Chapter 10 The Crimson Catacombs

"Welcome home."

The words lingered in the darkness long after the voice had fallen silent.

Jameson stood motionless, breathing heavily as he searched the chamber with anxious eyes.

"Who's there?" he called out, echoing through the vast underground hall. "Show yourself."

Only silence answered him.

He swallowed hard and took a cautious step backward. Every instinct told him to run, but he had nowhere to run to. The mountain had collapsed above him, and if this place truly lay beneath the Blood Altar, there was no obvious path back to the surface.

His hand drifted to his chest.

His heart was still beating, slow and powerful, each beat sounding clearer than anything he could remember feeling before.

He looked down at himself and frowned. The ceremonial robe he'd been forced into wear for the sacrifice was torn in several places, stained with dried blood and dust. He touched the deep wound on his wrist where the priest had opened his vein during the ritual, and found nothing there. The flesh had healed completely. His fingers moved to the cuts left by the chains around his ankles and wrists, and those had vanished as well.

Jameson stared at his own hands, unable to make sense of it. "I watched them drain my blood," he murmured. "I fell through a collapsing mountain. So why am I still alive?"

The question lingered in the empty chamber, and no answer came.

He took a slow breath and forced himself to calm down. Panicking wouldn't help him find a way out. If there was a path into this place, there had to be a path leading away from it too.

He lifted his head and finally took in his surroundings. The chamber was unlike anything he'd ever seen. Massive black pillars stretched up toward a ceiling swallowed in darkness. Crimson crystals sat embedded throughout the stone walls, casting a dim red glow across the space that felt almost like moonlight filtered through fresh blood. Ancient stone coffins stood upright between the pillars, each carved with symbols that had long since faded with age.

He walked toward one of them and found the lid cracked open. He hesitated before looking inside. It was empty, just a thin layer of black dust settled at the bottom, as though whoever had once rested there vanished centuries ago.

A cold breeze drifted through the chamber, and Jameson looked toward a wide corridor opening beyond the throne room. "Maybe there's another way out," he said quietly, and followed the passage deeper.

The further he went, the older everything around him seemed. The stone walls had been worn smooth by countless years, yet not a single cobweb hung from the ceiling. It felt as though someone had been keeping this place, tending to it, long after it should have been forgotten.

After several minutes, carvings began covering both walls. He stopped and realized they weren't decoration. They were murals, telling a story. He stepped closer, brushing centuries of dust off the nearest one with his sleeve, and the image underneath made him go still.

A group of starving humans stood beneath a crimson moon, their faces thin and hollow with despair. Before them stood a lone figure in flowing robes with a crown resting on his head. The next mural showed the same man holding his wrist over a stone chalice, blood pouring into the vessel, and the starving humans drinking from it one after another. In the mural after that, their bodies looked different. Stronger. Sharp fangs had grown in their mouths, and their eyes carried the unmistakable look of vampires.

Jameson stood quietly for a long moment. "So vampires weren't born," he said, his voice barely carrying through the corridor. "They were made."

He kept walking, and every mural added another piece to the story. The crowned figure taught the first vampires. He led them across kingdoms, united scattered clans under a single banner, and cities rose where there had once been nothing but wilderness. Fortresses were built. The vampire race flourished under him.

His pace slowed at another mural. The crowned ruler stood before several groups of followers, and instead of handing out weapons or crowns, he filled separate stone chalices with his own blood. Each group drank from a different chalice, and above every group hung a different symbol. A wolf, a raven, a serpent, a crown... Several more stretched across the wall beyond that.

Jameson's breathing slowed. "The noble bloodlines," he said, half to himself, looking back at the earlier murals. "Did they all start here?"

Everything he'd been taught inside Blackstone Manor suddenly felt incomplete. The noble families always claimed their bloodlines had existed since the beginning of time. These murals told a very different story. Every pureblood family seemed to trace back to one man.

He stepped closer to study the ruler's face and felt his whole body go tense. The face had been destroyed. Someone had carefully carved it away. He hurried to the next mural and found the same thing. Then the next. Then another. Every important figure carved into these walls had suffered the same fate. Only the faces were gone. The clothing and crown remained untouched. Even the smallest details had survived, all except the faces.

He reached out and traced the smooth marks left behind by whatever blade had done this. "This wasn't an accident," he said quietly. Whoever had done it wanted to erase identities without erasing history itself.

His mind went straight back to Blackstone Manor, to the statue inside the Hall of Ancestors, the mysterious figure standing beside the founder of House Valerius. Its face had been removed the exact same way. A chill ran through him. Someone had spent centuries quietly rewriting vampire history, and no one back home seemed to know it.

He pushed deeper into the catacombs until the corridor opened into an enormous circular chamber, and his footsteps slowed almost on their own. One single mural covered the entire wall in front of him. Thousands of vampires had been carved into the stone. Kings stood beside warriors. Priests stood beside nobles. Every one of them faced the same direction, toward the center, where a massive throne had been carved.

Jameson walked toward it, barely aware he was moving. His eyes swept across the countless figures, and every face had been deliberately erased, every single one, except for the figure seated on the throne itself.

His breath caught.

The face was untouched.

Time had failed to wear it away.

The blade that had erased every other face had never reached this one.

The ruler's expression was calm.

His eyes carried neither anger nor kindness.

Only quiet authority.

For reasons Jameson could not explain, he found it impossible to look away.

His heartbeat became louder with every step.

He stopped only when he stood directly before the mural.

Without thinking, he slowly raised his hand.

The instant his fingertips touched the stone, the entire chamber trembled.

The crimson crystals embedded throughout the catacombs blazed like living flames.

A deep sound more like a heartbeat echoed beneath the mountain.

Then, before Jameson's horrified eyes...

The carved eyes of the ancient king slowly opened.

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