The Sterile White Corridors of Central Hospital hummed with a forced, quiet efficiency. Holik stopped before a door of frosted glass, his expression a closed file. "The office."
Daemon, leaning against the opposite wall with practiced indolence, pushed off with a shoulder. "Guide's duty. You're seeing me in."
"I have work."
Daemon's lips curved. He said nothing, just held the stare—a hunter waiting for the trap to spring.
"What is your objective?" Holik's voice was a scalpel of dry ice.
In answer, Daemon moved—fluid, inevitable—and locked onto his brother's wrist. "This."
He pushed the door open and pulled Holik through.
The office was a serene monument to modern power. Behind a desk like a frozen river of obsidian glass, Kate looked up. Auburn hair cascaded over one shoulder. Her gray eyes, usually scanners, softened with mild curiosity.
Daemon's mind blanked for a full, humiliating second. A contained stellar event. In a suit.
"Why didn't you warn me your boss is a localized celestial phenomenon?"he breathed, the words ghosting Holik's ear.
Why is this cunning jerk a brother of mine? Holik thought, shooting him a look of pure, distilled annoyance.
"Mr. Holik. And…" Kate's gaze settled on Daemon, a warm, professional smile gracing her features. "You handsome. Please, sit." She gestured to the premium leather chairs. "Your name?"
They sat. "Daemon," he said, his voice strangely tight.
"Mr. Holik, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I am acting as a guide for Mr. Daemon." Holik's reply was a clinically neutral statement of fact.
Mr. Daemon? The absolute little— Daemon's head swiveled, his face a masterpiece of betrayed confusion.
A flicker of amusement crossed Kate's face. Siblings. The calculus is universal. "Mr. Daemon, is Holik your brother?"
Daemon was lost, tracing the S-shaped waves of her hair. Spun copper and twilight…
"He is," Daemon confirmed, collecting the shattered pieces of his charm. "My younger, and tragically less charismatic, brother."
"A pleasure. How can I help the Raid Guild?"
"Right. Requisition. Three hundred low-grade, two hundred mid, one hundred high. Regenerative."
"I see. You require my assent for that volume."
Assent? Is that a corporate incantation?'yes'? Daemon's internal monologue spiraled into silent panic.
Fascinating. Is he… blushing? From semantic ambiguity? Holik observed, a spike of academic satisfaction piercing his annoyance.
"Yes," Holik interjected, a life raft of calm. "He requires your formal assent."
Daemon shot him a look of profound gratitude. I will remember this. This debt will be repaid.
"Of course." Kate's laugh was a soft, melodic sound. She scribbled on a slip of smart-paper, the ink glowing faintly. "The central dispensary. They'll expedite everything."
As they left, stepping into the long quiet, they passed Jane moving in the opposite direction. She carried a storm-cloud energy, tense and potent.
Daemon's eyes tracked her. Another one? A sharper, fiercer draft from the same divine bottle. But she seems Familiar.
"Ocular discipline," Holik muttered, voice a low, sharp blade. "First, she is Director Kate's sister. Second, she operates on a taxonomic level your brain cannot map."
"She looks…catastrophically expensive. They are both unawakened."
"Do you comprehend what it means to control the Central Hospital's resource lattice? Power is not always mana."
Daemon grumbled, their shoulders brushing past Jane's in the narrow hall.
Jane felt the ghost-presence again, a cold pressure between her shoulder blades. I know someone's there. I can feel it. Jane's hand tightened on her phone.
Alexis, woven into the interstitial silence of light and shadow, followed. As expected of a nascent Primordial. Your clairvoyance whispers. But my stealth is superior .
Jane entered Kate's office without knocking. The door hadn't fully sighed shut.
"Jane? What brings you—" Kate's head tilted, her senses flaring. "You didn't come alone."
"It's not my imagination," Jane said, voice wire-tight. "The feeling won't leave. I'm being studied."
The Primordial of Life and Creation. Her resonance is deeper, more foundational than Time's. A verdant, terrifying potential. Alexis assessed from her void, dampening all intent.
