Three thousand years ago. Dark Age, Blood Moon Calendar, Year 1247. Moon Phase City.
The Noble Academy of old Moon Phase City.
Early morning. The first rays of purple moonlight sliced down through the skylight in the dome. Tiny dust particles floated in the air.
The light fell upon a row of parchment scrolls spread across a long table.
Leila sat at the head of the table. She was fourteen.
Her long silver hair was loosely pinned back with a bone hairpin. Her back was held perfectly straight.
The scroll before her was covered in dense annotations.
Tax distribution ratios for the twelve lord families. Ownership of transit rights for three cross-border trade routes. Priority rankings for imported glowstone ore from the southern veins.
Her quill glided across the parchment. Ink seeped evenly into the fibers with a soft rustle.
Her handwriting was neat, and the placement of her punctuation was flawless. Every suggestion struck at the heart of the matter, balancing the interests of all parties involved.
The instructor stood behind her, watching for the time it took to finish half a cup of tea. His breathing was very light.
He didn't change a single word.
At the other end of the long table, Valentine was also sitting.
She was also fourteen.
Her short black hair was a messy thicket. She hadn't combed it after waking up that morning.
She rested her chin on one hand. The quill in her other hand had been snapped in half.
Only three lines were written on the scroll before her.
The first line: "Trade" was misspelled as "Traid."
The second line: A tax calculation was off by two decimal places.
The third line: She had drawn a bat.
The bat's wing textures were clear, and the proportions of its skeleton were precise. Even the curve of the fangs, unique to the Blood Race, was sketched vividly. Next to it was a smudge of ink that had accidentally dripped.
The instructor walked over to her and stopped for five seconds.
He reached out, picked up the scroll, rolled it up, and set it back on the table.
“Miss Valentine, your father gave instructions. If you fail your lessons again today, dessert is canceled for dinner.”
Valentine's eyes widened. She pushed her chair back, the wooden legs making a piercing scraping sound against the floor tiles.
“Dessert?! No!”
...
After the Noble Academy dismissed for the day.
The courtyard.
Valentine lay prone on a stone bench, her face buried in her arms. The stone bench had absorbed the purple moonlight and felt a bit cool.
Leila stood beside her.
In her hands were two portions of raspberry milk jelly, wrapped in silk handkerchiefs. She had snuck them out of the family kitchen.
She placed one of them on top of Valentine’s head.
The weight of the handkerchief pressed against the black hair.
Valentine spoke with a muffled voice.
“Sister, did you get scolded for me again?”
Leila didn't answer the question.
She sat down and pushed her own portion of the dessert onto the stone table in front of Valentine.
“You must be stronger than me in at least one way.”
Valentine peeked out with one eye from the gap between her arms.
Her red iris was clouded with a layer of mist.
“Which way? I’m no good at memorizing. No good at math. No good at writing. No good at diplomacy. I even need you to help me get my dessert.”
“The bat you drew is very beautiful.”
Leila’s statement contained no hint of mockery.
Serious. Rigid. Completely earnest.
Valentine remained lying there, unmoving.
But the line of her lips curved upward slightly.
She reached out and took both portions of the dessert.
...
Seventeen years old.
The coming-of-age martial trial for noble families.
Traditional rules: every noble descendant was required, on a night of the full moon, to undergo a practical combat assessment against a magic beast captured from the Abyssal Rift.
Leila’s assessment ended extremely quickly.
Three layers of blood nets expanded from her palms, weaving into a dense cage that trapped the beast’s limbs and torso.
The beast struggled frantically within the net. The blood net tightened further, cutting into its flesh.
Blood source mana condensed into blades, precisely severing the beast’s seven main meridians.
One minute and seventeen seconds.
The elders on the review panel nodded one after another, whispering among themselves.
Clean. Efficient. Not a single unnecessary drop of blood was spilled on the ground.
It was Valentine’s turn.
The assessment venue changed.
