“The ashes in the sarcophagus were mine.”
Bell’s head struck the bookshelf.
It wasn't a conscious retreat. His knees had simply buckled, his center of gravity shifting until his spine slammed against the hard edge of the solid wood shelf. It hurt. But his brain didn't have the spare capacity to process that signal.
The entire logical chain in his skull shattered.
The fragments scattered, then reassembled within a fraction of a second.
Leila was the one who died three thousand years ago. It was Leila’s ashes burning in the sarcophagus. All the ancestors at the funeral had witnessed the illusion of “Valentine’s death in battle.”
Then the person before him—
Bell’s fingers found the edge of the table. His ten fingers dug into the wood grain.
He stared at the face opposite him. Silver hair, red pupils, a posture so arrogant it was almost rigid. He had looked at this face for over ten days, from the blood source mana lessons in the side hall to the all-night deductions in the Library; every detail was etched into his mind.
But he hadn't known the person behind that face for even a single second.
“You are not Leila.”
The words were squeezed out from between his teeth. It wasn't a question.
The candlelight in the Library flickered.
The woman opposite him did not move. Her long silver hair obscured half of her face, the ends of the strands curling slightly in the candlelight.
The silence lasted a long time.
Long enough for Bell to start counting his own heartbeats. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.
When she spoke again, the quality of her voice had changed. The arrogance was gone, the rigidity was gone, and even that near-obsessive fervor for knowledge was gone.
All that remained was something that had been suppressed for too long, finally seeping out through the cracks.
Fatigue.
Pure, bone-deep fatigue.
“Valentine.”
She spoke the name.
“Leila’s sister.”
Bell leaned against the bookshelf, motionless. His brain was flipping. Not working—flipping.
The blood source mana lessons in the side hall. She had knelt on the ground, holding his wrists in both hands, deconstructing every detail of blood manipulation for him.
The all-night deductions in the Library. She had used a quill to transcribe the calculus formulas he spoke onto parchment, her handwriting so neat that every stroke’s curve was flawless.
The Desolate Realm in the Council Chamber. Gray ripples had spread from beneath her feet, withered trees and crows forming in the void.
The “Leila” in all those images had to be overturned.
Relabeled.
Valentine.
Bell released his grip on the table’s edge. The skin under his fingernails had been pressed into white marks.
“Keep talking.”
Valentine did not sit down. She leaned against the opposite bookshelf, arms crossed over her chest, her chin slightly lowered. Her long silver hair hung down from both sides, casting two pale arcs in the candlelight.
“Sister was the brain of the Blood Race.”
Her phrasing was short, with two or three seconds of silence between each sentence.
“Politics, diplomacy, magic array design, the power balance between the ancestors—she carried all of it alone. The Vampire Queen sat on the throne as a spiritual totem. Sister stood behind that totem as the true operator.”
Bell did not interrupt.
“Since I was a child, I was my sister’s fist.”
Valentine raised her right hand, turning it over to look at her palm. The candlelight cast fine shadows in the creases of her palm.
“I never lost a fight. But if you asked me to write a diplomatic missive, I could phrase it so poorly that three kingdoms would declare war simultaneously.”
The corner of her mouth moved. It wasn't a smile, but some residual muscle memory.
“The Queen, Sister, and I. A totem, a brain, and a blade. The golden age of the Blood Race was sustained like that for nearly a thousand years.”
Bell leaned against the shelf, his breathing slow and steady. His brain was digesting every byte of information.
One in the light and one in the dark, one civil and one martial.
The structure itself had no flaws.
The flaw was three thousand years ago.
“The War of the Rift,” Bell said. Three words were enough.
Valentine’s fingers retracted, digging into the crook of her opposite arm. Her entire posture tightened slightly.
“The day the Star Dragon King descended, the sky was red.”
Her voice was very low, each syllable ground out from deep in her throat.
“The three of us joined forces and didn't even last half an incense stick’s time. The Queen’s entire right arm was vaporized by dragon breath, and her divine soul shattered mostly on the spot. Seven of my ribs were broken, and my left lung was pierced by the shockwave.”
A pause.
“Sister stood in front of both of us.”
When she said this, Valentine’s vocal cords vibrated. It was very slight. So slight that if the Library hadn't been deathly quiet, Bell wouldn't have noticed.
“She burned her entire life source.”
Valentine’s fingers dug into the cover of an ancient text next to the shelf, her nails sinking into the leather.
“She tore open a spatial rift and pushed the Queen and me out.”
Bell saw Valentine’s Adam’s apple bob once.
“When I looked back—”
She stopped.
