The Eastern Carpathian forests were shrouded in an unnatural bone-chilling fog that seemed to swallow sound itself. Tall pines stood in silent as their needles frosted with the early morning rime of Autumn.
In a small clearing, hidden beneath layers of holy concealment magic, a campfire crackled. The orange flames licked at the damp air, casting long flickering shadows against the trees.
It was five in the morning. To the human world, it was the break of dawn. But to the inhabitants of the shadow world beneath the mountains, it was the start of their evening, the time when the nocturnal nobility typically began to stir.
The Church had chosen this specific hour to strike, intending to catch the creatures of the night while they were at their most sluggish, preparing for their day.
Around the dying fire, five individuals sat in a heavy contemplative silence. Beyond the clearing, the forest was alive with the hushed movements of hundreds of other exorcists.
They moved with practiced military precision, their modified priest attires rustling softly. Each wore an exorcist battle suit, a high-tech black garment reinforced with lightweight, silver-etched armor hidden beneath the sacred cloth.
Dulio Gesualdo sat on a mossy log, his blonde hair messy and his expression deceptively relaxed. He watched the embers dim, his vibrant green eyes reflecting the fading warmth.
"So, it is confirmed then," Dulio said, his voice cutting through the silence with a casualness that belied the gravity of the current situation.
Beside him, Griselda Quarta nodded slowly. She wore her nun's habit layered over her battlesuit, her posture rigid and professional.
"According to our scouts who engaged the retreating stragglers near Suceava, there is no mistaking it. The traditional weaknesses of the vampire race, as we have known them since the old days. Such as holy energy, consecrated silver, and direct light have been severely mitigated, if not entirely nullified in some individuals."
"To think the Holy Grail is truly capable of rewriting the laws of an entire race," Dulio muttered, a rare frown touching his lips. "And to have the audacity to remain in the town after what they've just done."
Diethelm Waldsemüller, a tall black-haired man in his mid-thirties with a thick, well-groomed beard, shifted his weight. His priest vestments were heavy with the weight of hidden weaponry, as a healer he needed that just in case.
He had traveled all the way from Cologne Cathedral Germany, and his skepticism was visible in the way he gripped his prayer beads.
"It is a Longinus for a reason, Gesualdo," Diethelm said, his voice deep and gravelly. "But I don't believe it is as potent as yours. A cup of blood can only do so much against the law of heavens themselves."
He paused, looking toward the middle-aged man leading the group. "Why aren't we bringing the Durandal wielder for this, Pastor Cristaldi? If we are facing these gods-tier artifacts, we should be bringing our own heavy hitters."
Griselda interjected before the Pastor could speak, her voice sharpening as she mentioned her protégé. "Xenovia is still too young. She and Irina are working harder than anyone, but for a mission of this magnitude, invading the heart of the vampire territories... It would be a suicide mission for them."
'They barely survived an encounter with a vampire noble a few months ago...' She thought.
The fifth member of the group, a young woman with voluptuous body, ashen blonde hair and mesmerising gray eyes, sat quietly. Mirana Shatarova was a sestra of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Her chest was heavy with anxiety, her fingers trembling slightly as she adjusted her black sister outfit. Surrounded by these legendary figures of the Church, she felt like a small bird caught in a gathering storm.
"Miss Shatarova," Dulio said, his cheerful mask sliding back into place as he held out a stick. "Would you like a marshmallow? It's important to keep your sugar up before a war."
Mirana blinked, looking at the fluffy white confection and then at Dulio's genuine smile.
"Thank you, Dulio... that is very kind of you."
The leader of the operation, Ewald Cristaldi sat silently in the center of the group, his black hair peppered with grey, his face illuminated by the final flicker of the fireplace.
The silence fell again, only to be broken by a priest who materialized from the shadows behind Cristaldi. The messenger bowed to sent a whisper.
"Pastor Cristaldi, the southern perimeter of the Carmilla Faction's territory has been breached. We are ready to begin the operation."
Cristaldi opened his eyes slowly. The weariness was gone, replaced by a cold, righteous fire. He stood up, and the air around him seemed to hum with holy authority.
"Five hundred and sixty seven of our brothers and sisters were slaughtered by these filthy creatures in Suceava," Cristaldi stated, his voice ringing out through the clearing. "By the grace of the Lord, tonight we bring justice to their souls."
