“One!”
The Vampire Ancestor's countdown came to an end, and his brow furrowed.
From the very beginning, everything had been veering off course.
Why did the Witch flee? Why didn't the Hero give chase?
Who on earth was this white-haired, low-tier vampire fledgling? How had she blocked the attack of his massive vampire array?
A sudden sense of crisis welled up in his heart.
Having lived for so many years, he trusted his instincts implicitly.
No matter.
He would just have to kill the Hero first.
As for the Witch...
The people of Solitude would just have to suffer a bit more; the Green Mist King could bear the infamy.
He extended his arms, aiming them at the silver-white barrier Kaila had raised.
The Hero's sunlight and the moonlight of the Moon's Cage overlapped and intertwined, cradling the crying, trembling humans in the ruins who no longer knew who to pray to.
The golden chains tightened further around Kaila's shoulders, back, wrists, and ankles. With every call for the Hero rising from behind her, her power continued to swell.
Her physical instincts writhed restlessly.
Slay the Witch.
Slay the Witch.
Slay the Witch.
Kaila took a deep breath, tuning out the noise.
Her time was running out.
For every inch the chains tightened, the part of her that was “Kaila” diminished. Perhaps today, perhaps at this very moment, after her next breath, what stood here would be an unsheathed sword that could no longer recognize its friends.
Therefore, she should act now.
While there was still time, while she could still distinguish friend from foe, she should unleash her power upon the Witch and fulfill what everyone expected of her—that was the right path. That was the smart choice.
But.
Because Sophie had said: For me.
Just that one sentence. When everyone else was screaming “Hero,” only one person didn't. That person had simply turned around, eyes red, and said those words to her.
And so, Kaila stood there.
Without attacking, without pursuing, she channeled all her strength into a single shield, protecting the people behind her who couldn't even call her by name.
The blood-red ring slowly rotated in the heavens, its three ancient arrays resembling three open eyes overlooking the entirety of Silvervein City.
The Seventh Generation Vampire Dukes hovered at the highest level, the Eighth Generation Vampire Dukes anchored the core of the array, the Ninth and Tenth Generation Vampires maintained the blood-mist foundation, and the lower-generation vampires drove the civilians forward, forcing cries of terror and pleas for help to constantly feed the massive array.
The projection of the Green Mist King flickered in the bloody light.
Back in the Royal Capital, the mana of the royal court mages was still being drained. The backlash left behind by the burned-out Wish spell bit into their gaunt fingers and eye sockets.
Some gritted their teeth to the point of shattering them, while others watched strands of their white hair fall onto the obsidian floor, yet none dared to stop.
Everything had been pushed to the absolute limit.
The Vampire Ancestor aimed both hands at Kaila in the center of the barrier.
Unlike the previous annihilation mode designed to eradicate the Witch, this strike would be in penetration mode.
With this strike, let alone the people or the barrier here...
Half of Solitude would vanish because of it.
A dark-gold disc materialized in his palms.
The blackish-red light at the center of the disc condensed into a single point.
If it fell...
If only this strike fell.
The vampires would once again rid themselves of the nuisance of a Hero, just as they had done to the previous one.
It was truly a delightful tragedy.
Yet, his hands did not fall.
It was not because he hesitated.
It was because, at this very moment, the entire world looked in another direction.
The white-haired girl removed her mask.
Her presence became incredibly pronounced. With the activation of Stealth (Reversed)'s +50% presence effect, Sophie, who was already standing in a prominent and open area, became even more eye-catching.
The human skin mask, thin as a cicada's wing, slipped from her fingertips. Caught by the bloody wind, it drifted gently onto the scorched earth.
The face previously concealed by the mask was now exposed under the everlasting night and bloody light. She spun on the spot, allowing everyone to see her clearly.
Her long, silver-white hair fanned out in the howling wind, and her crimson eyes looked up. There was no light in her pupils, only mockery.
Beauty.
So beautiful, so dazzling.
