The barracks slept uneasily. Torches guttered, ropes bound pairs of patrols, and soldiers whispered rumors into the cold night. The silence felt heavy, as though the walls themselves held their breath.
Beneath those walls, the predator stirred.
Noctis opened his eyes in the hollow, crimson-violet rings glimmering. Serana had proven it — the Fatekeeper experiment worked. She gave him gifts without dying, and with each feeding the Grid deepened.
Now it was time to test another.
He emerged into the corridor like smoke, moving with liquid silence. His senses stretched, mapping the chambers through muffled breaths, snores, and the faint rhythm of hearts.
Then he found the one he wanted — a veteran officer, no commander but not green. His aura held the grit of steel, tempered by years of service. Stronger will than the lesser prey, weaker than Serana.
Perfect.
Noctis stepped through the wall, shadows peeling him into the officer's chamber.
The man stirred, hand brushing the hilt of the sword by his bed. His eyes opened — and locked with Noctis's.
The Binding Stare
The violet ring ignited.
Shadows bent inward, thickening the air. The officer gasped, his hand freezing halfway to his blade. His body stiffened, sweat beading instantly along his brow. His will surged in defiance, but the stare pressed harder, flooding his mind with the weight of command.
"Kneel," Noctis whispered.
The officer slid from his cot, knees striking stone. His eyes glazed, locked into the crimson-violet fire.
"Offer me your blood."
The man tilted his head, baring his throat with mechanical obedience.
Noctis stepped close, savoring the surrender. His fangs slid into flesh, hot blood surging into his mouth.
The taste was different from Serana's — rougher, sharpened by discipline and battlefield grit. The essence carried traces of the man's years with the blade, his practice, his honed strikes.
The officer moaned faintly, trapped between pain and trance, unable to resist.
Noctis drank deep. Shadows pulsed around him. And then—
The Message
[System Message]
Fatekeeper Experiment: Confirmed
New Branch Progression Detected.
Combat Tree Acquired — Soldier's Edge
Nodes flared within the Grid, shaping themselves from the officer's essence, twisted to fit Noctis's vampiric nature.
Blade Reversal — Twist-parry adapted into shadow-slick counters.
Formation Breaker — Sweeping strike tuned to unravel groups.
Iron Resolve — Defensive stance reshaped into vampiric resilience.
Silent Execution — Trained killing thrust reworked into shadow-augmented finisher.
Noctis pulled back, licking blood from his lips, his smile widening.
He brushed his thumb across the punctures. The blood vanished, the flesh knitting smooth. The officer swayed, entranced still, waiting for command.
"Sleep," Noctis ordered.
The man rose shakily, climbed back into his cot, and collapsed into deep, dreamless slumber. His breathing steadied. No trace remained.
Noctis slipped back into the wall, the Grid pulsing in his vision. Another tree joined the lattice, glowing red and gray, filled with blades twisted into shadow's likeness. The skills of mortal men — now his to wield, corrupted and remade for a higher predator.
He laughed softly, the sound low and sharp.
"First Serana. Now him. Tomorrow, another. One by one, their strengths become mine. The barracks will not know they serve me — until it is far too late."
The shadows wrapped around him as he sank back into the hollow, his eyes closing in satisfaction.
The barracks had grown used to fear. At night the ropes stretched between paired patrols like spider silk, gleaming faintly in torchlight. Boots struck stone in ritual cadence, armor sighed, and the air tasted of oil and sweat and quiet prayers. Men told each other that discipline would save them. They did not believe it.
Noctis rose from the hollow beneath Serana's chamber as the last patrol passed. The shadows folded off him like water sliding from a blade. He had waited for this hour—the moment when weariness turned vigilance into habit.
Tonight he wanted more than essence. He wanted structure. Each officer he fed from had given him a doctrine, a branch of the Grid born from their craft. Sword, shield, spear—each line widened his reach. He could feel them now inside him like chords resonating under his skin. The melody was incomplete.
He crossed the yard unseen. Frost filmed the stones, muting the sound of his steps. Through narrow slits of light he mapped the sleeping garrison: a murmured snore, a cough, the dry rasp of leather on scabbard. Then—steady breathing, the measured calm of a soldier who never left alertness even in dreams.
A spear leaned beside the bed; its point caught a sliver of moon. The captain's hand rested near it out of habit.
Noctis studied him a moment longer, then stepped through the wall.
The air changed when he entered. The man's eyes opened instantly. A commendable reaction—fast, disciplined. He reached for the weapon.
Too slow.
The violet ring within Noctis's gaze flared. The space between them thickened; the spear wavered, fell. The officer's body locked mid-motion, his will trapped behind glass.
