Chapter 10: Little Red
"How did a mortal awakener come in possession of a high-grade talisman? How did he manage to escape right in front of us? This is completely unacceptable!"
The priest's voice echoed through the cathedral ruins like thunder, each word laced with divine fury. His staff slammed into the stone with a crack that sent spiderweb fractures racing across the marble floor.
None of the enforcers dared to respond. The scent of burning blood still lingered in the air. The altar stones were scorched black, and the sacred runes were flickering erratically as if the very magic in the cathedral had been violated. Because it had.
The priest's molten silver eyes swept across the room. "Do you even understand what that was? That wasn't a mortal awakening. That was a bloodline reclamation. An ancient one. Primordial, possibly cursed. And it happened in our pool."
One of the junior enforcers, pale and visibly shaking, stepped forward. "W-we couldn't trace the destination of the teleport, Sir. The signature was... masked. Someone cloaked it immediately. That man could be anywhere.
Before the priest could respond to that, another man came running. "Sir, something is terribly wrong with the Cathedral Waters."
The priest glared back at the idiot spouting the obvious.
The man hurriedly explained. "Not just our Cathedral. All the Cathedrals in the Kingdom have been drained completely. There is no blessed water left in the pools. Every single Awakening Pool has gone dry!"
Gasps spread like wildfire through the room. Even the stern-faced enforcers, trained for divine combat and unfazed by horrors, gasped at this news.
The priest froze, staff clutched tight in his hand. "What did you just say?"
"I've confirmed with the High Chapels of Vehrin, Altharos, and Dawnspire," the messenger continued breathlessly. "It happened at the exact same moment. Their pools were completely drained. Not evaporated, not corrupted. Just... emptied."
Shock and dread filled the eyes of the priest. "He drained them? He... that boy... drained all of them?"
Everyone stood silently not knowing what to do now.
"Find him." The priest finally spoke up, his voice bellowing. "I want every teleportation gate, every resurrection shrine, every rogue bloodmage circle within five hundred miles locked down. I want his name and his soul. If there's even a trace of that awakening energy left behind... track it."
He turned away and mumbled in a low voice that no one could hear. "Because if that bloodling is allowed to awaken completely... this entire continent will burn."
Meanwhile...
Damon tumbled through space and reappeared on a steep hill just outside the outer perimeter of Nieta Falls. He hit the ground hard, coughing as the last traces of teleportation light faded. Grass tickled his fingers, dirt caked his palms, and his skin still steamed faintly from residual magic burns. But he was alive.
"Holy shit," he breathed, chest heaving. "What the fuck was that?"
He rolled onto his back and stared up at the clear sky, letting the wind cool his overheated body. "Wait, they will come after me now. They know that minor teleportation couldn't have taken me far. Shit."
Damon groaned and forced himself to sit up, every muscle in his body aching as if he had just run a marathon while being electrocuted. His fingers curled into the grass as he steadied himself. "I've got maybe seconds, maybe a couple of minutes if I'm lucky, before they start combing this place."
He was just about to get up and run like hell back to the vampire base when suddenly a voice appeared in his head. "No need to run, little Bloodling," the woman's voice whispered, ancient and cold, slithering into his mind like smoke through a crack.
Damon froze. His heart skipped a beat. That was not the system voice. And it wasn't his imagination either. "Who... who are you?" Damon asked aloud, glancing around the hillside. There was no one. Just wind, trees, and the distant growls of the beasts.
"Hmph. You think of me constantly, not in one life but two and yet you fail to recognize me when I am standing right in front of you?"
Damon's heart almost stopped when a foggy silhouette appeared in front of him out of thin air. The fog clung to her like a shroud, as though reality itself was trying to reject her presence. He couldn't see much of her except for the small insignia on her forehead.
It was the mark of the Golden Throne, except there was a sword piercing straight through it. He had seen this mark before. This was the same insignia that burned on the hilt of the Legendary weapon, Bloodreign.
"You are that... you are that..." From all the crazy system messages he had received during the awakening process, Damon was instantly able to piece together one puzzle after another, and in the end, only one explanation was possible.
"Yup, I am Bloodreign, fondly known as little red."
The wind stilled. Damon blinked. "What?" he croaked. The foggy silhouette laughed at his shocked expression.
"I know you figured it out, so why are you acting all surprised now? You got me, little bloodling. Three of you came after me that night, and you were the one who was successful. You got me, and I made sure we both got a fair second chance to climb our way back to the top."
Damon gulped. Sure, he had guessed correctly. But guessing was one thing, and knowing the truth was an entirely different thing. How could all of this be happening? How could she be the legendary weapon's soul? That was something that happened in his last life. How could it have possibly followed him in this new life?
Was she really the one who sent him back in time? But how could something like that even be possible?
"I know you have a lot of questions, bloodling but I have already used all of my energy to aid in your awakening. I am feeling very sleepy now. Wake me up soon, okay? I am counting on you. Also, I made sure no one could track you or see your status. You will just be a normal vampire in their eyes," she whispered, her voice already fading like mist at dawn.
Damon reached out instinctively, but the fog had already begun unraveling, dissolving into threads of shimmering red that drifted into the wind and vanished without a trace. The hillside returned to its peaceful state, and just like that, she was gone.