Her hands pressed against the floor. Her knees bent. Her thigh muscles strained. A crisp sound came from her bones as they ground together. She began to climb back up.
But her body only rose half a foot.
The figures of Cecilia and the red-robed old man had already vanished into the entrance of the passage leading to the inheritance chamber deep within the hall.
Lilian’s fingernails dug into the gaps in the marble steps, all ten fingers straining. The sharp pain of her nail beds being pried back burned from her nerve endings all the way to her brainstem.
She did not give chase.
It wasn't that she didn't want to. She simply couldn't.
Her left leg had completely lost sensation from overdrawing her mana, and every time her right leg bent, a grinding sound echoed from the inside of her knee. The skin on her thigh, burned by the Mithril dagger, was still seeping serum, soaking a small patch of her skirt.
Lilian collapsed back onto the steps. The back of her head struck the base of the throne with a dull thud.
The Crown of Thorns lay three steps away, its cold metal reflecting the residual light in the hall.
She stared at that crown for a long time.
Then she raised her hand and wiped away the line of blood seeping from her nose.
...
The stone doors of the inheritance chamber were pushed open from the inside.
It wasn't physical force. There was no sound of hinges turning. The stone doors slid sideways to both sides, and the sealing runes embedded in the door seams extinguished one by one.
Cecilia walked in front.
The green patterns beneath her skin cast shifting spots of light onto the ancient murals lining the stairs. The murals depicted key moments in the Blood Race Chronicles—the awakening of the First Ancestor, the descent of the curse, the establishment of the thousand-year empire, and finally, the decisive battle against the Star Dragon King.
As the green light swept over the mural of the final battle, the paint at the edges of the winged dragon’s silhouette began to flake away minutely.
The red-robed old man followed behind.
With every strike of the Bloodline Aria's base against the stone steps, the inheritance stone pillar pulsed in response. Dark red light flowed across the pillar’s surface at an accelerated rate, more than three times faster than when Lilian held the scepter.
An ancient resonance. The scepter was responding to its true master.
The two had not yet reached the altar.
“You took your time.”
A voice came from the shadows beside the stone pillar.
Cecilia’s footsteps faltered for a beat. Green light flickered at her fingertips before returning to a steady glow.
Valentine leaned against the base of the inheritance stone pillar, her arms crossed over her chest.
She had completely removed her silver wig.
Revealing ear-length short black hair. Without that layer of disguise, her facial features were sharper than “Leila’s”—the arch of her brow was deeper, her jawline harder, and her entire aura had shifted from classical haughtiness to a more direct, bladed coldness.
Her red pupils glinted coldly under the reflection of the dark red light.
She wasn't here by accident.
The inheritance chamber had only one entrance. All structural information was engraved in the inscriptions at the base of the stone pillar. To reach this position ahead of time, one had to pass through the backup passage beneath the palace foundations that only an ancestor would know.
She had arrived before they even set out from the main hall.
The red-robed old man’s footsteps stopped.
A very deep breath came from beneath the hood. The sound didn't seem to come from vocal cords; it was more like the friction of a rusted iron chain being dragged from the depths.
Silence lasted for five seconds.
“…Valentine.”
Hoarse. Parched. There was the noise of breaking air between the syllables.
Valentine did not move.
She stared into the shadows beneath the hood. A muscle at the corner of her eye twitched.
“I’ve been looking for you for three thousand years.”
Her voice was extremely flat. So flat that all peaks and valleys had been ground away, leaving only a straight line.
“Ed lost control every few decades. I suspected it the first time I carved a Suppression Mark on his wrist.”
She pulled her hand from her arm, her fingers spreading as she pointed at the old man.
“That wasn't a defect in his own bloodline. It was external blood source mana infiltrating through his meridians. The frequency matched the pulse of the inheritance stone pillar perfectly.”
The dark red light in the chamber cast a long, thin shadow from her fingertips.
“You were using him as a vessel. Or rather—you’ve been using his bloodline to maintain the existence of your remnant soul.”
Cecilia took a step forward. Green light danced at her fingertips.
