Chapter 1: The Awakening in Blood
The beeping flatlined at 2:47 AM.
Thirty-four years old. Thirty-six hours into my shift. Third triple-bypass of the night. My hands had been steady until they weren't.
Pain lanced through my chest like someone had driven a railroad spike between my ribs. The surgical scissors clattered against the metal tray. Nurse Patterson's voice came from somewhere far away, muffled by the roaring in my ears.
"Doctor? Doctor!"
The operating room tilted sideways. Blue scrubs blurred into white ceiling tiles. I watched my own hands reach for the table's edge and miss entirely.
"He's coding! Someone get—"
The last thing I saw was the patient's chest cavity, still open, the heart still beating while mine quit.
Darkness swallowed everything.
The Void
There was no tunnel of light. No deceased relatives waiting with outstretched arms. Just nothing. A complete absence of sensation that lasted either three seconds or three millennia—impossible to tell.
Then came the cold.
Not the gradual chill of a morgue or the clinical cool of anesthesia. This was different. Deep. Cellular. Like every molecule of my body had been flash-frozen and was just now beginning to thaw.
I opened my eyes.
Rain hammered my face. Grimy brick walls rose on either side. A dumpster overflowed with black garbage bags to my left. The stench hit next—rotting food, urine, copper.
Blood. Lots of blood.
My hands pressed against wet cobblestones as I pushed myself upright. Wrong. Everything was wrong. These weren't my hands. The fingers were longer, paler, the nails darker. I wore a leather coat that reeked of violence and something else. Something older.
Three feet away, a body crumbled to ash.
Not metaphorically. Not slowly. The corpse—male, dark hair, leather similar to mine—dissolved like time-lapse footage of a decomposing corpse. Skin flaked. Muscle dried and cracked. In seconds, nothing remained but a gray pile that the rain immediately began washing into the gutter.
And then the notification appeared.
[ CORVINUS BLOODLINE MATRIX INITIALIZED ]
The words hung in my vision, glowing faint blue against the backdrop of the alley. Not projected on anything. Not displayed on a screen. Just... there. Inside my eyes.
[ HOST SPECIES: VAMPIRE FLEDGLING ]
[ SIRE STATUS: DECEASED (LYCAN TERMINATION) ]
[ TIME UNTIL STARVATION DEATH: 71:42:18 ]
I blinked. The notification remained. I rubbed my eyes, smearing grime across my face. Still there.
"What the actual—"
My voice came out ragged, unfamiliar. Not my voice. Someone else's vocal cords.
A second notification cascaded beneath the first.
[ SYSTEM TUTORIAL INITIATING ]
[ THE CORVINUS BLOODLINE MATRIX IS A BLOOD CONSUMPTION AND HYBRID EVOLUTION INTERFACE. BP (BLOODLINE POINTS) ARE ACQUIRED THROUGH FEEDING. BP CAN BE INVESTED IN GENE TREES TO UNLOCK ENHANCED ABILITIES. ]
[ CURRENT BP: 0/100 ]
[ ACTIVE ABILITIES: BLOOD APPRAISAL LV.1, MEMORY SIPHON LV.1 ]
I read the text three times. Then I laughed. The sound echoed off the alley walls, borderline hysteric.
Transmigration. System interface. Vampire fledgling. The whole package deal from every web novel I'd read during midnight breaks at the hospital.
Except this wasn't a novel. The rain was real. The cold in my bones was real. And that countdown timer was very, very real.
[ TIME UNTIL STARVATION DEATH: 71:41:52 ]
Seventy-one hours to feed or die. Again.
I forced myself to stand. My legs worked differently now—stronger, more stable, but wrong in ways I couldn't articulate. Like driving a new car without adjusting the mirrors first.
Think. Analyze. That's what surgeons do.
Fact one: I died on an operating table in what was presumably modern America.
Fact two: I woke up in an alley wearing a leather coat next to a dissolving corpse.
Fact three: Said corpse was apparently my "sire" who got killed by something called a Lycan.
Fact four: I have approximately three days to drink blood or I join the ash pile.
The rain intensified. I needed shelter. I needed answers. I needed—
Movement at the alley's entrance. A figure huddled against the wall beneath a makeshift cardboard shelter. Human. Male. Old. The stench of cheap alcohol mixed with unwashed skin.
And hovering above his head, visible only to me: [ WEAK ]
Blood Appraisal. Level one. Showing only vague assessments, not numbers. But the word triggered something deeper than conscious thought.
Hunger.
Not stomach hunger. Not the hollow feeling after a long shift with no break. This was different. This was need. Craving. Every cell in my new body screaming in unified demand.
The homeless man shifted. His heartbeat thundered in my ears—impossibly loud, impossibly clear. I could track the pulse at his throat from fifteen feet away. Could hear the blood rushing through his carotid with surgical precision.
"No."
I said it out loud, gripping the dumpster's edge. The metal crumpled under my fingers like aluminum foil.
"I'm a doctor. I save lives. I don't—"
The countdown timer pulsed.
[ TIME UNTIL STARVATION DEATH: 71:38:09 ]
[ WARNING: DELAYED FEEDING ACCELERATES CELLULAR DEGRADATION. FLEDGLING METABOLISM REQUIRES IMMEDIATE STABILIZATION. ]
My legs moved without permission. Three steps. Five. The homeless man looked up as I approached. Rheumy eyes. Weathered face. Gray stubble coated his jaw.
"Got any change, friend?"
His voice was rough. Hungarian accent. Budapest, then. This was Budapest.
"I..."
Words failed. The hunger clawed at my throat. My vision narrowed until all I could see was the pulse at his neck. The rhythm of life pushing blood through fragile human vessels.
