The Blood of Vampire: Chapter 1 - The First Sanguine Oath
The ritual chamber smelled of copper and fear. Not Jatex's fear, but the rank, crushing terror of the human tethered in the center of the slate floor. Thirteen-year-old Jatex stood rigid, his hands sweating inside his ceremonial sleeves, his eyes glued to the granite pedestal.
This wasn't his day. This was Aeliana's.
His sister, five years his senior, was perfection. Her posture was flawless, her movements practiced, and her Shadow-Blood Weave—the spiritual core of every Vaelanar—was a cold, pristine coil of terrifying potential. Today, Aeliana would perform the Sanguine Oath: the spiritual consumption of a tethered life-source. It was the public declaration that they were creatures of The Thirst, and their hunger was their law.
Elder Sydon, their father, watched from the dais, his face a mask of spiritual pride. This was the moment their bloodline cemented its place among the ancient, puritanical Vaelanar Elders.
Aeliana raised her hand, her gaze unfocused, channeling her pure, inherited Shadow-Blood. The Siphon began, a silent, invisible tide of force reaching for the captive. Jatex felt the familiar, sickening pressure deep within his own nascent Weave, the first tickle of the Thirst responding to the call.
But Aeliana froze.
Her eyes snapped open and locked onto Jatex's. In that single, agonizing second, she saw past the ceremonial robes. She saw the sensitive child who still cried over nightmares, the soul who recoiled from the very concept of consumption. She saw his raw, spiritual revulsion to the entire process.
In that instant, she made her choice. A choice of terrifying, absolute love.
The Siphon didn't reach the captive. It recoiled.
Aeliana slammed her hand, palm inward, against her own sternum. Her entire spiritual architecture—the cold, pristine perfection she had spent a lifetime building—snapped. She executed the ultimate, self-erasing spiritual suicide.
A silent, blinding explosion of white-hot spiritual energy ripped through the chamber. It wasn't the hungry pull of a successful Siphon; it was a detonation of pure, selfless destruction. Aeliana had turned the Shadow-Blood inward, annihilating her own life essence.
Jatex was thrown against the wall, the air punched from his lungs. He didn't see blood; he saw light. He was bathed in the spiritual residue of his sister's sacrifice—a wave of desperate, selfless love and pure, untainted life energy.
Elder Sydon roared, a sound of absolute political and spiritual horror. But for Jatex, the shockwave had done something worse than injure. It had rewired him. The chaotic energy of Aeliana's self-destruction slammed into his young, vulnerable Weave, carving a permanent, agonizing spiritual wound into his core: the Sanguine Stain.
In that newly fractured space, the Thirst, raw and screaming, finally tasted something more potent than life essence: Grief, Loss, and Absolute Sacrifice.
The monster was born, stamped with his sister's pain. And Aeliana, the perfect Vaelanar, was silent dust on the altar floor.