The throne room of the Tepes was a sight to behold.
Carved from black stone and veins of graphite, it resembled less a royal hall and more a cathedral hollowed from the bones of the earth itself. The ceiling rose high and jagged, supported by massive pillars etched with ancient vampiric runes as records of bloodlines, wars, and kings long turned to dust.
Only a handful of torches burned along the walls, their crimson flames dim and wavering, casting long, distorted shadows that crawled like living things across the stone.
At the far end of the hall, silhouetted against a tall narrow window that overlooked the misty horizon toward Carmilla territory, stood King Tepes IV.
The man was tall and deathly pale, clad in a black fur-lined robe studded with deep crimson rubies. His long hair, platinum-blond to the point of silver, draped down his back like spilled moonlight. Resting upon his brow was an obsidian crown, its dark surface engraved and set with blood-red rubies that gleamed faintly in the dim light.
He was a man who had lived his life by the rhythm of the status quo. The rivalry between the Tepes and Carmilla bloodlines was an ancient, storied thing, yet he had never possessed the hunger for a total war.
He had been content to rule his shadowed peaks, protecting his lineage and his people.
Then the Holy Grail had chosen his daughter.
Valerie Tepes.
The thought twisted painfully in his chest.
"This war…" he murmured to the empty hall, his voice low and rough. "It should never have happened."
Neither side had anything to gain from conflict, no territory worth the blood, no ideology irreconcilable enough to justify war.
The status quo had been sufficient.
The Grail's appearance alone should not have sparked war. Political pressure, yes. Suspicion. Negotiation. Diplomacy. Queen Carmilla was not unreasonable. They could have talked. They should have talked.
But then came the Church's assault in Sucaeva.
Reports flooded in of new vampires, reinforced beyond natural limits, responsible for the deaths of over five hundred Orthodox exorcists and civilians. Everything was converging toward a pointless war, all because of that damned chalice.
And yet despite the motive of her friend's death.
King Tepes clenched his fist.
'Valerie would never have sanctioned that attack... Never.' He thought.
She was gentle. Thoughtful. Too compassionate to unleash monsters upon innocents.
"No… it wasn't you," he whispered. "It was him. It was always him."
Marius.
The name tasted like ash.
And so the king waited.
Not with an army. Not with banners or legions.
Only dozens of guards stood with him. Those were his most loyal knights, vampires who had served his rule across centuries, who had followed him through war and peace alike. They formed a loose semicircle behind the throne, weapons at rest, eyes forward.
They were not enough.
The king knew it.
But honor demanded he remain.
The sound of the great doors opening echoed like thunder.
Stone scraped against stone as the massive gates slowly parted as a wave of sound followed footsteps. Thousands of them.
The guards stiffened.
A man stepped through first.
He looked young in his early twenties. His face was flawless, almost doll-like, unmarred by age. Crimson eyes gleamed with amusement beneath neatly kept hair. He wore noble attire embroidered with symbols of Tepes authority, as though he already owned the place.
Marius Tepes stepped into the throne room.
Behind him came a sea of vampires.
Nobles.
Thousands of them.
They flooded into the throne room, filling the space with murmurs, suppressed laughter, and naked ambition.
The man at their head smiled.
Marius did not kneel. He didn't even slow down. He walked to the center of the room, his boots clicking with an insolent rhythm, and stood before his father's throne.
"It's a nice morning, isn't it, Father?" Marius asked, his voice ringing with a petulant, high-pitched joy. "Oh, I forgot. You never did have a taste for the dawn, did you?"
The King turned. His crimson eyes, heavy with centuries of wisdom and current grief, locked onto his son with a mixture of disdain and simmering anger.
"I told you to address me appropriately when we are in this room, Marius," the King said. His voice was a low, authoritative rumble that seemed to vibrate the graphite pillars.
"Oh no, Father. That shouldn't be necessary," Marius chuckled, shaking his head. "Because from today onward, that title and the man holding it will mean absolutely nothing."
The King's gaze drifted to the nobles standing behind Marius. These were families he had protected, lords he had feasted with.
"All of you understand that this is treason, do you not?"
The nobles did not flinch. They looked at the floor or stared back with glazed, hungry eyes. Marius's laughter cut through the tension like a blade.