Dulio stood up as well, brushing the dirt from his pants. "But Pastor, we still haven't confirmed which faction was responsible. The Tepes and the Carmilla have been at each other's throats for centuries. If we strike the wrong one, we might just be doing the other side a favor."
"It doesn't matter," Cristaldi said, his voice devoid of mercy. He gripped the hilt of his Holy Sword, the metal gleaming with a faint, lethal radiance. "They are all pests in the garden of the Lord. Tonight, we clean this earth of these pests entirely."
He turned to look at Dulio. "And as we discussed... can you handle the Northern Castle alone, Zenith Tempest?"
Dulio popped the marshmallow into his mouth, chewing it with a thoughtful expression before giving a casual thumbs up.
"Of course."
With a brief nod to Griselda, Dulio stepped into a gold-etched teleportation circle and vanished in a flash of light.
Ewald Cristaldi turned his attention to Griselda, Diethelm, and Mirana. Around three thousand exorcists had been mobilized from across Europe for this campaign. To some, it seemed like a small number to take on the entire vampire race, but Cristaldi knew better. These were the elite, the fanatical, and the blessed.
"The sky is with us tonight," Ewald declared, looking up through the canopy at the dark clouds. "They have existed in the shadows for far too long. Tonight, we bring the light. Let's clean this place."
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles to the north, a lone man walked across a bridge of black stone.
The city of the Carmilla Faction was a marvel of dark, extravagant architecture. It was a sprawling metropolis of obsidian and marble, surrounded by towering walls that seemed to reach for the heavens. A perpetual mist clung to the streets, it was clearly some sort of magical barrier designed to keep the sun's rays from ever touching the pale skin of its inhabitants.
At the heart of the city stood the main Castle, a towering gothic citadel that was carved directly into the mountainside. Its spires pierced the mist like jagged spears, each one crowned with iron gargoyles that had been worn smooth by centuries of rain and blood.
The stained-glass windows of the fortress glimmered with violet and blood-red hues, depicting scenes of forgotten rituals that had been erased from the history of mankind.
Dulio stopped at the end of the bridge, looking up at the gargantuan structure.
"Let's finish this quickly," Dulio whispered to the wind.
He raised his right hand toward the heavens.
"Zenith Tempest," he commanded.
The sky reacted instantly. The dark clouds began to swirl and churn, turning a brilliant, blinding white. The temperature dropped forty degrees in a matter of seconds.
White particles began to fall, the mists that protected the Carmilla territory corroded like ice particles.
Dulio walked forward, his footsteps echoing in the sudden terrified silence of the city. Above him, the sky raged in a greyish clouds.
The Second Strongest Longinus, the Prison of Bright Heavenly Thunder, Zenith Tempest had been unleashed.
And that early morning, snow began to fall in the middle of autumn over the sky of Romania.
***
The transition from the warmth of the restaurant to the jagged wilderness of the Carpathian Mountains was a violent assault on the senses.
The teleportation circle bloomed beneath their feet in a muted violet glow, lines of complex runes overlapping and correcting themselves in real time. Unlike Jay's usual instantaneous jumps, this one took effort.
Teleporting to a place you had never set foot in was already difficult. Teleporting into a territory that actively erased itself from human perception was something else entirely.
The Vampire Territories were shielded by layers of ancient spatial distortion and perception-altering mists, Gasper said controlling mists are one of their native properties. They were sovereign pockets of reality, invisible to satellite imagery and human travelers alike. Only with the help of Lavinia's own spatial magic and Gasper's vague, fragmented memories of the landscape was Jay able to finished the teleportation.
The smell of pine hit him first mixed with damp earth and something faintly metallic. Snow crunched softly beneath their boots as they emerged into a dense forest at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. Towering pines rose like dark sentinels, their branches heavy with frost.
Lavinia exhaled slowly, adjusting her glasses. "We made it."
Gasper looked around with wide eyes. "Yes. This is it. The forest behind Tepes territory."
Suddenly, Jay reached out and caught a drifting flake on his hand. He watched it for a heartbeat before his eyes narrowed.
"This snow..." he muttered. It was too heavy, too structured. Even without his Domain expanded, he could feel the dense concentration of mana woven into the crystal. "This isn't a natural phenomenon."
He closed his eyes for a moment, reaching out to the microscopic strand of mana he had planted on Sister Griselda back in the city. He could feel it clearly now. She was on the move, and she wasn't far from here.
