---

Another man added, "You saw the Leader’s face. It’s real."

The third man said, "That face is tragic."

The most loyal one said, "Shut up."

Another man said, "If Big Boss says he won’t abandon us, I believe him."

The cunning man said, "That is because he already hasn’t."

The youngest man asked, "What if it makes us monsters?"

One of the men nearest the front snorted. "You say that like the world is full of saints."

That drew a few grim laughs.

Another man, younger, with sharper eyes than the rest, said, "A monster with power lives longer than man without it."

An older one answered, "Depends who owns the monster."

The first replied, "Looks like him."

The line of logic tightened from there.

They had already given Sekhmet loyalty in practice, even before naming it that way. They had fought his enemies. They gathered enemy information for him.

They moved under his shadow. The question now was not whether becoming something else changed their relationship to him. The question was whether refusing power in Null out of fear of change made any sense at all.

For most of them, it did not.

Raka listened to every line. He did not pretend leadership meant thinking for other men. It meant hearing where their courage and cowardice actually sat before choosing the direction that forced the most useful version of both.

At length, he turned back toward Sekhmet.

"We choose power." he replied, "Master."

His men did not cheer. That made the moment feel heavier, not lighter.

Cheering would have made it sound like drunken bravado, like boys agreeing to steal something dangerous because danger looked exciting from a distance. This was not that. These were men of the lower paths, men who had lived long enough to know that real power always took payment first and explanations second.

They stood there in rough lines, breathing quietly, bruised by life and sharpened by it too, and accepted the choice with the grim seriousness of people who had already been weak for long enough.

Sekhmet looked at them and did not waste words praising their courage.

"Good."

Praise would have cheapened the moment.

Instead, he said, "Then listen carefully."

The whole hall tightened.

Even Bat Bat, who had spent the last several minutes looking at the men as if deciding which of them had the least respectable ears, went still enough to show she understood something important was happening.

Raka stood at the front with his face still swollen from the lesser vampire’s fists. He also looked more certain than before, and that mattered more.

Sekhmet went on.

"When I first met / beat you in the underground market, I bit you all."

A few of the men exchanged looks at that. Some remembered clearly. Some had tried to pretend that night had become less important with time. It had not.

Sekhmet’s voice remained calm.

"At the time, none of you understood what that meant. Most of you thought it was only part of the fight. It was not. My blood marked you then. Since that night, the mark has remained inside your bodies."

Now the room understood.

Or at least, the shape of understanding started to form.

One of the men near the back spoke before he could stop himself. "So we were already changed?"

Sekhmet looked at him. "No."

The man went silent.

Sekhmet continued, "You were marked as candidates. Ghoul candidates. The blood connection already existed. It did not complete because I did not command it to complete."

That line made several of them visibly tense.

Let them understand how long his hand had already been resting over their future without them fully grasping it.

Raka’s good eye narrowed. "So this whole time..."

"Yes," Sekhmet said.

Raka absorbed that and, to his credit, did not flinch away from it. Men like him preferred ugly truth to flattering lies if the truth made them stronger in the end.

Sekhmet said, "Because the mark is already there, I do not need to bite all of you again. I only need to choose."

That made the hall go very quiet.

Mira, behind the desk, felt a chill move through her at the ease with which he said it.

Choice.

That was what power sounded like in the mouths of the truly dangerous.

Not effort. Not uncertainty. But choice.

Sekhmet looked over them one by one.

"You have already fought for me. You already worked under me. Already shown enough loyalty for this to move forward." His eyes sharpened. "That is why I am giving you more."

Raka’s men stood straighter without meaning to.

Of course they did.

Power wanted posture from those who were about to receive it.

Sekhmet let his thoughts move inward.

’System. Convert them. Raise the marked candidates into lesser vampires."

The answer came at once.

[SYSTEM Notification: Marked ghoul candidates detected.

Bloodline candidates remain valid.

Loyalty and prior blood contact confirmed.

Lesser Vampire ascension available.

Proceed?

Yes / No]

"Proceed."

The hall changed immediately. It began with the blood. Not visible blood. Not at first.

The men felt it inside.

A few grabbed their chests at once. One staggered. Another cursed under his breath. Raka himself went rigid, jaw tightening so hard the already bruised side of his face twitched.

Then the first scream came. Not from the weakest one. But from one of the toughest. That somehow made the rest worse.

Because if one of the harder men could not swallow it in silence, then what was moving through their bodies was beyond ordinary pain.

The transformation spread through them in waves.

Not one man, then the next, like a row of candles catching.

No.

It hit the whole group at once, because the mark had already existed in them all.

Sekhmet’s command did not create the path now. It forced the blood already sleeping in them to wake and finish what had begun months ago.

Dark veins rose beneath the skin. Eyes widened. Bodies bent.

Some dropped to one knee.