"That's scary, Father. Truly. If only you had the power to actually make yourself a worthy king, perhaps those words would carry some weight." Marius took a step closer, his eyes dancing with malice.
"I've already killed my brothers. They said the same thing, you know. They died without ever realizing the consequences of insulting the fifth King of Tepes."
"You insolent!"
One of the King's loyalist guards, unable to bear the blasphemy any longer, lunged forward. He channeled the ancient Tepes shadow-magic, launching a spear of condensed darkness that hissed through the air.
SPLURRT
It struck Marius squarely in the stomach and erupting through his back in a spray of gore as blood splattered everywhere.
The King's side gasped, but it quickly turned to horror.
Marius didn't fall. He didn't even wince. He looked down at the hole in his torso with an amused expression. Before their eyes, the wound began to knit together with unnatural speed.
Meat pulsed, bone snapped back into place, and skin sealed over as if the injury had been a mere illusion. In seconds, his silken shirt was the only thing that remained torn.
"Impossible," the guard whispered, dropping his weapon.
"HAHAHA!" Marius threw his head back, his laughter echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
"You cannot kill me. I have achieved True Immortality! This is the difference between us, Father."
He gestured broadly to the thousands behind him.
"These people are not betraying you. They are simply choosing to be true Vampires and followed me, the God-King of the Vampire, the True Immortal, and i will make them whole with this power!" Marius's declaration echoed through the walls of the throne room.
Before silence broke, as he raised his hand.
"I can give you this power too, Father. If you just hand me that crown. You can sit by my side and watch as I unify the Vampire world and show the heavens that we no longer need to hide in the dark."
The King stood in a stunned, frozen silence. But his loyalists found their voices.
"You bastard!" one yelled. "That power... it's a human power! You've tainted your blood with the toys of the Church! You think that makes you better than us?"
The smile slid off Marius's face. The mention of "human power" hit a nerve, a spark of insecurity behind his pride. His expression flattened into a mask of cold infantile rage.
"Kill them."
The command was the start of a massacre.
The reinforced vampires of nobles, those who had tasted the essence of the Graal leaped forward. The physical disparity was staggering.
A loyalist guard, a veteran of a hundred years, swung his blade, only to find his arm ripped from his shoulder before he could finish the arc. The reinforced nobles moved like blurs of red and black, their strength enough to shatter graphite pillars with a single punch.
The King watched, paralyzed, as his most faithful servants were torn apart in a whirlwind of violence.
One by one, the loyalists fell, their screams echoing briefly before being silenced by the wet sound of tearing flesh. Marius watched the slaughter with a serene, terrifying smile, slowly ascending the stairs toward the throne.
Finally, the King stood alone. The graphite floor was slick with the blood of his kin. Marius stopped a few inches away, looking at his father.
"Kneel," Marius commanded.
The King did not move. He stood tall, his chin high, the crown of the Tepes glinting in the torchlight.
"Your action will lead to the destruction of our kin."
Marius didn't repeat himself with words. Instead, he unleashed an enormous suffocating aura as the floor cracked beneath the weight of it.
"KNEEL!" Marius screamed.
The King's legs buckled. Against his will, his muscles betrayed him. Slowly King Tepes IV sank to his knees, humiliated by his own blood in front of his people, his joints popping under the supernatural pressure.
His head bowed as his knees struck the cold stone.
Marius reached down and snatched the crown from his father's head. He held it up, inspecting the jewels as if it were a cheap trinket.
"Bring him to the basement," Marius said, his voice returning to a calm, bored lilt. "Don't kill him. I want him to live long enough to see my world. The Unified Vampire World."
Several nobles grabbed the broken, humiliated King and dragged him away. He didn't resist. His spirit had been extinguished before his crown was even taken.
Marius turned to the throne. He didn't sit immediately. He stood before it, placed the crown on his own head, and adjusted it with a smirk, as if declaring to the world that he had made himself king, owing nothing to his father or anyone else.
"Kneel, my people!"
As one, the thousands of vampires in the hall dropped to their knees, their foreheads touching the blood-stained floor.
"Today, the Vampire World welcomes its God-King! The True Immortal!"
"YEAH!" the nobles roared in a singular, terrifying unison.
