Chapter 12 The First Blood

The crimson droplet shot toward Jameson before he could react, and he threw both arms up to shield his face. Instead of striking him, the droplet stopped only inches from his forehead and hung there, suspended in the air as though waiting for permission.

Jameson stayed perfectly still, his pulse hammering against his chest. "What are you?" he whispered.

The droplet quivered gently, almost as if it had actually heard him. Then it began drifting around him in a slow circle, and Jameson turned with it, refusing to let it out of his sight. This was no ordinary blood. Even after all these centuries it still looked bright and vibrant, completely untouched by decay, and a faint warmth radiated off it that filled the entire chamber.

Without warning, it darted straight toward his hand. Jameson flinched, but the blood simply landed on the small cut across his finger and disappeared into the wound instead of running down his skin.

A sharp pain tore up his arm at once, and he gritted his teeth as it climbed from his hand to his shoulder before racing through every vein in his body. His knee buckled and he dropped to the floor, muscles tightening, each heartbeat pounding louder than the last. He pressed both hands flat against the stone, trying to steady himself against the wave of it.

"What is happening to me?"

No voice answered him. The answer came through his own body instead. His veins began to glow faintly beneath his skin, the light spreading from his hand across his chest before fading just as quickly as it had come.

A moment later the pain vanished completely, and Jameson stayed kneeling there, breathing hard, staring down at his own hands. Nothing looked different. No new wounds, no strange markings, nothing he could point to. Only a strength moving through him that hadn't been there before.

He rose slowly. The exhaustion that had weighed on him since the ritual had lifted completely, and his senses felt sharper than he'd ever known them to be. He could hear water dripping somewhere far off beyond the chamber walls, and he could pick apart the different scents hanging in the air around him. Stone. Dust. Old blood.

His brow furrowed. "This isn't normal."

He walked over to one of the broken crystal pedestals and caught his reflection in its polished surface. At first glance nothing had changed. Then he noticed his eyes. The dull gray they'd carried his whole life now carried a faint crimson ring around the pupils, subtle enough that someone standing a few steps away might miss it entirely, but unmistakable up close.

He touched his own face. "I've changed."

A deep vibration cut through his thoughts. The remaining crystal pedestals around the room began to tremble, and one after another, ancient cracks spread across their surfaces. Jameson stepped back and watched as the nearest one collapsed into pieces, then another, until within seconds every single pedestal had crumbled into piles of ancient stone and dust. None of them had held any blood anymore. They'd been empty for who knew how long. And yet they'd all reacted the moment he stood among them.

"They've been here for centuries," he murmured. Why break now?

His gaze drifted toward the staircase leading back up to the mural chamber, and the answer hit him almost as soon as the question formed. The catacombs were responding to him. Not because he was strong, and not because he understood any of what this place was. Because of his blood.

That thought unsettled him more than anything else he'd seen so far. He'd spent twenty years believing his blood was worthless, listening to nobles treat it as inferior, impure, good for nothing but sacrifice. And now an ancient sanctuary buried beneath the Crimson Dominion seemed to recognize it as something else entirely.

Jameson let out a slow breath. "I need answers."

Staying down here without understanding any of it would only put him in more danger, so he climbed the staircase again and stepped back into the mural chamber, which greeted him with the same dim crimson light as before. The carved king still sat on his throne, stone eyes open, still watching. This time Jameson didn't feel the same fear he had earlier. Curiosity had started to take its place.

He walked toward the enormous mural again, and this time he noticed details he'd missed the first time through. The throne wasn't resting on plain stone. Its base was surrounded by countless kneeling vampires, kings kneeling beside servants, warriors kneeling beside priests, with no distinction anywhere between noble blood and common blood. Every single one of them bowed before the same ruler.

Jameson frowned. That wasn't the world he'd grown up in. Inside the Crimson Dominion, blood decided everything. Purebloods ruled and half-bloods obeyed, full stop. But this mural was telling him there had once been a different order entirely.

His eyes drifted lower, toward the base of the throne, where something caught his attention. Words. Ancient symbols carved deep into the stone. He couldn't read them, not at first, but the moment he looked at them a strange feeling washed over him and the symbols seemed to shift and rearrange themselves before his eyes. He blinked, and when he looked again, they'd become familiar somehow.

He found himself reading them aloud without understanding how he even could. "Blood is inherited," he said slowly, then paused. "But kingship is recognized."

His breathing slowed. There were more words carved beneath the first line.

"No bloodline may command." He stopped again, throat tight. "The First Blood."

Jameson stared at the inscription, heart pounding hard against his ribs. He'd never learned this language. No one had ever taught him a single word of it. And yet somehow he understood every one.

Before he could make sense of any of it, another sound broke through the chamber. A heavy stone door slowly ground open behind the throne, and cold air drifted out from the darkness beyond it. Jameson turned toward the opening.

Unlike the corridors he'd already walked through, this passage was different. Fresh footprints marked the dusty floor, and Jameson froze the moment he saw them.

They weren't his.

Someone else had walked through these catacombs. And judging by how undisturbed the dust around them still was, it hadn't been very long ago at all.