The Monastery of St. Jude sat atop a jagged cliff like a broken tooth, ancient and decaying. It was 1236, a year of endless winter and lengthening shadows. Inside, the air didn't smell of incense anymore—it smelled of wet fur and copper.
Thomas, the last of the Order of the Silver Flame, clutched his side. His hand was soaked in blood that wasn't his own, but his strength was failing. Behind him, in the darkened nave of the church, he heard the skittering of claws against marble and the low, guttural growls of his pursuers. They weren't just hunters; they were the apex predators of the new world—a werewolf-vampire hybrid, a twisted mutation of the night that had spent the last decade hunting Thomas's brothers to extinction.
They weren't here to stop his mission; they were here to finish the harvest of his kind. Thomas was the last flame to be snuffed out.
"Not yet," Thomas hissed, shoving a hidden lever behind the statue of a weeping saint.
A stone slab ground open, revealing a stairwell that seemed to drop into the very bowels of the earth. He descended rapidly, his boots echoing against damp stone. The deeper he went, the more the air changed. It became heavy, charged with a static pressure that made his teeth ache. At the bottom was a door of lead and cold iron, sealed with chains that hadn't been touched in a millennium.
Thomas leaned against the door, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He pressed his face to the small iron grate in the center of the door.
"Are you there?" he whispered into the suffocating blackness.
For a long moment, there was only silence. Then, a sound like a heavy chain dragging over stone echoed from within. A pair of eyes snapped open behind the grate. It was void-black, ancient, and filled with a cold, predatory intelligence that made Thomas's soul want to shrivel.
"Who are you?" The voice wasn't a sound; it was a vibration that shook Thomas's bones. "Why are you here? What do you want, little spark?"
"I am the last of those who fight the darkness," Thomas replied, his voice trembling. "And we are losing. The world is overrun by the very filth you once ruled. The sky is grey, the fields are red, and humanity is nothing but cattle."
The eye narrowed. "And you come to me? The Great Abomination? Have you forgotten why your ancestors buried me under ten thousand tons of holy stone?"
"I have not forgotten," Thomas said, pulling a silver vial and a rusted iron key from his robe. "But the world is overrun by evil, and the only way to destroy this evil is by unleashing a stronger one. I am here to set you free."
A cruel, dry chuckle erupted from the darkness. "You would trade a wolf for a lion. You are a fool."
"Perhaps," Thomas gasped as the door at the top of the stairs burst open.
The hybrids were here. Two of them—hulking, gray-skinned monstrosities with the muzzles of wolves and the elongated fangs of vampires—sprinted down the stairs with unnatural speed. Their yellow eyes fixed on Thomas's throat.
Thomas jammed the key into the lock. With a scream of effort, he turned it. The lead door groaned, the ancient magic of the seal breaking with a crack like a thunderbolt.
"Stop him!" one of the hybrids howled, leaping through the air, its claws extended like daggers.
The hybrid never reached him. A hand, pale and thin as a skeleton's but moving with the speed of a lightning strike, shot out from the opening door. It caught the hybrid mid-air by the skull. With a sickening crunch, the monster's head was crushed like a ripe melon.
The second hybrid skidded to a halt, its bravado vanishing instantly. It let out a whimper, sensing the aura of the thing stepping out of the cell.
The First Vampire emerged. He was tall, gaunt, and draped in the remnants of a shroud that looked like shadow itself. He didn't look at Thomas. He looked at the remaining monster.
"You smell of a diluted, pathetic bloodline," the Vampire said, his voice now a melodic, terrifying rasp.
He moved. It wasn't walking; it was a displacement of space. One moment he was by the door; the next, he was standing behind the hybrid. He didn't use a weapon. He simply reached into the creature's chest and pulled out its beating, black heart. The monster collapsed into a heap of ash and fur.
The Vampire turned to Thomas, who was slumped against the wall, his life fading. "The debt is paid, priest. Now, I shall go and reclaim my throne of skulls."
"No," Thomas whispered, holding up the silver vial. "I cannot let you... go as you are."
Before the Vampire could react, Thomas smashed the vial against the creature's chest. The liquid inside wasn't holy water—it was the Blood of an Angel.
The Vampire let out a primal scream as the golden ichor seared into his skin. He felt his god-like power being compressed, forced into a vessel that felt agonizingly small. His fangs retracted, his dark aura dimmed, and for the first time in an eternity, he felt the cold bite of the wind.
"I have sealed your true power," Thomas choked out, blood bubbling at his lips. "You carry the light of an angel now. You must fight them... with the strength of a man. Redemption... or ruin. The choice is yours."
Thomas's head fell back. He was gone.
The Vampire stood in the silence of the dungeon. He looked at his hands; they were shaking. He felt a strange, rhythmic thumping in his chest—a heartbeat. It was a heavy, burdensome thing. He looked at the priest's body, then at the stairs leading to the surface.
He reached down and took the heavy cloak from the priest's shoulders, wrapping it around himself. He found a discarded sword near the altar above, its weight making his mortal muscles ache.
As he stepped out of the church and into the frozen night of the year 1236, he didn't feel like a god anymore. He felt a spark of something he had forgotten: wrath, tempered by a strange, newfound vulnerability.
"I am Gwaine, descendant of Cain," he whispered into the biting wind, his black eyes reflecting the distant stars. "And I am coming for my world."
He turned and began his long walk into the dark, his footsteps heavy and human in the deep snow.