Jane's proud shoulders slumped a fraction. "Kate… the party. Your call. I've replayed it all night. I was awful. I'm… truly sorry." The apology was raw, scraped from a place of genuine regret.
Kate's breath caught. A single, traitorous tear escaped, tracing a hot path down her cheek. Jane… apologizing? To me of all people?
"Kate?Are you crying?"
"No,"Kate sniffed, wiping hastily. "Aggressive allergens. A new strain." She compartmentalized with visible force. Jane nodded, accepting the fragile lie. The atmosphere shifted, the unseen weight lifting slightly.
"After you called," Jane continued, her voice lower now, "I encountered someone. A vampire. He called himself Carde."
Kate's tears stopped. Her focus sharpened, the director re-emerging. "Go on."
"He had that same… deep coldness Irene has. Carde's body was about eight degrees Celsius. Irene feels colder, maybe between minus ten and zero. Same porcelain skin, but different features. Carde had bright red eyes and dark blonde hair. Irene's eyes are golden amber, her hair is black."
"A physiological similarity, but distinct phenotypes," Kate murmured, her mind analyzing. "You said he told you he was a vampire? You didn't assume?"
"He told me. And he confirmed the myths are a deliberate cover."
"Then the probability that Irene is also a vampire—potentially of a higher caste—is significant." Kate's gaze intensified. "How do you know this Irene?"
"I met her with Derrick."Jane watched the name hit Kate like a physical blow. "They shared an old familiarity. She even gave him a ride home."
With Derrick? A hot, possessive spike of jealousy lanced through Kate's chest, so violent it momentarily clouded her enhanced senses. Kate's knuckles whitened on the glass desk. The surface vibrated faintly. How close are they? What does she want with him?!
"Derrick was minimal. But the space between them held history," Jane added, twisting the knife without meaning to.
"I still feel that presence," Kate hissed, her senses screaming. Her gaze locked over Jane's shoulder. "It's right behi—"
Jane whirled.
Nothing.
Time to withdraw. Seems the emotional spike made her sense me. Alexis dissolved her presence, retreating into the hospital's humming energy grid.
"It's gone,"Kate said, tension draining into weary confusion. "I could have sworn…"
The restaurant's ambient chatter died to a murmur as Lily entered. All eyes—male and female—drifted to her. Her strawberry-blonde hair, kissed with gold and red, cascaded like a sunset down her back. Her hazel eyes, bright and warm, found Derrick at the counter.
Seven years. He's not just older. He's a monument. Carved from silence and event horizons.
"Hi, Derrick." Her voice was softer than memory.
He didn't turn."Hi."
The single, flat syllable was a blade. She absorbed its cut.
"I'm sorry. For what I did. For leaving. Seven years ago." The words were a fragile sacrament.
This time, he looked. His dark blue eyes, a frozen sea under a moonless sky, met her bright hazel ones. "Why?"
And so, she told him. A story not of whims, but of a dragon princess mother, a demon prince father, their tragic exile. A childhood in another world, a desperate return to a trap, framed for matricide, imprisoned as an abomination. She spoke of loss, betrayal, and a loneliness that mirrored his own
Derrick was pulled under:
Nine years ago. High school library dust motes dancing in slanted sun. Derrick, a shadow seeking quiet. Whispers followed him everywhere. A new girl—Lily—sun-kissed skin. "Is he popular?"
"Are you blind? He's the epicenter of everything. And his twin sister is the only rival. Well, until you showed up."
Lily's infatuation was instant, total, and painfully obvious.
In gym class, during rock climbing, her gaze remained locked on Derrick below. She missed her grip, falling three meters with a gasp—only to land unharmed, her eyes still seeking him.
Jane, climbing beneath her, saw it all. A spike of pure, rivalry jealousy shot through her.
The months unfolded. Lily's crush deepened into something real. A year later, they were friends. Then, more. Evenings spent in his room, her head eventually finding the pillow of his lap as she slept, his hand resting lightly in her hair. A bond forged in quiet understanding.
