Chapter Twenty-Two #2
I’m running on speed that’s barely superhuman and fangs that won’t penetrate original -forged armor.
My brothers are scattered across the battlefield, fighting enemies that have suddenly gone still, waiting for Viktor’s command to resume the slaughter.
Sloane is powerful but untrained, her Bloodfire a weapon she can barely control, one slip away from igniting the Crimson Dawn that would give the Coven justification to erase her from existence.
And Viktor stands before me, backed by one of the five most powerful beings in supernatural existence, armed with weapons specifically designed to kill beings that shouldn’t be able to die.
The math is simple.
Brutal.
Absolute.
I’m going to lose.
“Nothing to say?” Viktor scoffs. “No last words? No speech about honor, family, and the mortal weakness you’ve chosen to wear like armor?”
I meet his eyes, seeing the centuries of resentment burning there, seeing the hunger for power that drove him to betray everything we built together, and seeing the absolute certainty that he’s already won.
“Just one thing,” I say quietly.
Viktor tilts his head. “What’s that?”
“You were never my equal.” The words land flat, deliberate. “I didn’t walk beside you. I made you. I pulled you out of death and gave you eternity. A sire doesn’t owe loyalty to what he creates… but a scion knows the weight of the blood that binds him.”
Something flickers across Viktor’s face. Not guilt. Not regret. Recognition.
“You’re right,” he says slowly. “I was never your equal.” His smile sharpens, bitter and earned.
“I was your scion, your shadow, your proof of power.” His gaze hardens.
“And I spent three centuries living with your blood in my veins, your will humming under my skin, knowing I would never be free until I tore myself out of it.” He steps closer, voice dropping.
“I didn’t betray you,” Viktor says. “I outgrew you. And tonight, I finally stop being your creation and become your consequence.” He reaches behind his back, and when his hand reappears, he’s holding a blade that makes every survival instinct I possess scream warnings.
Original-forged.
I’ve seen weapons this deadly exactly twice in my millennia of existence. Both times, they were wielded by Coven members executing traitors. The steel is black as a void, drinking light instead of reflecting it. Runes crawl across its surface, pulsing with power so ancient it predates language.
And the edge? The edge is sharp enough to cut reality itself.
“Thanatos gave me this,” Viktor says, turning the blade so it catches the blood-red light of dawn.
“Forged in the First Flame, when the world was young. Quenched in the blood of the first vampire ever slain, Khaos.” His smile sharpens.
“The blade worked,” he continues calmly.
“It killed him. Laid him low for a full day and night.” He tilts his head, eyes glittering.
“But Khaos was the first of us… the Original evil. True immortality flows in his veins.” He waves his hands through the air.
“And he rose again. Because we all know that Khaos cannot be contained.” The blade gleams as he finishes, his voice dropping.
“It can cut through anything… even an Original’s immortality.
” He smirks. “Just not Khaos… but any other Original, especially a bound one, well… they would be in very… serious… trouble.”
He moves, and despite my vampire speed, despite millennia of combat experience, I almost don’t react in time.
Almost.
I twist left on instinct alone, the motion born from centuries of survival rather than breath or heartbeat.
Steel hisses past my throat, close enough to scrape the space where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier, close enough to make every predatory sense inside me flare in violent warning.
Viktor doesn’t pause.
He never wastes motion.
He turns with the miss, body flowing into a reverse strike with effortless, unnatural precision, as if the attack was always meant to end this way. I bring my arm up to intercept, bare forearm snapping into place to stop the blow.
The blade connects.
And the world splinters.
The impact doesn’t just hurt. It’s agony. The shock ripples through my arm and into my core, rattling something deep and ancient that should not be able to be touched at all. Control slips and strength stutters. For the first time since the Binding, my body hesitates instead of obeying.
That’s when the pain truly arrives.
Not the clean pain of a cut. This is something worse. Something fundamental. The weapon doesn’t just slice flesh, it severs the connection between body and immortality, between undead existence and the power that sustains it.
Blood, actual blood instead of the sluggish ichor that usually flows through vampire veins, pours from the wound. Bright red. Warm.