It was as if an invisible hand had forcefully gripped everyone's chins, forcing them to turn their heads.
The fingers of the court mages maintaining the spell trembled.
In the grand hall of the Royal Capital, the chief mage, who was supposed to continue chanting the ancient vows, found his tongue caught on an old syllable.
Because he saw the white-haired girl.
He did not know who she was.
Yet, he could not tear his eyes away.
In the ruins of Silvervein City, mothers holding their children forgot to cry. Injured fathers forgot their pain.
The citizens who had just been cheering for the Hero stood with their mouths agape.
A deity.
Only a deity of beauty could possess such a presence; she was a sacred, inviolable creation.
The humans' fear was supposed to flow toward the Hero, the Witch, and death, eventually channeled by the vampires as fuel for the massive array.
But now, that stream of fear was cut off.
Every human stared blankly at Sophie.
She was too beautiful.
Beautiful to an absurd degree.
So beautiful that even death itself seemed like an irrelevant matter that had to wait in line.
If they could only hear her speak a single word or see her smile at them, dying here would be worth it.
A child blankly reached out, wanting to touch that white figure who seemed both as distant as the horizon and as close as their own hand.
His mother instinctively wanted to pull his hand back, but her own hand froze in midair, unable to move.
Not far away, a blacksmith with a broken leg went completely still.
His dry mouth hung open, and he forgot to scream from the pain. The two men supporting him also stopped in their tracks, all three pairs of eyes turning in unison toward the same direction.
A beggar who had been curled up in the corner waiting for death slowly stood up. He had never stood so straight in his entire life.
In another corner, a little girl who had cried herself hoarse stopped mid-sob and fell quiet.
Her eyes widened, tears still clinging to her face, but the terror in her gaze had vanished.
The crowds driven by the vampires, huddled together like cattle, no longer jostled or cried out.
There was a dead silence.
Thousands of people, along with their fear, wounds, and dying breaths, all turned their gaze toward the white-haired girl at the exact same moment.
The Green Mist King's expression changed instantly.
“Do not look at her!” he roared, biting the tip of his tongue.
But the command came too late.
Deep within the obsidian grand hall, the royal court mages formed a massive magic ring.
It had been less than fifteen minutes since the ritual began.
To these mages, this quarter of an hour felt longer than any battle they had ever fought.
The backlash of the Wish spell was truly agonizing.
Yet they dared not stop.
The Green Mist King had issued an absolute order.
Until the god-slaying array fell, the supply of mana could not cease for even a single second. So they kept their heads lowered and their eyes shut, pouring their entire souls into that sequence of ancient syllables.
They did not think of the cost, the pain, or where this mana was flowing and who it would bury.
Suspended in the center of the hall was a shifting projection of the magic array. Through its shimmering film, they could faintly see Silvervein City, thousands of miles away. It was through this power that the Green Mist King projected himself there.
The mages did not look too closely; doing so would only disrupt their rhythm.
They simply chanted and chanted, blindly outputting their mana.
Until that face appeared in the projection.
No one could say who looked up first.
Perhaps a mage had been halfway through a chant when their peripheral vision caught the shimmering film; perhaps that sheer beauty itself had traversed thousands of miles to forcefully pull their gazes. In any case, almost at the exact same moment, the chanting echoing across the magic ring faltered in unison.
The chief mage's tongue caught.
He had chanted these ancient vows for decades; he couldn't get them wrong even with his eyes closed. Yet at this moment, he was stuck on a familiar syllable, unable to proceed.
Because he saw the white-haired girl.
Across the shimmering film, across thousands of miles, across the distortion of the entire projection array.
For the first time, his old eyes, which had seen countless royal treasures and spells, could not look away.
“Continue...” He wanted to say “continue chanting,” but when the words reached his lips, even his own voice failed him.
The mage to his left stopped.
The mage to his right stopped as well.
The chanting scattered across the magic ring died down piece by piece.
Some stood with open mouths, but only air came from their throats; others had their fingers hovering over spell nodes, unable to bring them down.
