The forest had become quiet.
Too quiet.
Kael's vision blurred as he limped between twisted trees, his stomach hollow and cramping. He hadn't eaten in over two days. His lips were cracked. His throat scratched with each breath. When he pressed a hand to his ribs, he felt bone.
He was going to die.
Not in battle. Not remembered.
Just another nameless corpse buried by dirt and leaves.
---
That night, as the fog curled like smoke, he saw them.
Rabbits.
Small, black-furred, moving just beyond the mist. Their eyes glowed faintly red, like dying coals. Most would have run from the unnatural gleam.
Kael saw hope.
He dropped to his knees and carved a crude trap using thorny vines and a bent branch. His hands trembled, his body weak. But the hunger made him sharp. Desperate.
Within an hour, he caught the first one.
It thrashed and screamed not like a rabbit, but like something trying to speak through broken vocal cords.
Kael didn't care.
He broke its neck and skinned it with a sharpened rock. There was no firewood, so he ate it raw, gagging, eyes tearing up from the taste.
The meat was cold, sour, pulsing faintly beneath his fingers. It squirmed down his throat like it was still alive.
But it filled him.
Sort of.
---
He killed another the next day. Then two more.
His body began to recover. But not normally.
His strength returned too quickly. He could see farther now, hear things beyond human range the buzzing of flies across a corpse twenty meters away, the heartbeat of a rabbit hiding under roots.
His wounds stopped bleeding within minutes.
He no longer felt the cold, even when it rained.
At night, he no longer needed the moonlight to see.
And he began dreaming differently.
---
/> A woman with horns, weeping blood, whispering his name.
A throne made of ribs beneath a black sun.
The Nameless Hero, turning slowly to face him but Kael could not see his eyes.
Only his mouth, grinning with sharp, perfect fangs.
---
By the seventh day, Kael's skin had paled. His pupils narrowed in daylight. He no longer felt human.
And he didn't care.
---
He crouched low on a rock, watching a rabbit nibble on a glowing root. Its flesh looked translucent, almost fungal. The air shimmered around it. Kael's stomach clenched not with hunger.
But with instinct.
He leapt.
Faster than he should have. His legs carried him like springs. His arms moved on their own, grabbing, ripping, biting.
Blood sprayed across his face.
Sweet.
Too sweet.
He dropped the body, gasping. His hands shook. His lips burned.
He'd bitten into it. Without even thinking.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. But the taste remained.
And it felt right.
---
That night, he found a pond.
Circular. Still. Hidden between high stone ridges. Trees bent around it like they were bowing.
Kael stared into the reflection.
His face blinked back eyes dark and rimmed red. Hair wild. Skin too pale.
He didn't recognize it anymore.
Then he felt the pain.
It began in his spine, like fire.
Then his ribs cracked. His heart skipped a beat then began to pound like a war drum. His throat constricted. His hands bent backward, fingers stretching unnaturally.
He staggered toward the water.
Each step was a crawl.
Then he collapsed, face-first into the pond.
---
The world vanished.
---
End of Chapter 4
---
/>Lore Fragment – "Bloodlines of the Forsaken," banned manuscript recovered from the ruins of Velharan
"The first vampires were not born they were made. Not by bite or pact, but by curse. Exposure to corrupted mana miasma infected the body. But it was the will to live, the defiance of death, that opened the gate. Only those who refused to die, even as their soul cracked, could awaken the blood of the PROGENITOR!."