Then, the revelation in the moonlit school yard. The beautiful, scaled dragon, towering and majestic, caught in the act. Her shame was a palpable thing.
"Lily?" Derrick's voice, same as ever.
"It's me."She couldn't look at him.
He approached, his cold hand resting against her warm scales. "Don't be sorry for who you are."
Her giant head lowered.His palm met her snout. "You're still beautiful in this form."
The next day, she was gone. Vanished.
Then, emptiness. Her desk, vacant. Months of silent graduation. A loneliness not of heartbreak, but of unexplained absence.
The memory bled away.
Derrick collected his takeout bag, the crinkle of paper loud in the sudden quiet. He left without another word.
Lily watched him go, her heart a chamber of sorrow and fragile hope. I told him. The wound is still there. But perhaps… a single photon of thaw.
An F-rank dungeon portal flickered, a mundane anomaly in a city park. Derrick stepped through without breaking stride.
Scavenger Guild. Intel Room.
"Ma'am. The solo hunter Derrick has entered an F-rank dungeon. System just logged it."
Selene didn't smile. But her eyes, polished steel, sharpened to a lethal point. The pattern holds. He doesn't hunt for rank. He hunts for anomalies. She stood, her movement a silent command. "Prep my gear. I'm diving."
Central Hospital Lab.
Holik stared through the microscope's ocular lenses, watching cellular warfare on a nanoscale battlefield. Hypothesis confirmed. Standard awakening is a genetic lottery. This… is directed evolution.
His hand was steady as he lifted the pulsating S-rank mana crystal—a stolen piece of a star's heart—and dropped it into the crucible of bubbling, DNA-keyed solution. The reaction was instantaneous, violent, and beautiful. A light that spoke in gamma rays.
Side effects: unknown. Mortality rate: theoretical. Necessity: absolute.
He filled the syringes. Without ceremony, without hesitation, he injected them—carotid, femoral, heart. Agony, white-hot and profound, blazed through every axon. He barely scrubbed the crucible clean before stumbling out, the world already graying at the edges.
Outside, the sky was darkening. Not with clouds, but with an eerie, light-devouring void.
Hallucination. A known side effect of systemic neuro-inflammatory cascade. he told himself, staggering toward the oblivion of his apartment. He collapsed onto his bed, his body a sovereign state in the throes of a revolution he had authored.
Daemon, at the Raid Guild, looked up and felt a primal dread. Selene saw it as she reached the dungeon entrance—a shroud falling over the world. Irene, at her refinery, dropped a crystal and sprinted for her car, speeding toward Derrick's mansion. Jane slept fitfully as Kate watched the news, her face pale: "Global Darkening Event—Cause Unknown."
Derrick's Mansion.
Irene's car screeched to a halt at the gate. She felt it—the oppressive, world-bending weight in the atmosphere. She flung the front door open. "Derrick!"
Instead, she found Sariel in the living room, curled on a sofa with a quantum physics text, swathed in casual top and skirt.
They stared—the vampire refinery tycoon and the fallen archangel—in mutual, stunned silence.
The F-Rank Dungeon.
The dungeon was a tomb of silence. No screeches, no shuffles. Just the sound of his own footsteps.
A crossroad. Two paths vanished into gloom. Derrick chose the right.
Minutes behind, Selene, a ghost in light combat gear, reached the same fork. She chose the left, then doubled back, finding his trail. Her presence was a carefully curated nothing.
She found him halted before a massive, glowing rune etched into the cave wall. Its lines writhed like living, ancient things.
A dungeon rune. In an F-rank. This is an ontological error.
Derrick tilted his head, his eyes parsing the symbols. " The Integration is near. The Central shall it be," he murmured, the dead language flowing from him as naturally as breath.
Selene's blood crystallized in her veins. He read it? Without a dungeon rune decoder. Without a pause.
