Kṣayakṛt Raktavetālya
The last Heir ofRaktavetālyas.
He grew tall, as all Vetālas did, but his body never carried the abundance of power his brothers bore. His frame was lean, sinewed rather than massive, built not for brute force but endurance. His skin retained the same pallor it had at birth, moonless and cold-toned, untouched by sun or night. His eyes—deep, dark red—never reflected hunger. Only calculation.
Kṣayakṛt learned early that survival was not an instinct. It was a craft.
He watched the witches work before they vanished. He memorized the way powders were weighed, the order in which fluids were poured, the patience required before heat ruined everything. When the last female body decomposed, when there was nothing left to sacrifice, he understood something none of the others wanted to name.
There would be no more miracles.
If they were to exist beneath the sun—if they were to endure even a fraction of the world that rejected them—it would not be through blood or prophecy.
It would be through him.
He became the potion maker not by title, but by inevitability. He experimented with ash, marrow, bone salts, fermented blood, remnants of old spells that had lost their language. Many mixtures failed. Some burned. Some killed. Each mistake thinned their numbers further.
The pure Vetālas aged as they were meant to. One by one, they withered, their immortality revealing itself as myth. Time reclaimed them without ceremony. No ritual could stop it. No potion could reverse what was natural.
But the hybrids endured.
Kṣayakṛt endured.
He and the others—born of Pisācha and Vetāla—did not decay. They did not age. They remained while the world around them emptied, until the tribe was no longer a tribe but a memory held by five bodies.
Kṣayakṛt never mourned aloud.
Emotion sat in him like sediment—heavy, settled, unmoving. He was not cruel by nature, but he was unflinching. If something needed to be done, he did it. If a truth was unbearable, he carried it anyway. The others sensed it in him—not magic, not mind-reading—but a terrifying attentiveness. He listened too closely. He noticed what people avoided saying. Silence spoke louder to him than confession ever could.
They called him the reason for their survival.
They also called him the reason for their fall.
And he accepted both without protest.
Under the sun, his potions allowed them to walk. Under the moon, they remembered what they were. And in the spaces between—where neither light fully ruled—Kṣayakṛt Raktavetālya continued his work, knowing that existence itself had become a debt he could never repay__
I turned the pages to read further but voice stopped me from behind
"You do not touch things as you please "
A voice came from behind rough and deep
I turned my head to look and....
The man stood between two shelves, unmoving, as though the space had been built around him rather than the other way around. He was tall—six-foot-something, unmistakably so—but not in a way that demanded attention. His height felt incidental, like a weapon kept sheathed because it was unnecessary.
What was unbearable was his face.
Not beautiful in a way that invited admiration—beautiful in a way that discouraged it. Too precise. Too composed. Features aligned with a cold symmetry that made looking feel intrusive, almost disrespectful. His presence pressed down on the aisle, narrowing it, dimming it.
His eyes were dark. Not red—not as the book had described—but deep, dense, catching the low light like old honey sealed beneath glass.
He did not look at the reader.
He looked at the book.
"That it was not forbidden," the man continued calmly, "does not make it permitted."
Silence followed.
The kind that demanded obedience, not response.
The man stepped forward once.
The sound of his shoes against the floor was soft, deliberate. Every movement suggested restraint—not caution, but choice. As though violence was something he could afford not to use.
With two fingers, he closed the book.
The pages obeyed immediately.
He stopped.
Not close—never close—but near enough that the air shifted.
For the first time, his gaze settled on Eline.
It was brief. Assessing. As though he were not looking at a person, but at a surface that carried residue.
"You went nowhere else," he said. It was not a question.
Eileen straightened at once.
"No, sir. I did not leave the library. I did only what I was assigned." His voice dropped instinctively. "I'm sorry if I—if I misunderstood any boundary."
Kallsen's eyes did not soften.
Instead, he stepped half a pace nearer.
Not enough to threaten. Enough to sense.
The pause stretched.
Then, calmly, "Do you not use perfume?"
Eline blinked. The question caught him wrong-footed.
"No, sir. I don't. I don't use anything like that." He hesitated, then added quickly, "Nothing artificial. Nothing organic either."
Kallsen's gaze sharpened by a fraction.
Eileen's chest tightened.
"Do I… smell?" he asked before he could stop himself.
The words came out wrong. Too fast. Too earnest.
"I will wash properly," he said at once. "I'll scrub thoroughly. I didn't realize—if there's any issue, I'll take care of it immediately."
Kallsen did not respond.
He was no longer looking at Eileen's face.
He was listening to something else entirely—something beneath skin, beneath breath. Something old.
Finally, he straightened.
"It is not decay," he said, almost to himself.
Then, to Eileen, "See that it does not happen again."
"Yes, sir," Eileen said immediately.
Kallsen turned away.
But as he walked past, close enough that the edge of his coat stirred the air, his voice followed—low, precise, unmistakably final.
"There are places in this house," he said, "that leave a mark even if you never enter them."
Then he was gone.