The opponent was a mutant three times larger than a standard magic beast. Its bone plates were exposed, and corrosive slime dripped from its fangs. The slime hit the ground, burning with white smoke.
Her luck in the draw was abysmal. The instructor frowned, his hand resting on his sword hilt, ready to terminate the assessment at any moment.
Valentine stood in the center of the arena.
Barefoot.
She had stepped into a mud pit while entering, so she had simply taken off her shoes.
The mutant lunged at her, bringing a foul wind. A massive shadow loomed over Valentine.
She didn't use any blood source magic.
She raised her left hand, bracing herself to catch the beast’s right front claw with raw strength.
Her finger bones cracked from the impact, making a crisp sound.
But her right fist had already smashed through the beast’s skull.
Four seconds.
The sound of shattering bone echoed above the arena. The beast’s massive body collapsed with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Dead silence.
Leila sat beside the review panel, her recording pen frozen in mid-air.
The line of her lips tightened.
It wasn't surprise. It was verification.
She had long known exactly what that one way her sister was stronger than her was.
...
In the decades that followed.
The life trajectories of the two sisters began to diverge, yet they remained forever intertwined.
Leila entered the administrative center of the High Council.
Over fifteen years, she revised the Blood Race’s tax laws, opened trade routes with three human kingdoms, and negotiated the return of glowstone mining rights in the southern veins from three rival lords.
With just a single sentence at the council table, she suppressed three lords who were plotting rebellion.
Her name appeared in the signature block of every resolution document.
Valentine took a different path.
The border. The rift. The abyss.
She went on expeditions with the palace patrol, fighting from ordinary magic beasts all the way to S rank disaster entities.
She tore through the carapaces of disaster entities with brute force and crushed their cores.
Every time she returned to the city, her armor was stained with dried black blood and covered in cracks left by weapon strikes.
Leila would be waiting for her at the city gate.
The wind would blow Leila’s long silver hair.
She wouldn't speak. She would just hand over a clean towel and a dessert.
...
A century later.
Dracula rose to power.
A young vampire with a pure bloodline. During the seventh-layer suppression campaign of the Abyssal Rift, he demonstrated a potential for power that surpassed all First Ancestor candidates.
Leila was the first to see the value of his totem.
Three years of maneuvering behind the scenes.
She re-knit the twelve lord families, who had been divided for centuries, back into a single unit.
She established Dracula as the King of the Blood Race.
The day of the coronation.
The hall was brightly lit. A red carpet stretched from the throne all the way to the main entrance.
Leila was titled the First Ancestor.
She stood to the right of the throne.
The wording of the coronation edict she drafted was magnificent, transcribed countless times by later generations of the Blood Race. The lords below bowed their heads; none dared to look directly at her presence.
Valentine stood in the very last row of the hall, leaning against a cold stone pillar.
She watched her radiant sister on the stage. She watched Dracula, the man her sister had personally helped onto the throne.
The crowd was cheering.
The light fell on Leila’s long silver hair, reflecting flecks of crushed gold.
Valentine’s fingernails dug into the flesh of her palms.
She did not applaud.
...
The years after the coronation.
The Blood Race entered a golden age.
Leila’s policies expanded the race’s territory threefold.
The trio’s combination was known in later history books as the "Three Pillars of Moon Phase."
But Valentine’s position in this structure was forever that of the lowest-level executor.
Every time she returned from an expedition...
The record of merits would say, "Ancestor Leila’s strategic deployment."
The enemies Valentine had hacked to pieces became "the inevitable result of Leila’s planning."
No one remembered who it was in the seventh layer of the rift that had crushed the core of an S rank disaster entity with her fists.
They only remembered that Leila had predicted the disaster entity’s movement path three months in advance.
Valentine never complained.
She would simply return to her room and close the door.
She would walk to the vanity, look at her own face in the mirror—identical to Leila’s—and then reach out to flip the mirror over.
She would slam it face-down on the table with a dull thud.
She didn't envy her sister.
At least, that was what Valentine told herself.
The word envy was too ugly. It didn't belong between her and Leila.