Her voice broke there.
Five full seconds of silence. The only sound in the Library was the occasional faint crackle of the candle wicks burning.
“There was nothing left within the range of the dragon breath.”
Valentine’s voice resumed. It was flat. Completely leveled out.
“Not even ashes remained. She didn't even have time to scream.”
Bell stood where he was. The edge of the bookshelf pressed against his spine, a dull ache.
He didn't speak.
Comfort wasn't needed in this situation, nor were further questions. She would finish it herself.
Valentine released her fingers from the book cover. As her nails pulled out, they took a small piece of leather scrap with them.
“After Sister died, the Queen’s remnant soul disappeared into the depths of the rift with half her body. I returned to Moon Phase City alone.”
She looked up.
“The ancestors all had their own agendas, and they couldn't stand each other. The only thing that could keep them in check was the name ‘Leila.’”
Bell followed the logic.
“So you faked your own death.”
“I refined my own blood and bone into ashes and put them in the sarcophagus. I announced to the world that ‘Valentine had died in battle.’”
Valentine’s hand moved to her long silver hair, pinching the ends.
“I cut off my original black hair. I wore a silver wig. I learned Sister’s way of speaking, her posture, the way she held her pen when reviewing documents.”
She released the ends of her hair.
“Three thousand years.”
Those three words fell from her mouth, so heavy they should have bounced when they hit the stone floor.
“A sister who only knew how to fight has spent three thousand years playing her sister.”
Bell’s brain completed the entire reconstruction at this moment.
The near-pious attitude she had when teaching blood source mana in the side hall. Her obsession with knowledge. Her rigid refusal to say more than a word in the Council Chamber.
It wasn't rigidity.
It was the fear that speaking too much would give her away.
She didn't have her sister’s political talent, so she split the Blood Race into a system of ten co-governing ancestors and retreated into the shadows to maintain the balance. The less she said, the fewer mistakes she made. Three thousand years of silence wasn't due to her personality; it was a survival strategy.
And her frantic pursuit of knowledge—the wild joy she felt when seeing Bell use physics to deconstruct the nature of magic—wasn't just intellectual hunger.
It was a sister without her sister’s brain using three thousand years of the slow way to fill a void that could never be filled.
Bell closed his eyes.
Zero point five seconds.
He opened them.
“The existence inside the inheritance stone pillar.”
Bell’s voice returned to its usual steadiness.
“The Vampire Queen’s remnant soul is stuck in the deepest layer of the inheritance, blocking the succession channel. You’ve known this all along.”
Valentine did not deny it.
“Then why did you want Lilian to be the Queen?”
Valentine looked up, her red pupils reflecting two points of light in the candlelight.
“Because the Queen cannot wake up.”
Her answer was dry, direct, and left no room for doubt.
“Three thousand years. Her divine soul is so damaged that only a final sliver of consciousness remains. She cannot wake up, she cannot rule, she cannot pass on the inheritance, and she cannot completely perish. She is stuck in the crack between life and death, unable to go in or come out.”
Bell followed this line of thought further.
“Lilian’s ‘Daywalker’ talent, the key to breaking the curse—you wanted to use her to replace the Queen and become the new totem.”
“But the prerequisite is stripping the Queen’s remnant soul from the inheritance stone pillar.”
Valentine nodded.
“So the inheritance didn't fail.” Bell’s voice dropped half a tone. “It’s that the old Queen is blocking it, and the new Queen can't get in.”
“Yes.”
The puzzle pieces fit together.
Bell was silent for a few seconds, then he looked up.
“The Suppression Mark on Ed’s wrist.”
Valentine’s body tensed instantly. From her shoulder blades to her spine, every muscle contracted at once.
“The mark requires blood source essence to be injected into the core meridians. It costs two hundred years of life each time. The only person who could do that—for three thousand years, it’s only been you.”
Bell stared at her.
“What is the truth behind Ed’s periodic loss of control?”
Valentine’s answer was three times faster than the previous question.
“I can’t say.”
Not “I don’t know.” But “I can’t say.”
“Ed’s matter is connected to a thread. If that thread is pulled, the things it brings with it... I can’t handle them.”
Bell read something in her muscular reaction.
It wasn't fear of an enemy. It was fear of the consequences. The tremor of someone who had carried a heavy burden for three thousand years, exposed when facing a specific truth that said, “I can’t hold this up anymore.”
Bell did not press further.
It wasn't that he was giving up. It was a judgment. If he pushed too hard at this point, she would completely seal off all information channels.
He leaned against the bookshelf and closed his eyes for a dozen seconds.