Human.
I let out a heavy moan, teamed with a hiss as my fangs descend.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Viktor presses his advantage, forcing me back with a series of strikes that I can barely follow, let alone counter. “The blade makes you mortal where it cuts. Every wound it inflicts is permanent… no supernatural healing, no regeneration, just flesh, blood, and pain.”
He’s right.
The wound on my forearm throbs with every phantom heartbeat, bleeding freely in a way vampire injuries never should. The blood is too red, too warm, and it runs down my skin and drips to the concrete, and through the pain, the truth of this weapon settles into me with sickening clarity.
Death.
Not metaphorical.
Not eventual.
True death.
The kind I haven’t stood this close to since the night I was dragged screaming into darkness.
I shift my weight, searching for an opening, but the battlefield is wrong. Not just because of Viktor, but because of what hangs over all of us.
Thanatos.
His power presses down, an invisible fist clenched around the entire MC.
I feel it even through the madness, a cold, absolute restraint locking every one of my brothers in place.
Monsters brought to a standstill by a god who doesn’t need chains to bind us.
Dragonfire stalls mid-breath. Lycan muscles bunch and freeze.
Necromantic energy sputters and dies in half-formed spells.
And Sloane? The Heart Bind thrums painfully as her struggle crashes into me.
She’s fighting it, fighting him. I sense her magic surging, battering against the restraint, a storm trying to tear free of a sealed sky.
Fear claws through me sharper than Viktor’s blade ever could.
Because if she breaks through this, if she reaches for Lilith, that’s exactly what they want.
I try to counterattack anyway, pouring everything I have into motion.
Speed combinations that should be impossible to follow.
False strikes meant to draw a reaction, tiny shifts, flinches, instinctive defenses, so I can tear into the opening they leave behind.
Strike patterns stolen from wars so old their names were erased from history, and techniques honed over millennia, perfected in blood and darkness.
None of it matters.
Viktor moves like someone who’s been waiting his entire existence for this moment.
He doesn’t just keep up with me, he’s ahead of me, his blade already there, already cutting off every path I consider.
He forces me backward with relentless precision, shepherding me into narrower and narrower defensive angles, herding me like prey.
And all the while, beneath the clash of steel and the roar of magic I can’t reach, I feel Sloane pushing harder, her power rising in response to my danger.
Lilith stirs.
And terror grips me, not for myself, but for what will happen if Sloane loses control trying to save me.
Another cut tears across my ribs, and this one steals what passes for my breath, the pain sharp enough to make my vision stutter.
Then my shoulder opens, fire ripping through muscle and bone, my arm going heavy, unresponsive for a heartbeat that shouldn’t exist. My thigh follows, the blade biting deep, and my leg nearly buckles beneath me as weakness floods in, unfamiliar and terrifying.
Each wound doesn’t just hurt, it burns, branded with that same vicious mortality, bleeding real blood that pours too freely, too fast. Strength bleeds out with it. Control frays. My body reacts the way it hasn’t since I was human—clumsy, vulnerable—and screaming in ways I forgot were possible.
This isn’t injury.
It’s degradation.
A forced remembering of what it meant to be breakable.
“You’re wondering why you can’t beat me,” Viktor growls, his breathing barely elevated despite the intensity of our exchange. “Why someone you created, someone who should be inferior in every way, is carving you apart without effort…”
He’s not wrong. Through the haze of pain and rapidly mounting blood loss, confusion mingles with the desperate need to survive. I’ve fought thousands of battles. Faced opponents who should have killed me. Survived through skill, power, and the absolute certainty that I was the apex predator.
But now?
Now I’m mortal enough to bleed.
Weakened enough to be killed.
And facing an enemy who knows every technique I might use because I’m the one who taught him.
“Thanatos has been training me,” Viktor continues, circling as I struggle to maintain my defensive stance.
Blood soaks through my leather vest, drips onto the asphalt, and pools around my boots.
“For three years. Every night, learning to counter your fighting style. Learning your patterns. Your preferences. Your weaknesses.”
He strikes again, and this time I’m too slow.