ATTENTION: THERE ARE BLOODY SCENES. PLEASE READ THIS Chapter WITH CAUTION OR SKIP IT ALTOGETHER IF YOU ARE PARTICULARLY IMPRESSIONABLE.

Stepping over a pile of lifeless bodies, Lillian walked through the hall with a majestic step, grinning in an evil smile.

The werewolf Preston, after a long silence, contacted her and informed her about the appearance of her dear stepdaughter in the northern lands. She was unexpectedly surprised to hear that her powers had awakened.

She couldn’t hide the madness on her face and it made her beautiful face terribly intimidating at one point.

Lillian wondered if it was a magical intervention that caused her powers to awaken? Or what was it?

Seeing this child grow up, she waited for her to show at least some signs of magic. Her plan was to get rid of the girl by absorbing her powers, but she turned out to be completely incompetent and devoid of any, even insignificant strength.

This made Thea worthless in Lillian’s eyes and she lost her previous interest in the girl. And in order to get her out of sight and any future encroachment on her throne, she persuaded Horel to marry her off.

But who would have known that the eternally submissive and weak-willed girl would decide to run away with a vampire?

It was a terrible combination of circumstances that could ever happen. Of all the people in the whole world, why him?

It’s a thorn in her eye.

But, now that she had the most valuable blood of the immortal in her hands, she could only sympathize with the fate of the girl, whom she would certainly find and kill with her own hands, taking revenge on her for all her suffering, and also taking revenge on Raphael by killing his beloved again.

Lillian was furious when she found out that Artemis had transferred her powers to Raphael, which fell on his shoulders like the curse of an immortal vampire.

But if Raphael himself treated it as a curse, then Lillian longed to gain this power.

Kicking a limp hand in her way, she ordered the servants to clear the room of corpses.

Within half an hour, the room was vacated and only a bloody lake in the middle spoke of a terrible crime committed in this place.

She grinned, warmed by the thought that all the preparations were almost complete and she had gained enough strength to withstand the transformation.

One by one, the room began to be filled with witches, pre-selected by herself. Some were horrified by what they saw and experienced primordial fear, others simply followed the lead of their supreme witch, not realizing the consequences of this ritual.

And only a select group of witches, led by Tethys, considered it their duty. The duty to elevate witches and prevent other races from belittling them as it has been for centuries. They were obsessed, like Lillian herself, with the desire to gain power over others, to subdue them. This conceit made their hearts beat faster and in unison.

Her gaze caught on the absence of Eugene and Hara among those present, and she clenched her jaws with force, forcing her teeth to creak.

She didn’t need to explain that these two decided to betray her at the very last moment and she wrote it down on the subcortex of her memory, because she was preparing a separate cauldron in hell for them.

The witches parted as Lillian walked past them with a proud, graceful gait into the very center of the room, where the fresh blood of her victims was spilled.

The hem of her robe dress with a train was soaked in blood, weighing it down with every movement, but the next moment she untied the belt at her waist, allowing the silk fabric to smoothly slide down her graceful figure, accumulating in a shapeless heap at her feet.

She stepped over the pile of cloth and knelt down, leaning her hands on the blood-slick floor, rubbing it with her hands, as if it were mana from heaven.

Her ears caught the chants that came from the mouth of each witch who held a sparkling snow-white crystal in her hands and chanted a spell.

Lillian’s hands crawled up, smearing blood all over her skin, starting from her thighs, touching the sensitive spot of her femininity, climbing up her stomach, chest, neck, until they reached her face, leaving terrible scarlet streaks on it.

She was drowning in the feeling of power bursting through her, while the witches felt some loss of strength and a slight dizziness, but did not stop the ritual.

Taking off the chain around her neck, on which hung a bottle of the immortal’s blood, Lillian tore off the cork cap and in one gulp tipped the contents into her mouth, savoring this viscous, viscous liquid with a slightly salty taste of iron.

