Chapter 3

Two hours.

A full two hours for the meteor shower to pass. By the time it was over, the Lower and Middle Wards of the territory had been completely wiped clean.

The Astromancy Tower had barely survived the ghoul onslaught, saved only by its extreme elevation and Silas viciously defending the ground-floor entrance with his life.

When the final falling star streaked across the night sky, a thoroughly satisfied Valerius wrapped his arm around Lilianna and guided her down the stairs from the tower's observation deck.

"The night is truly beautiful, isn't it, Lilianna?" Valerius's voice brimmed with a sickening blend of tenderness and arrogance. "Only a starry sky like this is worthy of you."

Lilianna leaned shyly against his chest. "Thank you, Valerius. Even though sister Nyx threw a bit of a tantrum, as long as you are with me, I'm not afraid of anything."

"Don't mention that spoilsport," Valerius scoffed coldly. "Tomorrow at dawn, I'll have her kneel in the plaza and apologize for her pathetic little outburst."

Drowning in their own fabricated romance, they remained completely oblivious to what the world beneath their feet had become.

Until they reached the grand hall at the base of the tower.

A thick, nauseating stench of blood hit them like a physical wall. Valerius's footsteps skidded to a halt, sheer bewilderment shattering his handsome features for the very first time.

The heavy, reinforced doors of the hall were battered and warped. The floor was a horrific mosaic of severed limbs and mangled organs. His elite guards had been slaughtered mercilessly; some were bitten clean in half at the waist, while others were missing their heads entirely.

"W-what is this...?" Lilianna let out a piercing shriek, covering her eyes as she began to tremble like a leaf in an icy wind.

"Silas! Where is Silas?!" True panic finally set in. Valerius roared, his voice trembling with sheer disbelief.

Amidst a pile of corpses, a mangled hand twitched. Silas agonizingly dragged himself out from under the carcasses of two ghouls. His left eye had been gouged blind, three deep gashes exposed the bone of his cheek, and his left arm hung at a grotesque, unnatural angle.

He looked up at the Prince descending the stairs. In his single remaining eye, his familiar blind reverence was completely gone. In its place was nothing but a bottomless void of sheer terror.

"Your Grace..." Silas spat out a mouthful of bloody phlegm, his voice rasping like a broken bellows. "The territory... is gone."

"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?!" Valerius lunged forward, grabbing Silas by his ruined collar. "The defense grid was only down for two hours! How could they possibly breach the outer walls?!"

"They didn't just breach the walls... there were so many of them, as if they were deliberately lured here..." Silas coughed violently, bloody tears streaming down his ruined face. "There's no one left alive in the Middle and Lower Wards. We... we're just meat in a slaughterhouse."

Valerius staggered backward, his face draining of all color. The territory he prided himself on, the very foundation of his rule, had been reduced to ashes in exactly two hours.

But Silas no longer gave a damn about the Prince's mental breakdown. Remembering something, he let out a sudden, animalistic wail. Shoving Valerius aside, he dragged his broken arm and sprinted frantically toward the stasis pods in the Inner Ward.

"Elara... my Elara!"

The stasis ward was a secure sector designated for frail or pregnant vampires to rest. Silas's fiancée, Elara, was in one of those pods, carrying their unborn child.

He smashed through the doors of the ward. The scene inside was infinitely more horrifying than the massacre at the tower's base. Rows upon rows of reinforced stasis pods had been violently shattered open. The floor was slick with blood and paved with shattered bone.

Trembling uncontrollably, Silas staggered to a pod at the very back of the room.

The hatch had been completely ripped off its hinges. Inside lay nothing but a sickening, still-wet puddle of dark red blood, and a shredded strip of fabric from Elara's nightgown.

Pushed into the corner of the blood-soaked pod, half-eaten... lay the tiny, fragile remnants of an unborn skeleton.

"AAAAAGH—!!!"

Silas's knees gave out. He crashed down into the pool of blood and shattered glass. Clutching the bloodstained scrap of fabric to his chest, he threw his head back and unleashed a raw, blood-curdling scream. It was the howl of a man whose very soul was being ripped limb from limb—a sound overflowing with bottomless remorse, despair, and pure agony.

Valerius, having chased after him, could only stand frozen in the doorway. Not far away, he spotted several mangled corpses—his own blood uncle, and several of the vampire elders who had faithfully backed his reign. Without exception, their faces had been chewed completely off.

Power, bloodlines, loyal subjects—in this single moment, all of it turned to dust.