"Illya-kun, look at the way the mist is reacting," Lavinia said, her voice dropping to a cautious whisper. She pointed toward the sky, where the fog was being systematically shredded by a localized blizzard.
"The ability to overwrite a climate and weather to this extreme degree... there is only one thing capable of it. It's Zenith Tempest."
"So it really is the Church then," Jay said, his expression hollow. "But why aren't they here yet? Don't tell me they don't know which faction holds the Grail."
Lavinia frowned, thinking it through. "They can't be careless enough to charge in without gathering information first… unless," she paused, her voice lowering, "they intend to strike both factions and simply don't care who they hit first."
"Probably a little bit of both," Jay agreed. He turned his back to the towering walls of Tepes territory. "The Church's move shouldn't concern us at this moment. We have our own objective."
Gasper who had been huddled between them, suddenly pointed toward a mound of earth near the forests. Around a hundred meters away, a crude wooden structure marked the entrance to some kind of tunnel.
"There!" Gasper whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and hope. "That's the tunnel. It's the one Valerie and I use to run away from the castle. It connects the sub-basement directly to the outer woods."
"There are guards," Jay noted. His Domain brushed against the area, detecting four distinct magical imprints. They were vampires, an aggressive one at that.
"They must have guarded it after I escaped," Gasper slumped, his shoulders shaking. "Valerie probably got in trouble because of me."
Jay didn't respond with words. He stepped forward, his boots crunching softly on the frozen needles.
He didn't bother with stealth. With a sharp crack in the air, the pitch-black blade of Habakiri manifested in his hand, its surface rippling with violet flames that refused to give off light.
He didn't even break his stride, and with a single casual flick of his wrist.
Jay whispered,
"Cleave."
A silent arc of purple light tore through the distance almost instantineously. The four vampires standing guard at the tunnel entrance didn't even have time to turn their heads.
The slash passed through them and the wooden fortifications alike. In the next heartbeat, their bodies erupted into violet cinders, consumed by the Incinerate Anthem before they could even register the sensation of being cut.
Gasper stood frozen, his mouth hanging open in a silent gasp of awe. "H-how... Illya-san! That was incredible! Can you teach me to do that!?"
Jay didn't look back. He simply exhaled a plume of mist into the cold air.
Lavinia offered Gasper a small smile, patting his head. "Focus on the path for now, Gasper. Let's go."
They teleported there before slipped into the entrance and began their descent into the earth. The tunnel was cramped and damp, its walls slick with age, exhaling the stench of rotting timber and stagnant water. This was no passage meant for nobility or ceremony. It had been carved for discretion, for the quiet movement of things that were never meant to be seen.
With every step downward, the air grew heavier. The humidity thickened until it clung to their skin as a metallic tang crept into their mouths.
Jay expanded his Domain and letting it brush against the darkness ahead.
But for the first time in a very long while, something twisted in his chest. Not anger. Not even hatred.
Revulsion.
"We've reached the basement levels," Gasper said, trying to sound brave. "This is where I lived."
The tunnel opened into a vast, subterranean cavern that had been converted into a nightmare. It was a sprawling network of iron cages and stone confinement cells. Inside, Dhampirs, children and adults alike sat in the filth, their bodies skeletal and their eyes devoid of anything resembling hope.
But it wasn't just the half-breeds. There are humans too.
He saw pregnant women chained to the walls like livestock, and rows of small girls with the hollowed-out expressions. The stench of blood and human secretion was overwhelming.
Lavinia's face went pale. She clutched her stomach, a wave of nausea threatening to overcome her. She reached out, her hand trembling as she gripped the sleeve of Jay's black coat.
"Illya-kun..." she whispered, her voice cracking with horror. She looked at Jay, terrified that the sight of such calculated cruelty would shatter his precarious composure.
Jay stood perfectly still. He didn't move to comfort her, nor did he lash out in a blind rage.
He simply stood there, his gaze empty and cold as the void.
"Lavinia," Jay said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "Try to look for Glenda. I will take Gasper with me to find Valerie."
"No, Jay," she replied immediately, stepping closer. "Let's stay together."
Jay finally turned his head. His eyes met hers.
"It's okay, Lavia," Jay said, his tone strangely soft. "Let me handle this."
As he said that, Jay turned. His gaze was cold and unwavering.
In that moment, there was only a single thought left in his mind.
Kill them all.