The youngest mage's eyes slowly reddened, tears dripping one by one onto his open palm, completely unnoticed by him.
The mana they supplied to the array was supposed to be a calm, stable, and seamless torrent.
Now, that torrent was in chaos.
The projection array flickered violently, its shimmering film spiderwebbed with fine cracks. The mana rushing from the Royal Capital to Silvervein City became erratic and intermittent.
“What are you doing?!”
The chamberlain overseeing the hall barked, “His Majesty's orders: the mana supply must not cease! Reconnect it all!”
He urged them twice, then turned his gaze in confusion toward where the mages were looking.
The next moment, he too went silent.
At that moment, the entire hall of dozens of mages seemed to have lost their souls, staring up at the distant, silver-haired white figure within the shimmering film.
An old mage muttered, his voice trembling uncontrollably:
“What... is that...”
No one answered him.
Because in that very same projection, everyone saw her in a different form.
Some saw the girl they had passed by in their youth; some saw the ultimate answer to beauty that they had spent their entire lives pursuing but could never reach; others couldn't describe what they saw, only feeling a heavy blow to their chest, making even breathing feel redundant.
And all of this, across thousands of miles, looked back at them through the projection spell.
In the grand hall, the mana descended into utter chaos.
Thousands of miles away, the god-slaying array, fueled by human vows and fear, let out its first groan of strain.
The fuel of human fear within the array rippled uncontrollably, like a water surface disturbed by a finger.
The Vampire Ancestor's brow finally furrowed deep.
“Charm?”
No, that wasn't right.
A vampire's Charm twisted the victim's will toward desire, shaping the prey into a form that would willingly walk into their fangs.
But this white-haired girl's charisma was not a trap.
She was simply beautiful.
Yet she was beautiful to such an extreme that any rising desire would instantly dissipate out of sheer self-loathing.
This girl was sacred.
She was like a mirror; the moment anyone looked at her, they saw their own varied emotions reflected back.
The greedy saw possession, the lustful saw desire, the envious saw hatred, the arrogant saw defeat, and the cowardly saw the untouchable. The lonely saw old friends, believers saw miracles, sinners saw judgment, lovers of beauty saw their own inadequacy, and those who loved her saw only her.
She did not command anyone.
She did not lure anyone.
She simply stood there.
And so, everyone gazing upon her saw themselves in her at that very moment.
“A deity...” “Lady Goddess...” “So beautiful...” “Envy...” “Jealousy...” “Is she really human...?”
The fear was dispelled.
Only when the Green King roared at the mages behind him did the court mages snap back to reality, reconstructing their magic circuits one by one.
Sensing his array trembling and the human mana supply cut off, the Vampire Ancestor cursed the useless humans in his mind.
Fortunately, physical beauty held little sway over vampires.
“A mere Twelfth Generation... All vampires, prepare...” The Ancestor looked toward a Duke at the core of the array, about to speak.
But his voice stopped abruptly.
Among vampires, hierarchy was absolute.
It was an order etched into the very marrow of their ancient blood.
The elder generation dominated the younger.
The strong dominated the weak.
The old blood dominated the new.
And Sophie was of the Twelfth Generation.
By all rights, she should have been at the very bottom of this lineage—a low-tier vampire to be dominated, consumed, and sacrificed at will.
However.
【Bloodline Majesty (Reversed) Lv. Max: You can trigger bloodline suppression against vampires of a higher tier than you. Current suppression effect: After performing a Perception check, there is a probability of forcing the target to submit.】
In the night sky of Silvervein City, the first sound of knees crashing into the rubble echoed.
Thud.
An Eleventh Generation Vampire knelt.
He didn't know why he was kneeling.
He only knew—he had to kneel.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The vampires riding atop blood-wolves to drive the civilians fell to the ground in droves. Blood whips slipped from their hands, and the blood-wolves, losing their commands, spun in confusion.
