**Chapter 37– Extraction and Old Blood**
**Sunday, March 12, 2028 – 2:11 a.m.**
We don't wait for daylight.
Four kids.
Four crown pieces buried in four living hearts.
We move like ghosts ourselves.
**Target 1 – Lila Tsatoke (age 11, Remy's cousin)**
Remy carries her sleeping from her bedroom himself, tears in his eyes but hands steady.
Mom meets us in the backyard with the old cedar box lined in velvet.
I speak the softest word I own (one that means **release without harm**).
A tiny ruby shard slides out of Lila's chest like a tear, hovers, then settles into the box.
Lila never wakes.
35 / 47
**Target 2 – Juno Park (Seras's robotics partner)**
Seras portals straight into Juno's room, kisses her forehead, whispers "I've got you, nerd."
The shard comes out glowing copper (Seras's fire recognized its own).
Juno murmurs something about "cool dream" and rolls over.
36 / 47
**Target 3 – Marcus Hale (sophomore lacrosse, barely know him)**
Kayo handles it.
One tail tip through the window, a golden thread of illusion, and Marcus sleeps smiling while the shard drifts out like dandelion seed.
37 / 47
**Target 4 – Delilah Cho (freshman, art kid)**
I do this one myself.
I sit on the edge of her bed, stroke her hair, and apologize in advance.
The shard fights (tries to burrow deeper).
I use Livia's memory (the queen who burned a village to save the future) and force it out with tears on my face.
38 / 47
Four kids safe.
Four pieces reclaimed.
Zero casualties.
We meet back in the Ohio Club basement at 4:00 a.m.
The cedar box now holds four tiny, sleeping rubies.
Remy sets Lila's old stuffed coyote next to them like a guardian.
Seras is shaking (rage and relief).
Kayo's tails are wrapped around all of us like a living shield.
Rowan closes the box with a soft click.
**Rowan:**
"Nine pieces left.
Three in the Choir vault.
Two in Romania.
Four with her."
He looks at me.
**Rowan:**
"You just saved four mortal children from becoming collateral damage.
The Monastery is… speechless.
That hasn't happened in nine centuries."
I wipe my face (still wet).
**Celeste (voice raw):**
"They used kids as bait.
I'm done playing nice."
Al pours a round of something strong and illegal, even for ghosts.
**Al:**
"To the Romau kid.
Meanest sixteen-year-old on the planet and still the best damn heart I've ever seen."
We drink.
The HUD glows soft this time.
```
38 / 47
Living hosts freed.
Humanity +4
The Forty-Eighth felt every extraction.
She is coming.
```
I look at my family.
**Celeste:**
"Let her.
We're ready."
Outside, the first hint of dawn touches the steam.
Inside, four kids sleep safe in their beds.
And the storm queen just drew a new line in blood and mercy:
Touch my people again,
and I stop pulling punches.
Nine pieces left.
The endgame starts now. ** The Hollow Vault**
**Sunday, March 12, 2028 – 3:47 a.m.**
We descend beneath the old **Medical Arts Building**—the sixteen-story art-deco skeleton on Central Avenue that's been abandoned since the eighties.
The Hollow Choir carved their vault into the sub-basement that used to be the city morgue.
Perfect place for dead things to keep secrets.
We take the freight elevator shaft (ropes, claws, fox-fire, and one very pissed-off storm queen).
At the bottom: a door made of human ribcages laced with silver choir wire.
The six chained sorcerers are dragged in behind us, still bound in Shambhala silver.
I don't speak.
I just look at the lead sorcerer and raise an eyebrow.
He lifts a trembling hand.
The ribs part like curtains.
Inside: a cathedral of frozen blood and candlelight.
In the center, suspended in a sphere of black ice, float three perfect crown shards—pulsing like dying hearts.
I step forward and speak the softest, cruelest word I own now:
**Thaw.**
The ice explodes into harmless steam.
The shards scream (literally) as they tear free and slam into my bloodstone in a triple flash of crimson lightning.
**Crown HUD:**
```
38 / 47 → 41 / 47
New shards acquired: +3
The Forty-Eighth felt that.
She is coming.
```
The vault begins to collapse the second the shards leave.
We don't wait.
Kayo portals us straight out onto the roof of the Medical Arts Building as the entire sub-basement caves in behind us.
Dawn is still two hours away.
The city sleeps.
And I'm holding forty-one pieces of forever in my chest.
Remy kisses the silver scar on my forehead.
**Remy:**
"Romania next."
I nod.
**Celeste:**
"Then we come home for the last four."
The storm queen is going to wake a dead king.
And after that?
We end this.
** The Tomb of the Last Strigoi King**
** Monday, March 13, 2028 – 2:14 a.m. (Romanian time)**
We land in the Carpathians at new moon, where the air tastes like iron and old blood.
The tomb is hidden beneath the ruins of Poenari Citadel (Vlad Țepeș's real fortress, not the tourist trap at Bran).
Mom leads us through a passage only Moroi blood can open.
Dad carries the cedar box like it's holy.
The six of us descend stone stairs that haven't seen light in five centuries.
At the bottom: a single stone sarcophagus sealed with seven iron nails driven through the lid.
On the lid, carved in Old Church Slavonic:
**"Here lies the King who refused to kneel. Let him sleep."**
I place my bleeding palm on the stone.
**Celeste (in perfect Vinča and Romanian):**
"I'm not here to wake you for war.
I'm here to finish what you started."
The nails scream as they pull themselves free.
The lid slides aside.
Inside: no body.
Just a pool of perfectly preserved blood, black in the darkness, and two crown shards floating in the center like embers in oil.
They know me.
They rise on their own.
I don't fight it.
The shards slide into the silver scar on my forehead like they were always meant to come home.
Warm.
Heavy.
Final.
**Crown HUD:**
```
41 / 47 → 43 / 47
Strigoi King's Legacy accepted.
New passive: BLOOD OF THE IMPALER
(Once per year, you may refuse death for someone you love.)
The Forty-Eighth just lost two pieces she thought were forever buried.
```
The blood in the sarcophagus begins to evaporate, turning into red mist that swirls around us, then dissolves into the night.
A whisper (ancient, proud, exhausted):
**Vlad (barely audible):**
"Finish it, little queen.
Make her kneel."
Then silence.
Mom closes the empty sarcophagus.
**Mom (soft):**
"He waited five hundred years for someone worthy to take the last of his blood.
He just chose you."
Remy's hand finds mine in the dark.
**Remy:**
"Four left."
I look up at the ruined fortress silhouetted against the stars.
**Celeste:**
"All with her."
Seras cracks her knuckles, fire lighting the stone walls gold.
**Seras:**
"Then let's go carve them out of her heart."
Kayo's tails fan wide, golden in the moonlight.
**Kayo:**
"Home first.
She'll come to us now.
The valley is the final battlefield."
Rowan nods once.
**Rowan:**
"Shambhala is ready when you are."
We step back into the portal.
Forty-three pieces.
Four to go.
The Strigoi King's blood runs in my veins now.
And the Forty-Eighth is about to learn what happens when a Moroi Queen comes home with an army, a dead king's blessing, and absolutely nothing left to lose.
The endgame begins at sunrise.
Hot Springs will never be the same.