She tilted her head and glanced at Valentine, the corner of her mouth pulling into a curve so faint it was almost non-existent.
“Bell told you, didn't he? To wait here.”
It wasn't a question.
Valentine did not deny it.
The conversation in the Library before Bell knocked her out—about the abnormalities of the inheritance stone pillar, about Leila’s identity, about the truth of the funeral three thousand years ago—all deductions pointed to the same end point.
The old king was not dead. He would come to reclaim what was his. The inheritance stone pillar was the only entrance.
She just had to hold this place.
Valentine stared at the red-robed old man.
“Why didn't you come back?”
The words were squeezed out from between her teeth. The sharp edges of every word ground against her tongue.
“I played the role of the older sister for three thousand years.”
Her vocal cords began to grow unsteady.
“Dyeing my hair silver. Learning her stance. Learning the angle she held her pen when reviewing documents. Learning her poise in the Council Chamber, silencing ten ancestors with a single sentence.”
Her back left the base of the stone pillar, her spine tightening into a straight line.
“Do you know how scared I was? Before every word I spoke, I had to run it through my head three times, checking if the phrasing was right, if the tone was right, if Leila would say it that way. Three thousand years. I didn't dare relax for a single day. Because if I said one wrong word, used one wrong tone—”
Her vocal cords vibrated. It was brief.
“You’re fucking alive.”
The dark red light in the chamber skipped a beat at that moment.
“Why didn't you come find me? Why didn't you tell me anything?”
The old man did not answer.
He reached out his left hand. His withered knuckles slowly gripped the edge of his hood. His fingers tightened.
The hood slid back.
The residual dark red light in the chamber illuminated that face.
Valentine’s breath hitched.
It couldn't be called a face.
The entire right side—from the frontal bone to the jaw—had completely melted and then resolidified. Waxy scars were layered and piled, and the contours of his features were so blurred that only the general position of an eye socket could be identified. The eyeball was a cloudy grayish-white, its surface covered in a dried-up film.
The left side retained some of the original bone structure. But every muscle fiber appeared as a dark red distortion after being repeatedly scorched by high heat. The bridge of his nose had half-collapsed. A piece of his lip was missing, revealing charred gums and carbonized tooth roots when he spoke.
The Star Dragon King’s Dragon Fire.
It had not healed in three thousand years.
With the regeneration abilities of an ancestor, even severed limbs could grow back. But the scars on this face were like a brand seared into the cell nuclei by a power that transcended the physical plane; every time a layer healed, it was burned through again.
Eternal burning.
“Dracula.”
Valentine spoke the name.
The tail end of the last syllable broke. It shattered in two, dissipating into the cold air of the chamber.
Dracula.
The previous Vampire King. The spiritual totem exterminated by the Star Dragon King. The ashes in the sarcophagus. The “deceased” witnessed by all the ancestors.
Now, he stood before the inheritance stone pillar with half his face destroyed, holding the scepter that belonged to him.
Cecilia leaned against the stone wall of the chamber.
Green light flowed slowly across her arms. She held her arms, watching this reunion that spanned three thousand years with the air of an observer.
There was a very faint curve at the corner of her mouth. It wasn't mockery. It was closer to something like empathy.
Someone who had lived through hundreds of loops had seen too much.
Dracula’s single eye looked at Valentine. There was no focus in the grayish-white iris, but the direction of his gaze did not shift.
His hoarse voice echoed in the chamber.
“Valentine and Leila.”
A pause for two seconds.
“They look exactly the same.”
There was no aggression. No sentimentality.
Just a remnant body that had lived for three thousand years, looking at his sister’s face in the dim light and stating a fact.
Valentine’s shoulders slumped two inches.
The support for her entire upper body was drained away in the same instant.
“Exactly the same”—the footnote to three thousand years of masquerade. The reason she could deceive all the ancestors, deceive Grant, deceive Elizabeth, and deceive Ed, was because she and her sister originally had the same face.
Twins.
She could replicate everything about Leila. Except for the brain.
It took Valentine five seconds to prop her spine back up.
“What are you here for?”
