Chapter 372: A Fight Among the Gods III
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The blood he had swallowed in the orc cave, the ancient blood forced into him in that first terrible Chapter of his life, had not only awakened power. It had carried something with it. A remnant. A final imprint. The last living memory left inside the Blood God’s blood before everything went dark.
That was what he had seen. It was not a story. It was not a prophecy. It was a memory of his past life.
It was the final memory the blood of blood god itself still carried.
Lucard’s last sight before his mind and soul were pulled away.
Sekhmet’s hand tightened once, unconsciously, around Lily.
He had known from the start that the blood inside him was not ordinary god blood. He had known it was dangerous. It was hungry. It was ancient. He had known the system, the awakening, the bloodline, and everything after Chapter one had come from swallowing something no mortal or half-god should have survived.
But this was different. This was proof. Proof that the blood still remembered its original owner.
Proof that Lucard had truly existed.
Proof that the Blood God had not died cleanly, gloriously, or loyally surrounded by his race.
He had died betrayed.
Eaten by his own blood creations like a fallen beast torn apart before the body had even cooled.
That thought sat inside Sekhmet with an ugliness he could not immediately shake.
For a long moment he did nothing. He simply lay there, staring into the room while the memory settled deeper into him, it was no longer as vision, but as knowledge.
Lily stirred first. She was not fully awake.
Just enough to feel that something inside him had changed.
Her head lifted slightly from his chest. Sleep still blurred the edges of her expression, but concern came through clearly enough when she looked at his face.
"What happened?"
Her voice was rough with sleep, soft enough that another person might not have heard it across the bed.
"I saw the full vision." He replied.
She answered, "The vision from earlier?"
Sekhmet looked down at her.
"Yes."
She studied him for a second. "Was it bad?"
That question should have been simple. It was not. Bad was too small a word for what he had seen. It was too soft. Too mortal.
So he answered honestly. "It was his last memory."
Lily’s eyes sharpened despite the sleep still in them.
She asked, "Who’s memory?"
Sekhmet replied, "The Blood God’s."
That settled her fully awake.
She pushed herself up a little more, one hand resting lightly against his chest as if checking that he was truly there and not still halfway lost in whatever old darkness had reached for him through the blood.
Sekhmet continued before she could ask more.
"The blood I swallowed in the beginning carried it." His gaze shifted briefly toward the window, toward the paling sky, then back to her. "What I saw was not random. It was the last thing the blood still remembered."
Lily was quiet for a few breaths.
Then she asked, more softly than before, "Do you want to tell me."
He considered that. Parts of it, yes. All of it, no. Not yet.
Not because he wished to hide it from her. Because some memories came out jagged if spoken too early, and this one had teeth.
So he gave her the shape of it.
"He fought gods," Sekhmet said. "Too many at once. I don’t even know their ranks. But they should be at least twenty times stronger than true gods. Maybe, the gods who were born from nothing. The first ones (Walker). He nearly killed them all." His mouth hardened slightly. "Then he died before he could finish the last one."
Lily held his gaze. "And that is not the part still in your face."
No. Of course not.
He almost smiled at that, but did not.
"The part still in my face," he said quietly, "is how it ended."
She waited. No pushing. No panic. No childish need to fill silence with noise.
"He was betrayed," Sekhmet said. "By his own blood race. By the ones he created."
Lily’s expression changed at once. It was shocking and somewhat colder.
Understanding too.
Because betrayal by enemies was one thing. Betrayal by those made from your own blood was uglier. Closer. More personal.
Sekhmet’s voice lowered.
"They came to eat him while he was still dying."
Lily said nothing.
Neither did he.
The room went quiet again after that, but not empty. The kind of quiet that comes when two people understand a new danger has entered the shape of the world and are both adjusting to where it belongs.
At last Lily rested her head against him again, this time not from sleep, but from choice.
"You are not him," she said.
Sekhmet looked down at her.
"You carry his blood," she continued. "You saw his memory. But you are not him. You don’t have to think about that."
That line went deeper into him than he expected. He needed that distinction.
Because the danger of old blood was not only power. It was an inheritance. The slow poison of beginning to mistake memory for destiny.
He touched her hair once, absently.
"No," he said at last. "I am not."
Lily’s hand slid over his chest, over the place where his heart beat beneath skin and blood and old hidden things.
"And your people are not his people."
That made him go still for half a breath.
Because yes. That was the other truth.
Vera. Vela. Lily herself.
Raka. The lesser vampires. The ghouls. Even Bat Bat in her strange loud little way.
Whatever bloodline he was building now, whatever nest or house or monster shape it became in time, it did not have to end the way Lucard’s did.
Not if he built it differently.
Not if he built it with law in the blood from the very beginning.
Lucard had created a race from his blood, but he had left room for greed to turn inward when he fell. Sekhmet’s path was not the same.
He had the Abyss-class artifact. He had the Blood System. That changed everything.
The bloodline under him was not loose. It was bound. Structured. Watched. The loyalty in his people was not built only on fear, hunger, or temporary worship. It was written deeper than that now. His system sat at the center like an unseen throne, making betrayal far harder than it had ever been for the old Blood God. It’s impossible in his case.
Vera and Vela could not betray him.
Lily could not betray him.
Raka could not betray him.
The lesser vampires under his line could not simply wake one day and decide their creator’s throat looked profitable.
That was the difference between old blood and his blood.
The Blood God had fallen with only his power to rely on.
Sekhmet was building something else.
Something tighter.
Something colder.
Something that would not break apart the moment its master bled. His line would not be allowed to rot from the inside. Not ever.
Sekhmet let that thought settle too. Then he looked once more toward the growing light beyond the window.
Morning has come properly now. The night was over.
And now, under everything on the Sekhmet plate, one more truth existed beside them both.
The Blood God’s last memory was no longer buried.
Sekhmet had seen it. And from now on, he would not be able to unknow it.
He pressed one slow kiss to Lily’s forehead.
"Sleep a little longer," he said.
She looked up at him. "And you."
"No."
That answer should have annoyed her.
Instead it only made her sigh softly and close her eyes again, because by now she knew him well enough to understand when a man had too many thoughts in him to lie still and call it rest.
Sekhmet remained awake, holding her in his arms while the room brightened by slow degrees.
And that was how the morning truly began.