"Kneel."
The order vibrated through the room, soft but irresistible. Armor creaked as knees met stone.
"Offer me your blood."
The captain's head tilted, throat exposed. The rhythm of his pulse echoed like drumbeats under Noctis's tongue.
The bite was swift, precise. Blood rushed hot, carrying the flavor of repetition—hours of drills, the geometry of thrust and counter-thrust. It was clean power, linear, honed for reach. The Grid inside him shuddered and expanded.
[System Message]
Fatekeeper Experiment: Confirmed
New Combat Tree Acquired — Spearwarden's Path
Red lines branched outward in his vision, sketching the memory of spear-work as if the lattice itself practiced the form. Runes blossomed along the new limb:
Piercing Lunge — fold distance, drive shadow through space.
Sweeping Arc — convert reach into crescent force.
Dragon Fang Guard — set stance, turn pressure into counter.
Impaler's Grasp — pull prey into range.
Noctis drew back, licking the wound closed with a trace of essence. The captain swayed, dazed but breathing.
"Sleep."
The word carried the weight of a bell. The officer obeyed, lowering himself onto the cot. The torch guttered once and went still.
Return to the Hollow
He slipped from the room and crossed the sleeping barracks, the cold biting sharper now. Each branch of the Grid pulsed faintly in his vision: Sword—close; Shield—defensive; Spear—reach. A trinity of geometry. He flexed his hands and felt all three answer.
Serana's chamber waited at the far end of the hall, its door rimmed in pale light from the shuttered window. The scent of steel polish and lavender oil hung in the air—her careful habits even in exhaustion. He entered through the wall as he always did.
Moonlight poured through the narrow shutters, striping the bed in silver. Serana lay asleep, one arm outside the blanket, hair scattered like dark flame across the pillow. Her armor rested on the chair beside the bed, buckles neatly aligned. Even in rest, order surrounded her.
Noctis paused, studying her face. The color had returned to her cheeks since the last feeding. The Grid whispered faintly; her essence was stabilizing. He could drink again without harm.
For a moment he only watched. The moon brightened, the air in the chamber shifting with his breath. A quiet sound escaped her—a sigh, perhaps a dream. He moved closer, drawn by habit and hunger, the predator's ritual of proximity.
The shutters stirred. Moonlight wavered. Shadows stretched long across the wall and trembled together like two shapes meeting. The bed rocked once with the motion of shifting weight. Then stillness returned.
When dawn crept through the shutters, the chamber looked untouched. Armor gleamed where it had been set. The only disturbance was the faint trace of warmth left in the air, the scent of blood too delicate for mortal noses.
Serana woke slowly. Her first thought was of drills to arrange, reports to file. Her second was confusion at how deeply she had slept. She rubbed her temples, rose, and stretched. The world felt heavy with dew, unreal. Whatever dream had visited her dissolved before she could grasp it.
She straightened the bed, frowning at the chill in the sheets, then dismissed it. There was work to do. By the time she stepped into the corridor, the commander's mask had settled back over her features, calm and disciplined.
Behind the wall, Noctis rested. He no longer needed full sleep; essence pulsed through him in measured rhythm. The Spearwarden's Path shimmered alongside Soldier's Edge and Bulwark Dominion, forming a triad of human warfare refined and remade in vampiric logic.
He considered the next pattern. If swords taught him focus, shields patience, and spears precision, then captains of other disciplines might offer timing, coordination, impact. Each art would fuse into his own, until the Blood Grid mirrored every mortal doctrine.
His lips curved faintly. "Soon," he murmured, "even their generals will move when I do."
He closed his eyes. The Grid dimmed, its glow sinking into the dark like coals under ash. Above, the barracks stirred to another ordinary morning. Below, the predator slept with the contentment of a craftsman whose work was coming together piece by piece.
Night gathered like ink around the barracks. The ropes on paired patrols drew faint white lines in torchglow; helms turned in practiced sweeps; boots kept the tired cadence of men who believed vigilance could hold back what they did not understand.
Inside the hollow behind Serana's chamber wall, Noctis opened his eyes.
The lattice of the Blood Grid was still there when he blinked—afterimages burned into his sight: the sword-tree he had stolen from a veteran (Soldier's Edge), the fresh, long-armed geometry of the spear (Spearwarden's Path), and the violet eye of dominion (Binding Stare) quietly pulsing like a second heartbeat.
He had proved the Fatekeeper method on Serana.
He had proved it on officers of lesser will.
Now he wanted hierarchy.
Captains.
