She spoke first.

"You are not from this world."

Not a question.

I looked at her sitting in the chair beside my bed.

I said nothing.

"What makes you say that," I said finally.

"Two hundred years of solitude gives you a great deal of time to observe," she said. "The way you talked to the cave. The things you said. The references that belonged to nowhere in this world. The way you moved when you first started training is like someone rebuilding something from memory rather than learning it for the first time." She paused. "And the blood. The way it tasted."

I looked at her.

"Blood has a quality," she said. "Everything about a person is in their blood. Where they come from. What they carry. What they are made of. Yours tasted like somewhere else entirely."

I did not say anything to that.

She seemed to find my not saying anything satisfying.

"Since you have been talking to me for two months without knowing who you were talking to," she said, "it seems fair that I introduce myself properly."

She stood from the chair. Not with any ceremony. Just stood, the way people stood when they had decided to do something and were doing it.

"My name is Nythera." She held my gaze without any particular effort. "Former Queen of the Vampire race."

I looked at her for a moment.

"Former..."

"Two hundred years sealed in a cave changes the political situation considerably," she said. "I imagine there is no throne left to return to. There rarely is, after that length of time."

She said it without bitterness.

"Kael Ardyn," I said. "Current heir to the Ducal House of Ardyn. Formerly known as the trash of the family."

"I know," she said. "I heard everything you said in the cave."

"Everything."

"Everything," she confirmed. "The system. The higher beings. The novel. The sister is in the hospital. The girl with pink hair. The duel." A pause. "The twelve year old in the maid outfit."

I looked at the ceiling briefly.

"I will tell you the rest," she said, returning to the chair. "Since we are past introductions."

.....

She told me.

The daemons that had sealed her had done it during the first great incursion, two hundred and twelve years ago. She had been a threat to their expansion, the Vampire Queen with a domain that could consume anything they sent into it and rather than face her directly they had built the seal around her while she slept. Cowards, she said, with the flat certainty of someone stating a weather fact.

The cave had not been a prison. More a lock. The seal fed on ambient mana from the stone enough to hold but not enough for anything else. Two hundred years of enough to hold and nothing else.

Then I had started bleeding into the floor.

"Blood from outside this world carries a mana signature the seal was not built to recognize," she said. "It could not process it correctly. Every day it fed on something it had no framework for, and every day it weakened slightly further than the day before."

"Twenty one days," I said.

"Twenty one days."

I thought about the system mission. The Level 5 daemon wandering east. The timing.

"The daemon," I said.

"A remnant of the original seal. When it began to break down it pushed what remained of itself outward. I had no control over that." She looked at me steadily. "I am sorry you were in its path."

"You could have warned me." I said.

"I did not know what day you would come east. And I could not speak outside the domain."

I looked up for a moment.

"Fair enough." I said.

"Where do you come from."

I opened my mouth.

The system flickered.

[Host. You cannot disclose your point of origin to individuals native to or residing in this world. This information is classified under the terms of your binding contract.]

I closed my mouth.

Nythera watched me do both.

"The system stopped you," she said.

"Yes."

"You were going to tell me."

"I was considering it."

She looked at me for a moment with those eyes.

"Interesting," she said. "That you were going to tell me."

I did not respond to that.

She stood again.

"From this point forward,... we are husband and wife."

I stared at her.

"That..."

"You fed the seal that contained me for twenty one consecutive days," she said. "In my culture that constitutes a marriage proposal. You made it twenty one times.And I accepted."

"I did not know that."

"That does not change what it was."

I looked at the ceiling.

The system flickered.

[Goddess of Love has sent a super chat.]

[Amount: 500 PS.]

[Message: Congratulations.]

[God of Thunder has sent a super chat.]

[Amount: 200 PS.]

[Message: You did this to yourself.]

I closed the notifications.

"I am going to need some time," I said, to the ceiling.

"You have time," Nythera said, sitting back down in the chair beside my bed. "I am not going anywhere."

I looked at her.

She looked back.

The expression had not changed.

The former Queen of the Vampire race, sitting in the chair beside my bed in a secondary estate in the Northern Region of an empire I had arrived in two months ago by accident, watching me.

I looked up.

"Former Queen,"

"Former." she agreed, from the chair.

"Right".

She was still in the chair when I looked at her again.

"There is something you should know," she said.

"There are many things I should know. You can add them to the list."

She did not smile at that.

"The blood I gave you. It was not something I did casually."

"Among my kind," she said, "sharing blood in that manner is done once. Only once. In an entire lifetime." She paused. "It cannot be undone. It cannot be given to anyone else after."

I looked at her.

"You gave it to me,"

"Yes."

"You had been sealed in a cave for two hundred years. You did not know me. You had heard me talking to a wall for two months."

"I knew you better than most people who have met you in person," she said. "Two hundred years is a long time to be alone. I had time to consider what I was waiting for."

"You were not waiting for me specifically," I said. "You could not have known I was coming."

"No," she said. "I did not know you were coming. "But when you arrived I knew what you were."

"And what am I?"

She considered the question for a moment.

"Someone who talks to empty caves," she said. "Someone who trains before dawn because he has a reason to, not because someone told him to." She paused. "Someone who is trying to go back to a sister who cannot hear him."

I did not say anything.

"That is what made you decide,"

"That is what made me certain," she said. "I had already decided."

"When," I said.

"The fourth morning," she said. "You came in and you were tired and you sat down in the north corner. And then you said I wonder if she can tell when I am not there. About your sister." Nythera looked at me. "I decided then."

I stayed with that for a moment.

"I did not know you could hear me,"

"I know. That is why I believed it."