him, so his presence was still erased.

But the man looked straight at him anyway.

"Darkness," the man said softly. "How rare..."

Once the man’s eyes gleamed with intrigue, Teclos shuddered and tried to escape.

A black slash tore across the room. At the same time, he stepped back into the shadows, trying to teleport away.

But the man simply walked through the slash, and the dark blade broke against him like smoke against stone.

He appeared in front of Teclos’s face, and his pale hand caught Teclos by the collar, lifting him off the ground.

"Hoh," the man said, eyes scanning through his body like he had found a new toy to play with. "A very interesting human."

Teclos tried to drive his spare knife into the man’s throat, but he was simply slammed into the floor, shattering the tiles and cracking the walls.

Everything went black as his consciousness faded.

—

When Teclos came to, someone was screaming at the top of his lungs.

"How?!"

The voice roared through the chamber.

"How the hell does a kid bypass all of our security and breach my extraction chamber? Not only that, he destroys it completely without anyone noticing?! Huh?!"

Teclos’s eyes opened slowly.

He was on the floor of a large room, wrists bound behind his back with strange cuffs, his mana heavy and unresponsive. His mouth tasted of blood.

Before him stood the Count.

Aweq.

The kindness he showed in public was gone. There was no gentle smile or dignified calm in his expression.

Only a red-faced, snake-eyed man trembling with rage.

Several knights knelt before him, heads lowered, shame written across their faces.

The Count raised one hand.

"My lord, we—"

One of the kneeling men tried to speak but was cut off in the next second.

His head twisted sharply to the side.

Without any emotion, and with just a flick of his wrist, a loyal servant was deemed worthless.

Teclos’s mana flared in rage the instant he saw him. The Count noticed, and his eyes shifted toward him.

"Oh. The troublemaker has awakened."

Teclos tried to move, but the bindings held him and his mana firmly in place.

The Count stepped closer, smiling now.

"You’re going to be tortured, boy. Slowly. We are going to find out who is backing you, who sent you, and how much you know." His smile widened. "You are going to wish you were dead."

Teclos bared his teeth.

"You piece of shit."

The room went quiet.

"I am going to kill you if it’s the last thing I do," Teclos growled. "I’m going to rip your heart out, you goddamn waste of a human."

He tried to flare his mana again, but none of them looked afraid.

Then a pale hand slammed him back down before he could rise.

"Now, now," the silver-haired man said lightly. "Such harsh words, little shadow."

The Count suddenly stiffened.

"Lord Luther," he said.

So that was his name.

Luther.

The vampire smiled pleasantly.

"I have decided to take him under my wing."

The Count protested with a desperate plea.

"But Lord Luther! He destroyed all of my hard work! He reset my immortality plan by many years!"

"Doesn’t matter, my dear Aweq-y. He is mine."

The Count’s eye twitched at how simply Luther brushed him aside.

Luther tilted his head.

"Besides, if you want to be immortal so badly, just let me bite you and turn you into a superior race," he said, fully enjoying himself.

"Hah!" The Count’s face twisted in disgust. "So I can be your slave? No thank you."

"Suit yourself."

Then Luther grabbed Teclos by the collar and pulled him close.

Teclos barely had time to register what was happening before fangs sank into his neck.

"Arrgghh!" 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The bite burned like ice and fire at once. Luther’s fangs pierced his skin with terrifying ease, and the moment the vampire released him, Teclos collapsed to the floor, his body convulsing violently.

Every vein in his body swelled beneath his skin as black lines spread through him. His bones cracked, his muscles tore and stitched themselves back together, and his blood felt as though it were boiling inside his veins.

Even his soul seemed to scream.

It was the most agonizing pain he had ever felt, as if he were being ripped apart piece by piece from within, then stitched back together.

The mana around him grew heavier and darker.

His strength surged and more than doubled.

Teclos did not understand what was happening because he was so delirious from the pain.

But he was certain that, with this strength, this was the moment. Even if he died after, he had to kill the Count right here.

His bindings snapped under his enormous strength, and he leapt toward the Count.

A sword of darkness formed in his hand, aimed straight for the Count’s neck.

The Count’s eyes widened in panic, but just before Teclos reached him, one word came from Luther’s mouth.

"Stop."

And Teclos froze.

His blade hovered inches from the Count’s throat.

His whole body shook. Just one more centimeter forward.

His eyes stared directly into Aweq’s, into his soul, as he prepared to reap it.

But he could not move.

Could not even speak.

Luther’s smile widened behind him.

"What a fascinating little thing you are. Your willpower is quite strong for a human."