Their arts were not just tricks of a single hand; they were doctrines. Formations, timing, the ways a line breathes and breaks. If he drank from them under the Fatekeeper's veil, the Grid would not only deepen—it would widen, stitching command-logic into his predation.
He listened through stone. Voices mapped the barracks for him: the gravel of old scars, the clipped tones of parade-ground precision, the softer edge of quartermasters, the iron rasp of a shield captain who never spoke without a wall in his throat. Names drifted. Schedules slotted into place. He could hear fatigue like frayed rope in some; in others, the strung wire of men who slept light and woke violent.
"Good," he murmured. "A ladder to climb."
He slipped from the wall.
Reconnaissance in Silence
He moved not as a man but as a temperature change: the corridor cooled and warmed in his passing. At each captain's door he paused, letting Perception drink the room across wood—counting breaths, noting the tempo of sleep, the twitch that marks a swordsman, the bottomed-out stillness that marks exhaustion, the restless roll of a mind still fighting a battle that ended at dusk.
He marked four targets:
Shield-Captain Varkos — spine like a plank, breath slow and square. The weight of a tower shield leaned near his bed. Doctrine: hold. Survive. Bulwark arts lived here.
Captain Irelda — quartermaster turned line captain, movements neat even in sleep, fingers that counted before they cut. Doctrine: ration violence and timing. Likely to carry formation tempo in her blood.
Captain Halven — banner-man and archer-chief, quiver whispering when he breathed. Doctrine: space, distance, sequencing. The Grid would translate that into ranged predation adapted for shadow and step.
Lance-Captain Roen — cavalry mind sleeping on foot, legs twitching with phantom spurs. Doctrine: shock, angle, finish. He would taste of impact control.
Noctis considered waking one now. He could take all four in a night. The thought pleased him—the Grid blossoming with four fresh branches at once—but patience had served him too well to abandon. Patterns drew hunters just as surely as prey. One captain would be enough. Tonight, the proof. Tomorrow, the harvest.
He chose the wall.
Shield at Rest
Varkos's chamber smelled of oil, leather, and old rain—the scent that shields keep when they have been roofs as often as bulwarks. A battered heater lay on a peg; near it, a larger, scalloped tower leaned like a sleeping animal.
Noctis rose out of the stone at the room's seam. The captain slept on his side, back straight even in surrender to the body. The kind of man who dies on his feet because his spine refuses the ground.
Noctis let the violet ring kindle behind his irises.
The captain's eyes opened cleanly, no linger of dream. His hand moved toward the bed-leaning shield with admirable economy.
"Be still," Noctis said.
The command took like a piton driven into granite. Muscles held their line, breath hitched, then settled shallow. The eyes were furious and clear—and caught. Binding Stare pressed; the fury glassed over and became a disciplined emptiness.
"Kneel."
The weight of a lifetime's posture resisted and then obeyed. Varkos's knees met stone.
"Offer me your blood."
The head turned. The throat bared. Noctis stepped in, the movement a quiet subtraction of distance.
Fangs touched skin. Heat rose. Iron came up like a memory of rain on armor. With the first swallow he tasted angle and cover, the instinct that measures not the man in front of you but the space around him—how streets funnel, how doors narrow, how the first step back can be the only step that matters.
He drank until the Grid burned.
What the Shield Gives
Script shimmered in the air.
[Fatekeeper Experiment: Confirmed]New Combat Tree Acquired — Bulwark Dominion
Nodes unfurled, not knives or speartips but planes, angles, rebuttals:
Wallbind Step — A short pivot that makes an enemy's front become his prison; the nearest surface becomes your shield edge.
Lockbreaker Bash — A low, driving blow that unseats stance and opens armor seams; adapted for bracer, hilt, or even shoulder.
Tortoise Collapse — Turn a crowd's press against itself; the first rank crushes the second; you walk through the fold.
Rally Shroud — An aura of presence that hardens allies; in Noctis, it becomes a shadow-pressure that softens enemies' timing.
"Doctrine," Noctis whispered against cooling skin. "Thank you."
He sealed the wound with a touch; the flesh knit smooth, the heat left no stain. "Sleep."
Varkos stood, turned as bid by unseen order, and lay back on his cot. The breath resettled. The room remembered its oil and rain.
Noctis stepped backward into stone and vanished.
Interstice: The Plan
In the hush between walls he counted nights like beads, stringing intentions:
Night 1 (Done): Shield-captain — take Bulwark Dominion.
Night 2: Archer-captain — draw out Ranger's Ledger or whatever the Grid will rename: spacing arts, kill-ordering, line-cleave at distance.
Night 3: Quartermaster-captain — the tempo branch; make his step the metronome that others trip to.