It was no longer a demand.
It was the final question of someone who had carried a burden for far, far too long and was so exhausted they only wanted to hear an answer.
Dracula was silent for three seconds.
Then he reached out his left hand and gripped the tie of his red robe’s collar. His knuckles bent. The tie was undone.
The front of the red robe slid open to both sides.
His withered chest and abdomen were exposed to the dark red light. The contours of his ribs were clearly visible; his skin clung to the bone, with almost no fat or muscle in between.
Valentine’s gaze fell on Dracula’s abdomen.
Her red pupils constricted to the size of pinpricks within a tenth of a second.
On Dracula’s abdomen—three inches above the navel—an irregular protrusion rose from the skin’s surface.
The contour of the protrusion was not a tumor. It was not a scar.
It was a face.
A complete human face with clear features, embedded in the flesh.
Its eyes were closed. Its lips were slightly parted, and a very faint airflow was moving in and out.
Every detail of the face—the arch of the brow, the height of the bridge of the nose, the line of the jaw—
Was identical to the face before Valentine that had just removed its silver wig.
Leila.
Valentine suddenly doubled over.
Her left hand braced against the edge of the stone pillar’s base, her nails digging into the stone cracks. Her right hand covered her mouth, her fingers digging into the flesh of her cheeks.
Sour bile and blood foam overflowed from between her fingers, splashing onto the stone floor of the inheritance chamber.
Her stomach constricted. Her diaphragm went into spasms. Her breathing was cut into fragments.
That face moved slightly beneath the skin of Dracula’s abdomen.
The lips quivered a bit more.
As if calling a name in a dream.
Valentine’s legs were shaking. From her thighs to her calves to her ankles, every muscle was trembling at a different frequency.
She crouched down. It wasn't an intentional crouch. Her knees had simply given out.
Dracula looked down at the face on his abdomen.
His withered palm gently covered it. His fingers spread, his pads tracing the edge of the protruding contour. His movements were extremely careful, as if he were afraid of breaking an old object that had been kept for three thousand years.
“Leila is not dead.”
The hoarse voice ground out from deep within his throat.
“She burned her entire life essence. But I intercepted the last wisp of her consciousness before the spatial rift closed.”
His fingers brushed very lightly over the forehead of that face.
“I sealed her remaining soul fragments inside my own body. Using my bones as a vessel, my flesh as a shield.”
The focus of his single eye remained fixed on the face on his abdomen.
“Three thousand years. The Dragon Fire has never stopped. It doesn't just burn my flesh. It burns her too. Every second. My body is the only thing between her and the Dragon Fire.”
The chamber was so quiet that one could hear the hum of the light flowing inside the inheritance stone pillar.
Valentine crouched on the floor.
Her right hand still covered her mouth. The blood foam between her fingers had already dried.
Her gaze was nailed to the face on Dracula’s abdomen.
That face that was exactly like hers.
Her sister’s face.
It had been three thousand years.
She thought her sister had been reduced to ash. That not even a remnant soul remained.
She had burned her own bone and blood to make fake ashes, held a funeral, put on a silver wig, and became “Leila” from then on.
And her sister had been here all along.
In the belly of a man she thought had been dead for three thousand years.
Alive.
Valentine’s hand moved away from her mouth. Her knuckles were stained with blood and stomach acid.
“You…”
Her vocal cords could barely make a sound. Air squeezed out of her throat, grinding against the parched mucous membranes.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
The second time she asked this question. But this time, the weight was completely different.
Dracula’s single eye finally moved from his abdomen to look at Valentine.
“Tell you what?”
There was no sharpness of a counter-question in his hoarse voice. Only an extremely weary statement.
“Tell you I was alive? And then? You would have dropped all your disguises to come find me. The ancestors would have discovered you weren't Leila. The power structure of the Blood Race would have collapsed overnight.”
He pulled the front of his red robe back together, covering the face on his abdomen.
“You played the part well. More steady than she was herself. For three thousand years, not a single ancestor suspected.”
Valentine’s teeth bit into the inside of her lower lip. The taste of blood spread at the back of her tongue.
