Chapter 7 The First Progenitor
The silver blade completed its descent, cutting deeper across Jameson's wrist, and fresh blood spilled onto the ancient stone beneath him.
The priest stepped back as the blood flowed through the narrow channels carved into the altar. The crimson liquid joined the streams from the other eleven offerings, weaving together into a single network of glowing lines that stretched toward the center of the ritual platform.
Jameson's vision blurred and his breathing grew shallow. He could feel the warmth leaving his body with every heartbeat, and somewhere in the fog of pain he understood this was how it ended. For generations, half-blood thralls had been brought to this mountain. They arrived in chains, gave their blood to the altar, and disappeared from history without leaving behind so much as a name. He had always believed his fate would be no different from theirs.
The High Council raised their hands together and began to chant, their voices echoing across the mountain in an ancient language that no longer belonged to the living. Above them, the Blood Moon climbed higher, its light bathing the altar, the nobles, and the gathered Blood Guards until the entire plaza looked as though it had been submerged beneath an endless sea of blood.
The blood flowing through the channels reached the center of the altar, and the ancient carvings pulsed once, then twice. Then something changed.
One thin stream of blood slowed. It belonged to Jameson.
The priest frowned. His blood had stopped moving, resting inside the carved channel as though an invisible wall blocked its path. The other offerings continued feeding the altar without interruption, but Jameson's blood remained perfectly still, refusing to join the rest.
One of the High Council members noticed first. "The ritual," she started, but couldn't finish the thought.
Another elder looked down at the frozen stream. "Why has it stopped?"
Before anyone could answer, Jameson's blood began moving again, only now it was no longer flowing toward the altar. It was flowing away from it. The crimson stream turned back on itself and raced toward him instead, climbing the channel in the wrong direction as though something inside him were calling it home.
The priest's calm expression finally broke. "Impossible," he whispered, backing away from the platform.
The blood reached Jameson's feet, and the ancient runes beneath him erupted with brilliant crimson light. A deep vibration spread through the mountain, and the stone beneath every vampire in the plaza began to tremble.
Another Council member stepped forward, his voice sharp with alarm. "Stop the ritual!"
The priests broke formation at once and their chanting collapsed into confused murmurs, but nothing they did made any difference. The altar no longer answered to them. The crimson light kept spreading across the carvings, faster now, hungrier, and Jameson's body suddenly arched hard against the chains holding him down.
A sharp pain exploded inside his chest, as if molten metal had been poured into every vein at once. He gritted his teeth until blood filled his mouth, but the pain only grew worse, climbing through his ribs and up into his skull until he could think of nothing else.
Then the streams of blood flowing from the other eleven offerings abandoned their own channels entirely. Like rivers changing course, they turned and rushed toward Jameson's platform instead, drawn to him the same way his own blood had been.
The gathered nobles gasped and rose from their seats. The Blood Guards tightened their grip on their silver spears, searching for a threat they couldn't name. No one on that mountain, not even the oldest among them, had ever witnessed anything like it.
The blood reached Jameson, and instead of spilling across the stone, it disappeared straight into his wounds. His body shook violently and his heartbeat thundered inside his ears, one beat and then another, each one louder than the last, until it no longer felt like his heartbeat alone.
The mountain answered him. A heartbeat echoed from somewhere far beneath the altar, slow and ancient and impossibly powerful, and the entire plaza fell silent around it. A second heartbeat followed, stronger than the first, and cracks began spreading across the surface of the ancient altar as dust drifted down from the towering pillars surrounding the ritual grounds.
The oldest members of the noble houses exchanged uneasy glances. Even Lord Magnus, a man who had never once shown fear in public, stared at the altar with wide eyes. "This cannot be happening," he said under his breath.
Lord Adrian stood perfectly still, but for the first time since arriving at the mountain, the confidence drained from his face. His eyes never once left Jameson.
The mountain shook again, and this time every pureblood vampire in the plaza felt it deep in their bones. A strange pressure settled over the ritual ground, pressing down from every direction at once. It didn't come from the sky, and it didn't come from the altar. It came from Jameson himself.
Several younger nobles staggered backward. One Blood Guard dropped to a knee without understanding why, and then another followed, and then another, until half the guards stationed around the plaza had folded under a weight none of them could explain. The High Council stood frozen, and they could all feel it in their own blood, an ancient trembling that had nothing to do with fear. It was instinct. Every drop of blood inside their bodies had recognized a presence that should never have existed again.
One of the oldest Council members took an unsteady step backward, his voice barely above a whisper. "The First Blood."
"No," another replied at once. "That bloodline was erased. It should be impossible."
But the pressure only intensified. More nobles fell to their knees, clutching their chests as though their own blood had turned against them, and even the Blood Guards struggled to keep their footing on the trembling stone.
Jameson heard none of it. His eyes stayed shut while his body burned from within, as if something ancient were forcing its way through every vein, every bone, every last fragment of his soul. When the pain finally became too much to hold inside, he screamed, and the sound of it tore across the mountain and echoed off every stone pillar surrounding the altar.
The chains binding him rattled violently and then snapped, one after another, the broken iron links crashing onto the stone. A wave of crimson energy erupted from his body and swept across the entire ritual ground, throwing the nearest Blood Guards backward and knocking priests off their feet. Several nobles stumbled into the stone seats behind them as the crimson symbols carved into the altar blazed brighter than the Blood Moon itself.
Then Jameson's heartbeat stopped, and everything went silent. The screams, the chanting, the wind, the mountain, even time itself seemed to hold its breath.
A single voice spoke inside his mind. It was calm, ancient, and carried a kind of power no living vampire could ever hope to possess.
"After all this time," it said, and a long silence followed before it finished. "My blood has finally returned."