The Tenth Generation Vampires' hands maintaining the foundation began to tremble, and the dark-red sigils on the chests of the Ninth Generation shifted by an inch.
The Seventh Generation Vampire Dukes did not kneel, but their hovering height plummeted, as if the entire sky had grown heavy and pressed down on their shoulders.
The Vampire Ancestor had lived for far too long—so long that he believed he had seen every form of order.
Yet, he could not comprehend the scene before him.
In the era of his birth, the Third Generation Ancestors still walked the earth. He had watched with his own eyes how this lineage multiplied, branched, and settled over generations, carving the rule of “elder generation dominates the younger” into the very first heartbeat of every newborn vampire.
This order had never failed.
It was more stable than any throne and older than any faith—the only thing he could trust blindly through his long life.
A firstborn could betray his father, and a subject could murder his king.
But a Twelfth Generation could never make a Seventh Generation Vampire Duke bow.
It was not a matter of willingness.
Water does not flow backward, and fire does not burn downward.
Yet, he could not comprehend the scene before him.
The white-haired girl's bloodline tier was laughingly low, and her physical aura was so thin she seemed ready to dissipate at any moment. According to every law etched into his bones, she should have dissolved into blood mist with a mere flick of his finger.
Yet, his descendants were kneeling to her.
Their blood was commanding them.
Submit to her.
She was lower than them—and therefore, she was higher.
The lower the tier, the higher the status.
“...Get up, all of you.” For the first time, a crack appeared in the Ancestor's voice.
No one stood.
“Stand up!”
He no longer held back. His Fifth Generation, emperor-tier bloodline manifested as a dark-red mountain, slamming ruthlessly down upon the array of his descendants. Blood-red veins ruptured across the kneeling vampires, their bones groaning under the unbearable weight, and several began bleeding from their eyes and noses on the spot—
—yet they pressed their foreheads even deeper into the ground.
The Ancestor froze.
He had used all his strength, only to press them deeper toward her.
Sophie took a step forward.
Beneath her feet was a vampire who had just knelt.
The vampire instinctively reached out, wanting to crawl away, but froze under the Perception check of Bloodline Majesty. Ultimately, he lowered his back even further, forming a step for her.
Sophie raised her foot and stepped onto his back.
Crack.
One of the vampire's ribs snapped, but he tensed his back even straighter.
A second crawled over. Then a third.
Low-tier vampires, rampaging blood servants, half-decayed magical wolves, and low-tier puppets stitched together by blood mist all gathered and piled beneath her feet. They were no longer a mass of foul flesh struggling to maintain their dignity.
They were a staircase.
A staircase that felt honored to serve.
Sophie walked up just like that. One step, then another. Backs became stairs, blood-wolves lowered their heads to form shadows at the edges of her pedestal, and crimson wings tore through her clothing to unfurl behind her.
With every step she took, the flesh beneath her feet packed tighter.
Not a single back flinched. They vied to lay themselves flatter and steadier, terrified she might misstep, terrified they were unworthy of being a step beneath her feet.
A bloody wind swirled around her, lifting her loose silver hair. The bloody light of the everlasting night rose from below, illuminating this staircase of vampire bodies in a brilliant crimson.
The humans in the ruins looked up, watching the white figure ascend inch by inch.
They were speechless.
For they were witnessing something they had never seen in their lives, something that had never occurred in the history of this land.
The ruins, the blood mist, the cries, the Hero's light, the Moon's Cage, the projection of the Green Mist King, the burned-away lifespans of the court mages, and the god-slaying array that should have wiped out half of Solitude.
All of it lay beneath her feet.
She reached the highest step, stopped, and turned around.
The blood-red ring still rotated in the heavens, its three ancient eyes looking down upon Silvervein City.
Yet even so, they still had to look up at Sophie.
The Vampire Ancestor raised his head blankly. For the first time in his life, he had to look up to see a Twelfth Generation Vampire.
In his palm, the dark-gold disc capable of piercing half a nation still glowed as its black-and-red light condensed at the center.