Derrick moved on, Selene ghosting him, until they breached a vast throne room. A Giant, thirty meters of mythic muscle, sat on a throne of stone, his axe a monument to slaughter.
"Hey, you! How did you enter this place?" the Giant's voice was the sound of continents grinding.
"How does one enter a house?"Derrick replied, tone flat.
He doesn't have a death wish—right?. Selene thought, pressing herself into the stone.
"You DARE!" The Giant, Viron, rose, the world trembling. "The Integration has already begun! Soon—"
The entire dungeon quaked, a deep, foundational shudder that spoke of realms colliding.
"It has begun," Viron finished, a grim smile on his colossal face. "Who are you?"
"Derrick. Why ask for a name you intend to erase?"
"I like your spirit. A shame I must crush it." Viron hefted his axe and moved with shocking speed, the blade a silver arc aimed to cleave Derrick in two.
The axe swung, a blur of absolute death. Derrick's hands came up—not to block, but to catch. The impact sent a shockwave of thunder through the chamber. Dust rained like centuries from the ceiling.
He caught that! Bare-handed! The kinetic force should have rendered him into paste. He didn't even slide back. Selene's mind rejected the data.
Derrick's eyes narrowed. Inefficient. This is why I required the S-rank weapon.
Viron roared, using earth magic to rip the ground from under Derrick and hurl him eighty meters upward, then let gravity reclaim him. Derrick landed in a crouch, unfazed.
Gravity magic. Finality. Viron unleashed his full power, a crushing field designed to turn diamonds to dust.
Derrick straightened.
A pure black aura erupted from him. It did not spread; it devoured. The light, the sound, the very pressure of the gravity field—all were consumed by the color of the void. He took a step forward. Then another. Walking through the impossible strain as if it were mist.
He looked at Viron. His gaze full of frostily
Viron's colossal eyes widened in primordial, soul-deep recognition. He dropped to one knee, the impact cracking the stone floor like an eggshell. "Oh, Great Primordial Being of the Oblivion."
Primordial… Being? Selene's breath vanished from her lungs.
"What is the Integration?" Derrick's voice was frost given sound and will.
"The fusion of realms.Other worlds… merging with this Central Earth. The doors are being shattered open."
Derrick gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. He turned to leave, his back to the kneeling giant.
He's just… leaving? After that? Selene's blood ran cold.
"Never turn your back on a foe!" Viron bellowed, betrayal flashing across his face. He swung his mighty axe in a final, desperate arc at Derrick's exposed back.
The axe connected.
And shattered into a million glittering fragments, as if striking the heart of a neutron star.
Derrick half-turned. Not a motion of his body, but a flick of his will. A wave of absolute, conceptual cold—not ice, but the cessation of all motion and energy—washed over Viron. The Giant froze, not in ice, but in stasis, then crystallized and fractured silently into a mound of grey, inert dust.
Derrick walked out.
Selene, hidden, felt a terror so deep it was akin to reverence. She vanished, her mission, her understanding of reality, utterly rewritten.
Outside, chaos reigned. The sky was a bruise on the face of the world. Portals, jagged and weeping unstable energy, flickered in the streets. Monsters from layered nightmares clashed with panicked hunters. It was not a riot; it was a preview of apocalypse.
Integration. Derrick observed, the cold fact settling in his bones.
Before him, the air tore. A portal of swirling, chaotic non-light bloomed, and from it stepped a young woman in a dress of liquid night. Her beauty was devastating, a paradox of perfect features and wild, untameable energy.
She did not speak. She crossed the distance, took his face in her cold, gentle hands, and kissed him. It was not a kiss of passion, but of profound, aching recognition, a lock finding its key after eons of separation. She pulled him into a desperate, world-anchoring embrace.
A tremor, ancient and deep, shook Derrick's core. What… is this? Why does she feel… like a part of me I forgot?
She pulled back, tears like molten silver tracing the perfect lines of her cheeks. "Void," she whispered, the word a universe of longing. "Don't you remember me? It's Chaos."