"You don't look so good," the man said. He started to rise, concern replacing wariness. "Hospital's just—"
I lunged.
The impact drove us both into the brick wall. Instinct—horrible, alien instinct—guided my mouth to his throat. Teeth that hadn't been fangs an hour ago pierced flesh like surgical needles.
Blood flooded my mouth.
And everything changed.
Not just the taste—though that was overwhelming, coppery and warm and somehow right in a way that horrified the doctor still screaming inside my skull. No, it was the connection. The instant, involuntary link that formed between predator and prey.
I saw his life.
Fragments. Flashes. A young man in military uniform, proud smile, medals on his chest. Three daughters blowing out birthday candles—the same daughters who stopped visiting when the bottle became more important than family. A wife's funeral. A park bench that became a bedroom. Winter shelters that smelled of despair. His name—János Kovács, veteran, grandfather, forgotten.
[ MEMORY SIPHON LV.1 ACTIVATED ]
[ RANDOM MEMORY FRAGMENTS ACQUIRED: 3 ]
[ NOTE: STRONGEST EMOTIONS SURFACE FIRST—FEAR, REGRET, LONELINESS ]
The heart beneath my hands stuttered. Slowed. Stopped.
I released him.
János slumped against the wall, eyes open and empty. The rain washed trails through the grime on his face, creating paths that looked almost like tears.
[ BP ACQUIRED: 2 ]
[ CURRENT BP: 2/100 ]
[ BLOOD APPRAISAL RESULT: HUMAN MALE, AGE 47, CHRONIC ALCOHOLISM, SEVERE MALNUTRITION ]
[ HUNGER TIMER RESET: 72:00:00 ]
I vomited.
Blood—his blood—splattered against the cobblestones. My stomach heaved again and again until nothing remained but dry retching. The irony wasn't lost on me. Forty-eight hours ago I'd been elbow-deep in someone's chest cavity, saving their life with steady hands and clinical detachment. Now I'd murdered a homeless veteran for two bloodline points.
The system notifications pulsed, indifferent to my moral crisis.
[ TIP: BLOOD WASTED THROUGH REGURGITATION CANNOT BE RECOVERED. RECOMMEND FEEDING MORE SLOWLY ON FUTURE TARGETS TO MAXIMIZE BP YIELD. ]
"Shut up."
The words came out as a growl. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stared at the corpse. At János. At the man whose final thoughts were of three daughters who'd given up on him.
The doctor in me cataloged the visible damage. Puncture wounds at the carotid. Rapid exsanguination. Death within minutes. Quick, at least. Probably painless after the initial bite.
The monster that had taken the doctor's place cataloged something else: how to do it better next time. How to extend the feeding. How to extract more memories, more points, more power.
I hated that second voice. But I couldn't silence it.
A wallet had fallen from János's pocket during our... during my feeding. I picked it up with shaking fingers. Forty-seven euros in worn bills. A photograph behind a plastic window—three young women in graduation robes, smiling at the camera.
I pocketed the wallet. Guilt token. Reminder. Evidence of who I'd killed to stay alive.
The leather coat from my sire hung heavy on my shoulders, blood-stained and too large. I adjusted it, covering the bite marks on my own throat—remnants of my own turning, presumably. More instinct. More knowledge I shouldn't have.
[ QUEST AVAILABLE: SURVIVE THE FIRST NIGHT ]
[ OBJECTIVE: FIND SHELTER BEFORE DAWN (UV SENSITIVITY FATAL TO FLEDGLINGS) ]
[ REWARD: 10 BP, SYSTEM TUTORIAL COMPLETION ]
[ ACCEPT? Y/N ]
I mentally selected yes. Another skill I shouldn't possess but did—interfacing with the system through thought alone.
The rain was letting up. Dawn would come in approximately five hours based on the sky's color. I needed shelter. I needed information. I needed to understand what the hell I'd become.
Vampire. The word echoed in my mind as I left János's body behind. I'd watched enough movies, read enough stories. Undead. Immortal. Predator.
But something about the system notifications nagged at me. Corvinus Bloodline Matrix. Hybrid Evolution. Lycan termination. These weren't generic vampire terms. These were specific. Familiar in a way I couldn't quite place.
I stopped at the alley's entrance, scanning the empty street. Budapest. 2003, based on the cars and the posters advertising a movie release I remembered from my previous life. Early 2000s technology. Eastern European architecture.
The pieces clicked into place.
Underworld. The movie franchise. Vampires versus Lycans, ancient blood feuds, hybrid evolution, and the Corvinus bloodline at the center of everything.
I'd been transmigrated into the Underworld universe as a newborn vampire with a system interface and roughly three days to figure out how to survive.
A laugh escaped me. Smaller this time. Less hysteric.
"Thirty-six hour shift was easier than this."
The streets were quiet. I moved through shadows instinctively, avoiding the few lights still burning in windows above. My body knew things my mind hadn't learned yet—how to move silently, how to blend with darkness, how to track the heartbeats of sleeping humans behind brick and mortar.
Dangerous knowledge. Predator knowledge.
But also useful. If I was going to survive this world—a world where Viktor schemed in his crypt, where Lucian plotted underground, where Michael Corvin hadn't yet discovered his destiny—I needed every advantage.
I had memories of five Underworld films. I had a surgeon's analytical precision. I had a system that quantified power in ways the immortals of this world couldn't comprehend.
And I had approximately seventy-two hours before the hunger returned.
A storm drain gaped at the street corner, large enough to admit a crouching man. I dropped through it without hesitation. The sewers would provide shelter from the coming dawn. Time to learn the rules of this new existence.
Time to become something more than prey.
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