Too many fragments were flipping through his mind. The inheritance stone pillar. The funeral three thousand years ago. Leila’s true identity. The Wood Elves vanishing from world history. Cecilia’s Restart Plan.
Every fragment was falling in the same direction.
He opened his eyes.
“Who should I be helping right now?”
Valentine looked at him. Her red pupils were motionless.
The silence lasted a long time.
Then the corners of her mouth relaxed.
The curve was very faint. It wasn't a smile, but a deformation of the facial muscles naturally relaxing after letting go of some persistent hold. It carried the weight of three thousand years.
“It doesn't matter who you help, Bell.”
Her voice became very light.
“The situation is settled. No matter how smart you are, you can’t change—”
The ceiling shook violently.
Dust trickled down from the stone cracks, falling onto Bell’s shoulders, onto Valentine’s long silver hair, and onto the open Blood Race Chronicles.
Bell looked up.
Fine cracks appeared on the dome of the Library. It wasn't physical shattering. It was space itself twisting.
He rushed to the window.
Between the twin purple moons above Moon Phase City, a pale rift was tearing open. The edges of the rift were uneven, with jagged fringes extending slowly to both sides.
There was no starlight inside the rift.
Only an aura surged out from the gap. Withered, rotten, carrying the scent of fermented and decomposed plant fibers.
The moment Bell’s nostrils were filled with this aura, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
The first black shadow fell from the rift.
Then a second. A third. A tenth.
Countless withered wooden figures poured down from the pale rift. Their bodies were dark brown, their skin cracked and peeling, with a texture close to tree bark that had been air-dried for centuries. Their eye sockets were two hollow black pits, with black fluid slowly flowing inside. Their limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, knees bending outward, fingers having two more joints than a normal person.
They landed on the rooftops of Moon Phase City. In the plazas. In the streets.
The moment they landed, they began attacking every living thing in sight.
Screams and the sound of metal clashing came from all over the city.
Bell stared fixedly at those withered wooden figures.
In a tenth of a second, his brain completed the comparison.
Skeletal structure. Limb proportions. Number of joints. The curve of the facial contours.
Elven skeletons.
But not the physique of any of the seven existing branches.
Wood Elves.
The race that had been erased from the history of this world, which existed in no one’s memory, the race that only he still remembered.
Their corpses—no, they weren't corpses. They were withered husks driven by some power. No soul fluctuations, no mana reactions, only a mechanical, aimless instinct to attack.
Cecilia.
Bell turned to rush for the Library door.
A hand landed on the back of his neck.
The palm struck precisely on the blood vessels and nodes on either side of his cervical spine.
A sharp surge of blood source mana poured in from the contact point, traveling up his spine and reaching his brainstem within zero point three seconds.
His vision began to blur.
His knees lost their support.
The floor was tilting.
Before he collapsed, a voice came in. It was far away. Like it was separated by a layer of water.
“If you die, everything is gone.”
His back hit the stone floor. It was cold. That was the last sensory signal.
Then, darkness.
Valentine supported the back of Bell’s head with one hand, laying him flat on the floor by the desk. Her movements were steady. From the exertion to the landing, his head didn't hit any hard objects.
She straightened up.
A strand of the silver wig had come loose during the tremors. A small section of black real hair was exposed at her temple.
She didn't bother with it.
She pushed open the Library door.
In the corridor outside, the auras of ancestors were moving at high speed. Grant had already rushed out of the palace. Elizabeth’s threads were spreading over the city. From afar came Altan’s muffled roar and the thunderous sound of the ground shattering.
The pale rift overhead had doubled in size again.
The rain of withered wood fell from the sky, with no sign of stopping. Screams came simultaneously from the city’s east district, south district, and market district.
Valentine raised her right hand.
The gray ripples of the Desolate Realm spread out from her feet. The oil lamps in the corridor went out. The reliefs on the walls began to weather and peel. The air was filled with the smell of earth and rust.
“It’s been three thousand years.”
Her voice was very low. So low that only the cracking stone tiles beneath her feet could hear it.
Where the silver wig was loose, that section of black real hair flashed in the gray light of the ripples.
“It’s my turn.”
She stepped over the threshold of the Library.
Outside the window at the end of the corridor, the fingers of the first withered wooden figure were already gripping the windowsill of the Night Rose Palace. Black fluid dripped from its hollow eye sockets, burning a smoking black spot onto the white marble surface.
Valentine raised her right foot and stepped down.
The sound of the withered wooden figure’s skull shattering under her boot rang out at the same time as the third wave of screams from outside the city.
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