She loved her sister. That was the truth.
Her sister loved her too. Every time she returned injured, her sister would be waiting at the city gate. The desserts never stopped.
But there was something deeper than envy. Something darker.
It didn't burn on the surface, nor did it leave a trace in any recognizable place.
It was hidden in the deepest part of her bones.
Only in certain moments.
Like when she saw the pride in her father’s eyes when he looked at her sister.
Like when, at the Ancestor Council, everyone waited for Leila to speak, and not a single person spared a glance in her direction.
That thing would stir.
A sleeping beast, turning over, then going back to sleep.
...
The War of the Rift.
The sky that day was red.
The Star Dragon King descended.
Dragon wings unfurled, covering half the Firmament. A luster of destruction flowed over its scales.
The first wave of dragon breath fell. Within a ten-mile radius, the ground melted into a lake of lava. The high temperature distorted the air. The lava boiled and bubbled.
Dracula’s right arm was vaporized, the stump charred black. His divine soul cracked on the spot.
Seven of Valentine’s ribs were broken. Her left lung was pierced by the shockwave.
She knelt on the ground. Blood flowed from her lips, staining her collarbone.
Leila stood in front of both of them.
Her long silver hair turned golden-red under the light of the Dragon Fire.
She looked back at Valentine.
That single glance contained a massive amount of information.
Reluctance. Entrustment. A silent plea: "Sustain the Blood Race for me."
Then Leila burned her entire life source.
A spatial rift was torn open.
Leila’s hands embedded themselves into the edges of the rift, her knuckles twisting from the force. Her mana was overdrawn to the limit. She used her own body as a fulcrum.
She pushed Dracula and Valentine out.
The dragon breath pursued them from behind.
The moment Valentine was pushed through the rift, she saw her sister’s back.
The long silver hair curled, carbonized, and dissipated in the Dragon Fire.
She reached out.
Her fingertips were less than a foot away from Leila’s back.
She could have stopped it.
With her speed. With her reaction time. With all the remaining strength she had at that moment.
The moment Leila turned around, she could have cut in from the side and blocked the vanguard of that dragon breath for her sister.
She hesitated.
Zero point three seconds.
Perhaps even shorter. So short that her own consciousness hadn't even clearly captured the thought.
But the beast in the deepest part of her bones...
In those zero point three seconds, it woke up.
...
The spatial rift closed.
Leila was gone.
Nothing was left. Not even ash.
Valentine knelt on the scorched earth after the rift had closed.
Dracula lay half-dead beside her.
The sky faded from red back to purple.
The twin purple moons hung indifferently overhead, illuminating the charred ruins within a ten-mile radius.
Valentine’s hands were braced against the scorched earth.
Her ten fingers sank in.
Warm ash squeezed through the gaps between her fingers.
She bowed her head, her shoulders shaking violently.
And then she smiled.
That smile emerged from deep within her abdomen.
It didn't pass through the control of her vocal cords. It didn't ask permission from her facial expressions.
It was a sound her body made on its own.
The dried blood scabs at the corners of her mouth tore open. Fresh blood flowed down her chin, mixing with the mud and ash, dripping onto the scorched earth.
“Finally—”
Her vocal cords were vibrating. Not with the vibration of crying, but with laughter.
“Finally dead.”
“Finally, everyone can look at me.”
After those words were spoken...
Her laughter stopped.
She froze where she was.
It felt as if cement had been poured into her spine.
She heard what she had said.
She heard herself laughing.
The beast in the depths of her bones hadn't just turned over.
It had stood up.
In her most defenseless moment, it had shown its true face to her.
She saw clearly what that zero point three seconds of hesitation really was.
Valentine knelt on the scorched earth and covered her face with her hands.
Not because of grief.
But because of fear. Fear of herself.
The liquid seeping through her fingers... she couldn't tell if it was blood or tears.
Beside her, the dying Dracula let out a muffled noise, calling Leila’s name.
Valentine’s fingers slowly moved away from her face.
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