Her lips moved in a smile, and then she lay on her back, letting herself slide in this scarlet liquid, as if she was taking a hot bath.

She closed her eyes, reproducing from memory the words from an ancient book, which described the ritual of turning into a vampire and only with the blood of an immortal, this had a completely different subtext.

Her voice was like a nightingale, reciting an ancient incantation, while the other witches were busy with their own spell, which merged in unison.

And in the next second, when Lillian’s voice stopped, the crystals in the witches’ hands were covered with a thick red color causing some to shudder in surprise.

Scarlet rays began to scatter from each crystal, which found unity in the center, touching each other at one point, overflowing with magic and ready to explode at the same moment.

But instead, this single ray rushed towards Lillian, digging into her chest, piercing her through, cutting and letting her blood flow.

Her body convulsed. She could not control herself and the feeling of bursting struck her, it seemed that the skin on her arms and legs was stretched, ready to burst.

Her body was breaking, twisting, hearing the crunch of bones as she screamed, choking on her own blood, which flowed from all the cracks.

Lillian couldn’t even take a breath, because as soon as she did, she immediately vomited blood.

For the briefest moment, she was afraid that something had gone wrong and her body had not accepted Raphael’s blood.

The pain was too unbearable, it was worse than death, it was pure madness, as if she had fallen into hell in the hottest cauldron that was prepared for her.

The joints on her arms and legs became so mobile that they twisted in the opposite directions and came back with a crunch, forcing her to languish from incessant torment.

Lillian couldn’t even understand how long it lasted, as her entire consciousness was compressed into a tight ball at that moment. It was exactly until the moment when the beam of light uniting the crystals together suddenly disappeared and the crystals themselves broke with a noisy crash in the hands of the witches, flying into the smallest fragments.

This was followed by the monotonous dull sound of witches falling unconscious.

The ritual was completed.

Lillian’s body stopped breaking, but she still felt pain and remained conscious, which was the best outcome for her.

Her tongue and palate in her mouth were parched with insane thirst and she unconsciously ran her tongue over her front teeth.

She shuddered when she felt the elongation in place of her usual fangs. Her new fangs were sharp as blades, and her gums itched and itched.

Her mouth quickly filled with saliva as she looked at the unconscious witches and the blood pulsed in her temples.

She was shaking with an inexplicable tremor as she crawled on the floor and slipped on bloody stains before finding her first victim, whom she immediately bit into the neck.

It didn’t feel the way she remembered Raphael’s blood tasting. Now it felt divinely delicious, to the point of shaking, to the point of insanity. She couldn’t tear herself away until she emptied the witch’s body like a vessel with water in it.

But it turned out to be too little. Not enough to satisfy her inhuman hunger, and as if distraught, she burst out laughing, biting into another victim.

She tore at their skin like an enraged beast, as if a raw piece of meat was the most delicious dish she had ever tasted. She wanted more, she couldn’t control her inner trembling.

Reveling in the sweet blood, she tore apart the bodies of her former relatives and it was so easy, like butter. It didn’t cost her any effort to do it.

She stretched out her hands in front of her, looking at the elongated sharp nails through the prism of her glass-bloody eyes and it responded with a pleasant thrill in her heart.

As if wanting to test her hypothesis, she slid these very hands over her own neck and the next moment abruptly turned it until the vertebrae crunched.

In a normal state, a simple person would have already fainted and died, but in her case, everything was different.

Another crunch of vertebrae forced her neck to return to its original position, as if it was made not of bones and flesh, but of rubber.

It wasn’t a witch anymore, or even a woman. It was as if she had just left the gates of hell, having made an escape. A terrible bloodthirsty creature that knows no mercy.

An immortal blood-sucking monster.

For the witches killed by Lillian, this was the best outcome she could offer them, because if they were conscious, their death would be more painful.

Her eyes flashed brightly towards the lifeless body of old Tethys.

- Now you are forgiven for your betrayal.