“When the White Tower Society found me, I only had half a remnant body and a wisp of obsession left.”
Dracula’s fingers slid slowly over the surface of the scepter. His nails dug into the grooves of the rose patterns.
“They gave me a way to repair the soul fragments. The condition was to work for them.”
He paused for a beat.
“Fourth Councilor. This identity was the bargaining chip exchanged for Leila’s life.”
Cecilia changed her leaning position against the stone wall. Her arms went from crossed to hanging down, her fingers unconsciously plucking at the folds of her skirt.
Valentine slowly stood up.
Her knees gave two crisp cracks. Her thigh muscles were still shaking, but her back was held straight.
“So you’ve come here today—”
Dracula raised his cloudy single eye.
In the grayish-white iris, something was slowly turning in the deepest depths.
“I am going to resurrect Leila.”
Six words.
No hesitation, no preamble, no unnecessary embellishment.
“The blood source essence of the past Vampire Kings is sealed within the inheritance stone pillar. This essence is enough to reshape a complete soul vessel. I need to open the deepest layer of the inheritance and transfer Leila’s fragments from within me.”
His palm covered the protrusion on his abdomen once more.
“To reunite you sisters.”
When those last four words came out, there was an extremely faint tremor in his hoarse voice. It wasn't a plea. It was the physiological reaction of someone who had used a three-thousand-year-old shell as a stake, produced by his vocal cords when stating the true purpose behind the gamble.
Valentine stood three steps away.
Short black hair. Red pupils. Without the silver wig to hide it, the similarity between her and the face embedded beneath the skin of Dracula’s abdomen was cruelly clear.
“Is something wrong?”
Dracula asked.
Valentine’s lips parted. Then closed.
the muscles in her face were doing something very difficult—they were trying to express too many things at once, and in the end, none of them could take shape.
Deep in the chamber, the pulse of the inheritance stone pillar quickened again.
The dark red light accelerated its movement between the ancient inscriptions on the pillar’s surface, as if something inside the pillar had been awakened by the resonance of the scepter and was struggling to wake from its slumber.
Cecilia turned her head and glanced at the stone pillar.
The green light turned half a circle in her irises.
“Time is running out.”
All the casualness of an observer had been stripped from her voice.
“The withered husk tide will last for another half-hour at most. The other ancestors will be rushing back once they finish clearing the outside.”
She pushed off the stone wall and took two steps toward the altar.
“Do it.”
Valentine’s right foot slid back half a step.
A combat stance.
The gray folds of the Desolate Realm began to spread outward from beneath her feet. The patterns on the stone brick surface aged rapidly where the folds rolled over them, the filler in the joints turning to powder and falling away.
“I won’t let you touch the inheritance stone pillar.”
Valentine stared at Dracula.
“You make it sound very nice. Resurrecting my sister. Reuniting us. But you have the White Tower Society standing behind you. What is the price of the repair method the White Tower gave you? Opening the deepest layer of the inheritance requires releasing all the blood source essence of the past kings—that is the foundation of the entire Blood Race for three thousand years. You’re going to hollow it out.”
Dracula did not deny it.
Valentine’s fist clenched. The bones of her knuckles protruded from beneath her skin.
“So your 'resurrection' comes at the cost of burying the entire Blood Race with her.”
Dracula’s single eye looked at her.
On the half of his face that was destroyed, the corner of his mouth on the intact side moved. It wasn't a smile.
“Do you think Leila’s life or the foundation of the Blood Race is more important?”
The temperature in the chamber was dropping.
The gray folds of the Desolate Realm had already expanded to a five-meter radius around Valentine.
The green patterns on Cecilia’s arms suddenly brightened.
Dracula’s fingers tightened around the scepter. The rose patterns on the shaft began to grow hot in the dark red light.
Three people. Three powers. In the heart of the inheritance chamber, the contours of a confrontation were taking shape.
Valentine’s Desolate Realm pushed forward an inch. The stone bricks beneath her feet cracked into fragments.
At that moment, the lips of the face on Dracula’s abdomen soundlessly quivered.
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