If it fell...
If only this strike fell.
The Vampire Ancestor shifted his arm, aiming the strike originally meant for the Hero at Sophie.
Sophie did not look at him, as if the impending, earth-shattering strike were nothing more than a passing breeze.
Standing atop the highest step, she advanced no further.
Sophie reached out her hand.
【Shadowstep (Reversed) Lv. Max: You can instantly move any shadow within your field of vision beneath your feet. This skill has no fixed cooldown; each consecutive use reduces the mana cost of the next Shadowstep, with the cost gradually resetting after exiting consecutive casting state.】
With a gentle flick of her finger.
The shadow of a low-tier vampire vanished.
Without sound, without light, and without any sign of a spell activating, the shadow stretched across the scorched earth by the bloody light detached itself from its master in silence, sliding beneath Sophie's feet to blend obediently into her own shadow.
The vampire looked down in confusion—his feet were bare of shadow, illuminated brightly.
The moment he lost his shadow, he whimpered briefly in confusion, as if a piece of his soul had been ripped away.
But Sophie did not stop.
A second shadow. A third.
Every shadow stretched across the ruins by the everlasting night and bloody light began to peel silently away from its host, flowing toward her.
What is a shadow?
A shadow is not a physical object.
It has no weight, no temperature; it cannot be touched or grasped.
It is merely a place where light cannot reach, left behind when light collides with something that refuses to move out of the way.
Thus, a shadow is an absence.
It is the absence of light, a silent echo cast upon the world by the object that blocks it.
Where there is an object, there is a shadow; move the object, and the shadow moves; destroy the object, and the shadow vanishes. For thousands of years, everyone took it for granted: a shadow is subordinate, secondary—an insignificant tail dragged behind its host.
No one would ever fight over a shadow.
Because a shadow is nothing.
Yet, precisely because it is nothing, it is everywhere.
For every beam of light that illuminates an inch of earth, darkness must fall upon another. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. As vast as the reach of light may be, the domain of shadow runs just as deep.
And so, a question arises.
Whose shadow is the largest in this world?
It does not belong to a tower, a mountain, or a city.
It belongs to the planet itself.
When the planet turns around, placing its massive body between the star and the void, it blocks the light. On the side facing away from the light, it casts the oldest and largest shadow, enveloping half the world and reaching deep into the heavens.
Humanity gave this shadow a name.
They called it—
The night.
Night is the planet's own shadow.
It is the silent, lightless place left behind every time the planet turns its back.
Vampires revere it as their mother, believers fear it as a god, and all things sleep, breed, and die under its shroud. None had ever questioned its origin, and even fewer had ever considered—
That a shadow could be taken away.
Sophie pulled her fingertips back one final time.
The entire sky shuddered violently.
Dark clouds still pressed against the heavens, and the blood-red ring still spun. Yet, the bone-deep darkness that had shrouded this land for days vanished without warning.
In the ruins, someone raised a hand to shield their eyes, only to freeze.
There was no blinding light. The darkness had simply disappeared.
Just like that, the sky became bright.
The night that had been stripped away did not dissipate.
It wound slowly along Sophie's back, shoulders, and wrists, spreading and draping down to weave a robe flowing with starlight. Crimson wings unfurled from beneath, the night serving as her garments and the everlasting night as her hem. The darkness of the entire city was draped over her alone.
People looked up at the same sky, gazing at the white figure who wore the darkness of the entire city upon her shoulders.
The night had not vanished.
It had simply found a new master.
“You don't seem to understand.”
Sophie finally spoke.
She slowly lowered her head, her crimson eyes locking with the Vampire Ancestor's.
There was no light in her eyes, no anger, and very little emotion. There was only a pitying, nonchalant certainty.
Like a true master looking at a guest who had stumbled into her home, only to mistake it for an abandoned ruin.
Behind her, the robe woven from the night billowed gently in the windless sky.
“The ruler of the night is me.”
Rate on N.U.