Night 4: Lance-captain — kinetic law; make shock a blade you can start or stop.
Between harvests, he would use Binding Stare sparingly, never in adjacent halls on adjacent nights. He would move like a rumor: never quite in the same place twice, always just after the watch changed, always just before the mind becomes either deep asleep or fully armed.
He smiled. Serana would be taken between nights, measured drinks that turned vigor into conduit and never triggered the alarms of collapse. A rose watered with night.
The Grid ghosted over his vision again, Bulwark's newborn branch interlocking with Soldier's Edge and the spear's geometry. He tried the feel of Wallbind Step in the hollow, half-standing in the stone: a weight shift, a suggestion to space itself to offer him an angle. It worked even without a wall—shadows have edges too.
"Tomorrow," he said to no one, and meant it for everyone.
A Quiet Return
He passed the barracks yard as the hour turned, hearing a patrol report to a sergeant with rope-burned palms. "All quiet," the man lied, meaning only: we did not see him. Noctis let the lie live—comfort is a better prison than fear when you want people to stay where they are.
Serana's door breathed faintly. Inside, the bed held a tide-mark of sleep approaching shore. He did not enter. The point of a plan is the space it keeps unbroken. The violet ring dimmed, banked coals under ash.
He settled back into the hollow and let the memory play through him.
The patterns Varkos had lived by were still unfolding behind his eyes — angles, distances, reflex. Every motion had purpose.A doorway was never just an entrance; it was a kill zone if you walked through without shaping your path.Three opponents meant sequence, not chaos — break the first, and the rest would hesitate long enough to die.Even a thrown knife carried a message: where the enemy wanted you to be. Step aside from that intent, and the blade became useless.The logic clicked together, piece by piece, until the captain's instincts were mapped perfectly inside his own.The man was gone, but his rhythm remained — now part of Noctis's reflexes.The Grid loved this kind of thinking. It stitched the captains' years into his nights.He slept, not like men do, but like a shadow finishing a lesson while the candle goes out.
Night blanketed the barracks in a steady, workmanlike dark. Torchlight flickered along the ropes of paired patrols. Boots struck in measured loops. Through the wall behind Serana's chamber, Noctis listened and built the map.
He marked breathing patterns, gaits, and habits. A shield-captain who shifted once and then locked into plank-straight stillness. A quartermaster-captain whose lips moved faintly, counting even in sleep. A lance-captain whose legs twitched with the restless echo of spurred riding.
And the archer-captain.
A bow creaked once in his sleep—the low, precise groan of a recurve bow tested by muscle memory. Two quivers in the room: a lighter scout set near the door, a heavier mixed-load beside the bed. Breathing steady, controlled, never careless. The pattern of a professional accustomed to readiness.
Noctis slid out of the wall and crossed the corridor without casting a shadow, moving like a subtle pressure change that made the air forget its draft for a heartbeat.
The door swung on silent hinges. The room smelled of oil and cedar, bowstring wax, fletch glue, and leather dye. It was more workshop than quarters, each item carefully placed within reach.
Noctis stepped inside. The stillness shifted.
Captain Halven's eyes snapped open. His body reacted instantly. In one continuous motion he rolled from his cot, reached for the peg, seized his bow, and nocked an arrow. He drew the string back smoothly, aiming down the cleanest firing lane across the room. He did not look directly at Noctis but at the line least likely to fail.
"Drop the draw. Put the bow down," Noctis said evenly.
The violet ring lit behind his eyes.
Binding Stare
[Skill: Allure's Gaze III — Binding Stare]
Effect: Compulsion. Target must obey direct command. Opposed Will check.
Opposed Check: Halven
(Will 142) vs. Noctis (Will 255) → Overwhelmed.
Halven's draw faltered. Tendons stood out in his forearm. His teeth clenched. Shoulders tightened as he fought the order for a full second. But the compulsion pressed harder.
The bowstring eased. He lowered the arrow. He set the bow back on the peg.
"Stand up. Face me," Noctis commanded.
Halven obeyed, posture straight, chest lifted with military discipline.
"You are under my command," Noctis said. "Acknowledge it."
"Yes, sir," Halven replied. His tone was flat, hollow, emptied of will by the Stare.
"Expose your throat."
Halven turned his head and raised his chin, baring his neck with precise, deliberate movement.
Noctis stepped forward and bit. His fangs pierced cleanly.
Blood surged across his tongue, warm and iron-rich. It carried not just vitality but doctrine, the patterns that shaped Halven's life.
The sense of spacing: distance measured in breaths and heartbeats, the subtle differences in timing that determined survival.
