Velra froze.
Her instincts—those old, feral whispers carved into her very bloodline—rose all at once, louder than her panic, clearer than her fear.
Before her conscious mind could even shape the thought, she already knew the answer.
There was a way.
A forbidden, irreversible way.
One only true vampire nobility could perform—
a ritual meant for moments like this... when a life was dangling between breath and silence.
"Offspring..."
The word trembled on her tongue like a sin spoken aloud.
Vampiric bloodsucking had always served two purposes.
One was simple: to feed.
To sustain.
To survive.
The other—
the darker, sacred one—
was to create offspring.
Not children.
Not servants.
But beings bound to their creator by blood and fate.
"Eternal youth... a body that denies death itself..." Velra whispered, voice cracking. "With this method... I can save you."
Her fingers grazed his cold cheek.
His breath was nearly gone now—thin, fading, slipping away like mist.
"I’m sorry," she murmured.
"I’m so sorry for not asking your permission. But this is the only path left."
Naturally, such a gift—immortality, resilience, the strength of the night—came with a price as sharp and merciless as a blade.
If the creator dies...
their offspring dies with them.
A shared fate.
A shared end.
A bond that could never be undone.
Velra felt the weight of that truth pressing on her chest... yet her resolve did not waver.
She leaned closer to him, gathering her courage as the snow howled around them like a mourning chorus.
"I will bear the price," she whispered.
"Even if it means my life is tied to yours... I won’t let you die here."
Her eyes softened, glistening with crimson tears.
"Live," she breathed.
"Even if you have to live through me."
Velra’s hands trembled as she steadied herself, breath turning white in the frigid air.
Her body was weakening—far more than she wanted to admit—and the world around her faded in and out like a lantern on the brink of extinguishing.
She was once Velra Erzsebet, a noble vampire whose very name was enough to make cities kneel.
But here, in the human kingdom, stripped of her power after the Drazroth incident...
She was nothing more than a fugitive on the verge of execution.
A flickering candle in a storm.
And now Julies—reckless, maddening, impossibly stubborn Julies—had thrown himself into that storm with her.
"...To think I would use this spell," she whispered, almost laughing at the absurdity.
"I thought... I truly thought I would never use it in my entire life."
Becoming a vampire’s offspring was not a blessing.
It was a chain—an unbreakable bond that tied two lives together.
And the cost of that bond was steep.
If an offspring dies...
The pain rebounds onto the master.
Their life force tears, fractures, sometimes collapses entirely.
In Drazroth—where strength dictated who lived and who was culled—the existence of such a weakness was fatal.
For centuries, Velra had refused to create even one offspring.
She would not expose a soft underbelly for predators to strike.
She would not let anyone hold the knife to her throat.
"But fate is cruel..."
Her voice trembled.
"It gives me someone who isn’t even a vampire... and demands I call him my offspring."
Her mana surged weakly, responding to her will.
The blood he had given her—warm, stubborn, clinging to life—rose around them in a crimson vapor.
It spiraled into the air and carved glowing lines across the snow.
A magic circle.
Ancient.
Forbidden.
Irreversible.
The ritual of creating an offspring.
Velra placed her hand over Julies’s unmoving chest.
Her fingers shook, but she pressed them firmly against him.
"I, Velra Erzsebet..." Her voice caught.
She swallowed hard and continued.
"...swear to eternally protect Faceless Imposter as my offspring."
A pulse of red magic surged outward.
Thump.
The circle reacted.
Crimson light spiked and then funneled directly into his chest like liquid fire.
Julies’s body jolted.
Velra gasped and nearly collapsed, bracing herself with one hand on the frozen ground.
"Haaah... haaah..."
Her breath came out ragged.
"This is... more difficult than I remembered..."
Her vision blurred.
Her limbs grew numb.
Her head felt heavy, as if filled with snow.
But she didn’t stop.
She couldn’t stop.
Because buried under the pain, the exhaustion, the fear—
—was the faintest echo of a heartbeat that did not belong to a dying man anymore.
But to a new existence struggling to awaken.
A heartbeat that answered hers.
The offspring contract was the highest form of magic a vampire could invoke—
a binding that tied two lives so closely together that neither could ever fully separate again.
Even for Velra, a noble of ancient blood, performing it so forcibly, so abruptly, was...
exhausting.
She exhaled a long, shaky breath.
"...Haaa..."
Her vision swam for a moment, colors blurring at the edges.
Her limbs felt heavy, her heartbeat unsteady.
Yet at the same time, Julies’ chest began to rise and fall with more stability.
His breathing, which just moments ago had been fragile and fading, steadied into a faint but clear rhythm.
The burns on his skin began knitting themselves closed.
The frostbite melted away.
Even the deep wounds across his back softened, the angry red fading to pink.
He looked—finally—at peace.
Velra stared, transfixed.
"...Now we are together forever."
The words slipped out in a dazed whisper, barely louder than the wind.
Her fingertips brushed her lips, noticing how cold they had become.
"...Together," she repeated quietly.
She hadn’t expected this.
Not like this.
Not with her own blood, her own essence, tying them together for eternity.
A soft sigh escaped her, half-laughter, half-relief.
She had always been possessive—quietly, secretly—of the one who walked beside her despite her monstrous nature.
But she had never imagined sealing that desire in such a drastic way.
Yet...
It didn’t feel wrong.
Not even slightly.
In fact, the warmth in her chest said the opposite.
’The revival at the Drazroth Empire... seems far away now,’ she thought with a faint melancholy.
Everything had been altered irreversibly.
Plans, destinies, timelines—they’d all been rewritten the moment she chose to save him.
But eternity was long.
And they would walk it together.
Her lips—sculpted elegantly, like the curve of a blade—lifted into a soft, satisfied smile.
"Time... we have plenty of it," she murmured.
She leaned closer, her hand gently brushing a lock of hair from Julies’ forehead.
"Sleep as long as you need," she whispered.
"I’ll be right here."