"And to celebrate this grandest of days…" Marius shouted, his voice rising to a fever pitch, "…we shall march upon the Carmilla Territory! We will crush the filthy Church and those Carmilla vampires alike! We will drink their Queen dry, and we will reign supreme!"
"YEAH!!"
And with that, the Tepes Faction welcomed their new King.
Meanwhile in the darkness of the upper veranda, hidden from the eyes of the feasting vampires below, Rizevim Livan Lucifer leaned against a stone railing.
He held a glass of expensive red wine, swirling it slowly as he watched the "soap opera" unfold with an unreadable smile. To him, this was better than any theater, it was the most absurd but wildly entertaining comedy.
'The Game of Thrones... Kukuku, now that's a good title.'
A soft shimmer of light appeared behind him. Euclid Lucifuge stepped out of the shadows, his silver robes torn, his left arm missing a sleeve where the fabric had been scorched away.
"The arrogance to crown himself," Euclid remarked, his voice tight with suppressed irritation. "Even though every drop of that power was a gift from you, Rizevim-sama."
Rizevim turned, his hazel eyes sparkling with amusement. "Oh, Euclid! You're finally here. You missed the best part of the episode, it was quite entertaining."
Then, Rizevim's gaze fell on Euclid's tattered sleeve and the faint, lingering scent of blood. He raised an eyebrow.
"What happened to you? Is that some new style or something?"
Euclid's face flushed with a rare moment of embarrassment. He bowed his head. "No... it is just... there is a dangerous human in the territory. The one who has been killing those Vampires."
Rizevim blinked, then let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter.
"A human? A human did this to you? My, my... he must be quite the specimen if he can ruffle the feathers of a Lucifuge, not to mention of someone as strong as you."
"Yes... but he is nothing compared to you, Rizevim-sama," Euclid said quickly, his voice urgent. "His Sacred Gear, the Incinerate Anthem... it is a toy in front of your power."
Rizevim's smile vanished instantly. The air around him turned frigid, more terrifying than Marius's aura could ever hope to be.
"Don't ever talk about something so obvious, Euclid," Rizevim said softly. The lack of volume was more threatening than a shout. "You know that i don't like being compared to those mongrels."
Euclid shivered and dropped to one knee, his head low. "I... I crave your forgiveness, Rizevim-sama. It was a lapse in judgment. It shall not happen again."
Rizevim stared at him for a moment longer, then scoffed, turning back to the wine.
He was about to make another biting comment when he suddenly paused. He tilted his head, his nostrils flaring as he caught a new scent on the wind.
It was a cold, magical signature that felt like the heart of a glacier.
A slow, genuine smile spread across his face.
"Now, now... who is this lovely lady wandering through my halls?"
***
On the other side of the castle, far from the roar of the throne room, Lavinia Lane crept through the labyrinthine corridors.
She moved like a shadow. Every room she passed was scanned with clinical intensity. She had seen the horrors of the castle, the broken bodies, the twisted experiments, human slaves, but she pushed through it all.
Then, she felt it.
It was faint, a dying ember of a familiar warmth, but she knew it. She had felt this magic so many times during her childhood. It was the scent of home, of wisdom, of a maternal protection that had been snatched away.
"O-shishou-sama..." she whispered, her voice trembling.
She reached a heavy, iron-bound door guarded by a dozen vampires. They didn't even have time to scream. With a silent wave of her hand, a wave of Absolute Zero glacier ice erupted from the floor, flash-freezing them into macabre statues of jagged crystal.
Lavinia didn't even look at them. Tears began to drip from her eyes as it freezing into tiny diamonds before they hit the floor. She pushed the door open.
The room was a nightmare.
It was a laboratory, filled with glass vats and surgical tools that looked more like instruments of torture. Unconscious vampires were strapped to tables, their bodies mutated into things that no longer looked vampire.
But Lavinia ignored the sight of abomination. She ran to the far end of the room.
There, suspended by heavy iron shackles that bit into her wrists and ankles, was a woman. Her long purple hair was matted and messy, draped over a face that was gaunt and deathly pale. Her robes were tattered, revealing skin bruised by countless scars.
It was her master. Her mother in all but blood.
"O-shishou-sama!"
Lavinia fell to her knees before the suspended woman, her breath hitching.
Glenda of the Oz,
One of the strongest magician in the world,
The Witch of the South, lay lifeless as if her soul had been ripped from her very being.