Chapter 3

My body, with no magic flowing through it at all, shook violently under that pressure. My organs trembled, and the taste of blood surged up my throat.

"What a pack of useless trash. You can't even deal with a rat that snuck in?"

Claude descended the steps one at a time, draped in the dark gold robe that should have belonged to the head of House Ventrue.

In his right hand, he held a massive dark-red greatsword, its hilt carved with nine weeping bats.

I would recognize that aura even in death—the Sword of the Progenitor.

A thousand years ago, I personally crushed the Abyss and forged that supreme blade of royal authority with nine hundred ninety-nine drops of my true origin blood, a labor that took a full century to complete.

Before I went into slumber, I had deliberately left it behind to protect House Ventrue.

And now Claude, the usurper who had stolen my lands, stood on my castle floors and held my sword in his hand as he stopped before me in arrogant triumph.

"You filthy mongrel with a death wish." Claude drove the Sword of the Progenitor into the floor with a heavy thud and looked down at me like I was less than dirt. "How dare you make trouble in my domain?"

I clenched my teeth and swallowed down the blood rising in my throat, saying nothing.

Seeing that my head was lowered and I had no power left to resist, Claude slowly raised the sacred sword in his hand and aimed its tip straight at my brow.

"Since you care so deeply for that Ventrue remnant in the cage, then as Lord of Saint Laurent, I now pass judgment with this sacred sword, symbol of the Progenitor's authority—"

"You lowborn bastard, and that little beast in the cage, will die together!"

Claude's left hand lashed out, and with one brutal swing he drove the blade hard across my shoulder and chest.

In that instant, my vision went black around the edges, and a piercing ring filled my ears.

Then I heard the sickening crack of my own bones breaking.

Claude tapped my cheek with the blood-slick flat of the blade. "That's what happens when you challenge me."

I lay in a pool of blood and forced my head up.

Then, suddenly, a hoarse laugh escaped me.

"That all you've got?"

The cruel smile at Claude's lips froze. His eyes darkened at once. "What did you say?"

"I said you're not worthy of that sword." I was breathing hard, but my voice still carried naked scorn. "You may have stolen the throne. You may be holding the Sword of the Progenitor, the blade that once made all races bow. But even so, you can't bring out even one ten-thousandth of its true power."

That single sentence landed exactly where it hurt most, on the rawest, most shameful wound in the usurper's heart.

He had seized power, but he would never earn the true acknowledgment of the Progenitor's holy relic.

The smugness vanished from Claude's face. In its place came pure, twisted rage—the kind born from having his deepest weakness dragged into the light.

"You're dead—!!!"

With a distorted, furious roar, Claude gripped the Sword of the Progenitor in both hands. A blinding crimson blade-light wrapped in destructive force crashed down toward my head.

The high-ranking vampires around us stared wide-eyed in excitement, waiting to see my head split from my body.

The agony I expected never came.

Instead, hot blood splattered across my face like rain.

My eyes flew open, and my pupils contracted.

The silver-haired boy inside the holy silver cage had somehow found strength from nowhere. At all costs, he had detonated his weak blood core.

He tore the holy silver chain from his neck by force and threw himself in front of me like a shield.

The Sword of the Progenitor punched straight through his thin chest and nailed him to the ground.

"You..." My hands shook as I caught his collapsing body.

Blood kept spilling from his mouth as he spoke in broken fragments. "Ventrue... cannot... end..."

His breath was so faint it was already close to vanishing.

Claude sneered from the side and lifted his boot, about to grind it into the boy's face. "If he was in such a hurry to die, then I'm happy to oblige!"

"Touch him and see what happens." I fixed Claude with a cold stare.

I bit through my fingertip and forced out a single drop of incomparably precious Progenitor true blood.

The moment it appeared, the air in the castle seemed to freeze.

Every vampire there instinctively felt a shudder rise from the deepest part of their soul, but their shallow understanding kept them from recognizing what it was.

I fed that drop of true blood into the boy's mouth.

Wrapped in dark golden light, the fatal wound through his chest stopped worsening, and his life was forcibly anchored in place.

At that exact second, the evening bell at the top of the castle rang out twelve times.

Midnight had arrived.