The discipline of angles: battles seen not as men but as lines of fire, the geometry of advantage.
The order of killing: who to strike first to break command, who to leave for last so fear spread further.
He drank these truths as much as blood.
The Blood Grid flared into sight.
[Fatekeeper Experiment: Confirmed]
[New Combat Tree Unlocked: Ranger's Ledger]
A doctrine of distance and sequencing, rewritten into shadow-predation.
Unlocked Nodes:
Shadow Volley — Split one launch into delayed phantoms that bloom where targets attempt to escape.
Pierce the Horizon — A compressed line strike that ignores cover until impact.
Silent Pin — Anchor a target's movement by driving a barb through their shadow.
Kill Order — Multi-target sequencing; determines strike priority for maximum collapse.
Noctis withdrew. He touched the wound with two fingers; the skin sealed and the heat faded.
"Return to your bed and sleep," he ordered.
Halven obeyed in two clean motions, lying down and resuming his breathing pattern. The rhythm was nearly the same as before, but now carried Noctis's imprint.
Noctis stepped back into the wall, letting the stone close over the room.
Back in the hollow behind Serana's chamber, Noctis did not rest. He wanted proof of the doctrine he had taken.
He raised his hand. Shadows gathered and solidified into a narrow spine, its form sharp and steady.
Test One: Baseline Shot
He launched it forward. The projectile traveled in a straight line, no arc, no drop, striking the opposite wall with a dry, precise impact.
Result: Stable. Entry hole the width of a finger. No feathering or external support required.
Test Two: Shadow Volley
He called another spine, fired, and split it mid-flight into three. Each phantom staggered by fractions of a second.Click. Click. Click. Impacts followed in quick sequence, each at slightly different heights.Result: Forces dodging targets into compromised positions. Effective for overwhelming shields.
Test Three: Serrated Edge
He reshaped the spine, etching saw-teeth along one side. When fired, it rasped against the wall, leaving a shallow trench.
Design Notation: Serrated Phantom — maximizes tissue disruption. Wounds tear wider if the target moves. High bleed potential.
Test Four: Razorline
He smoothed the edge into a flat, surgical blade. When launched, it cut through the air silently and parted a dangling thread of shadow with exact precision.
Design Notation: Razorline — optimized for clean passthrough. Minimal noise, suited for silent kills.
Test Five: Helix-Bore Point
He twisted the head into a double-helix groove, turning it into a drill. Fired, it struck with a low thrum, boring into the wall until it vanished. Heat bled faintly through the stone.Design Notation: Helix-Bore — penetrates armor and reinforced material. Hybrid of bullet and drill behavior.
Test Six: Range Chime
Flattening several spines into crescents, he launched them in a fan pattern with tiered delays. The impacts created layered echoes, resonating with distinct tones.Design Notation: Range Chime — produces sound telemetry, useful for mapping angles in darkness or smoke.
Test Seven: Silent Pin
He created a thin barb and drove it into the ankle-shape of his own shadow. The hollow floor cracked hairline. His leg resisted movement until he released the technique.Result: Target immobilization through shadow anchoring. Effective for containment prior to finishing strikes.
Test Eight: Pierce the Horizon
He extended a single finger and willed the strike. A compressed line of darkness carved a tunnel through the far wall.Result: Creates a denial line. Ignores cover until final point of impact. Leaves clean edges with no debris.
Test Nine: Kill Order
He projected four phantom silhouettes at different distances and armor weights. He instructed the Grid to calculate the most efficient sequence of elimination.
[Node: Kill Order]Priority:
Caller (rear, unarmored) — first target to sever chain of command.
Shield (front-center) — second target before rotation completes.
Blade (front-right) — third to remove immediate damage threat.
Runner (rear-right) — spared briefly to spread panic, then eliminated before escape.
Result: Grid calculates for maximum collapse with minimal alarm. Doctrine sequences strikes automatically.
The hollow walls were marked with holes, trenches, and scorched lines. Noctis studied them without satisfaction or regret, only calculation.
The doctrines he had consumed were stacking into a larger design. Soldier's Edge gave him close-quarters execution. Spearwarden's Path gave him reach and control. Bulwark Dominion taught him to withstand and redirect. Ranger's Ledger now added distance, timing, and sequencing.
Tomorrow he would seek the quartermaster-captain, to take tempo and rationing into himself. After that, the lance-captain, to master shock and impact. Four nights to complete the captain-tier harvest.
He sank into the wall's stillness again. Serana's steady breathing carried through the stone. Patrols outside shifted, unaware.
The Blood Grid pulsed behind his eyes. With every new branch, its design grew more intricate, more inevitable.