Earth.
On top of a colossal 700-foot black wall was a man.
Sitting on the edge, calmly meditating in a lotus position.
With short black hair and pale skin, the man was topless, seemingly unaffected by the cold, harsh winds. One could even see that snow was gathering around him, but it refused to touch his skin.
Maximus Nosferat.
The firstborn of Morgana Nosferat and the current acting leader of the Nosferat family.
For weeks now, he had been sitting here. Meditating.
Not to gain power; he had more power than he could ever need.
No, he was trying to control his power. To get used to it. To master it.
And, of course, to guard.
Maximus was defending The Black Aegis from the monster hordes that always liked to pop out of nowhere, paying a visit to his axe.
The Black Aegis wasn't just a wall. It was a seven-hundred-foot middle finger to the apocalypse.
Stretching across the horizon like a scar on the earth, it was the only thing standing between the remnants of civilization and the tide of madness that had become the "new normal."
Whoosh!
Suddenly, Maximus felt something—a disturbance in the force….I mean mana—in the distance.
He slowly opened his eyes.
Crimson.
Not glowing. Not flaring. Just… present. As inevitable as gravity.
He rose to his feet in a single smooth motion, bare soles resting on obsidian stone dusted with untouched snow.
His gaze went up toward the sky.
"So," Maximus murmured, voice calm, almost bored. "Attacking from above now?"
At the same time, he was annoyed. Monster hordes liked to appear every time he tried to meditate. Every damn time he was close to understanding something new, to experience enlightenment, these bastards came and ruined it.
"The frequency of the attacks was less these past few weeks," he mumbled to himself as he slowly stretched. "I guess I could return to the city for a few days."
Maximus took a fighting stance. A simple martial arts stance with his left foot forward, right foot back, both arms at the ready.
He was not going to use the axe.
That axe wasn't even a real weapon, but a ceremonial gift made to look good, not to function as a real weapon. He was going to use his fists and end this quickly so that he could go back to his meditation.
"Sigh~…" Maximus let out a long sigh as he drew in his right arm like an archer pulling the string of a bow, the space between his knuckles beginning to distort, to warp, the very air screaming under the pressure.
"Tian Po Quan… First move…" Maximus said, a smile appearing on his face. "Heavenly—"
The word never finished leaving his lips.
Maximus' fist moved.
He threw a punch.
A straight punch.
Not fast. Not slow. There was no flash. No explosion. No dramatic pillar of light splitting the heavens. Just… a punch.
But the effect was something else entirely.
The sky folded.
The clouds above him collapsed inward as if grabbed by an invisible hand, compressed into a single trembling point before detonating outward in a soundless implosion. Whatever had been descending from above—winged silhouettes, half-formed bodies stitched together from mana and hunger—ceased to exist in the most literal sense.
Erased.
A shockwave rippled outward, peeling the uppermost layer of snow off the Black Aegis like powder from glass, racing toward the horizon before fading into nothingness. The wall itself didn't so much as tremble.
Maximus lowered his fist slowly.
"…Impact," he finished calmly.
Silence followed.
No screams. No remnants. Not even falling ash.
Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!
"Good job. Not bad, kiddo!"
A voice echoed, clear and casual, completely out of place with the devastation that had just occurred. The clapping was slow, deliberate.
"Sigh…" Maximus let out a sigh, shaking his head, but a small smile did appear on his face. "…I see you're still alive, old man."
A man emerged from a shimmer of displaced air, descending casually as if stepping off an invisible staircase. He had ashy-grey hair, wearing a silver-embroidered coat that shimmered faintly in the crimson glow. His gaze lingered on Maximus with a look of approval.
The moment his feet touched the black stone—
"Maxi, my boy! You almost hit me with that fancy little punch of yours." The man opened his arms wide with a grin. "Come give your old man a hug."
"Sigh… Grandpa Dmitri," Maximus said dryly, not moving an inch from his spot. "And it's Maximus. Not Maxi."
"Pfft!… Nonsense." Dmitri scoffed, waving a dismissive hand. "I wiped your butt when you were a snot-nosed brat running around the citadel. I'll call you whatever I damn well please."
The man was Dmitri Tepes.
Morgana's grandfather. And Maximus's great-grandfather.
One of the oldest vampires who refused to die or fade away, clinging to the world with the same stubborn tenacity he used to cling to his title as the Lord of Wallachia.
He still preferred to use the surname Tepes, saying that one must not forget their roots. However, secretly, he was proud of the Nosferat name, and he was the one who suggested it to Morgana in the first place.
Whoosh!
"You're fast, old man."
Another voice came from behind Maximus.
"Still sharp, even after all these centuries."
Maximus didn't turn.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't sigh—though he really wanted to.
"…You too?" he muttered. "Is today some kind of undead family reunion?"
A figure stepped out of the shadow cast by the Black Aegis itself, as if darkness had decided to stand up and take a humanoid shape. Tall. Lean. Wrapped in a long coat darker than the stone beneath their feet, its edges fluttering despite the lack of wind.
Crimson eyes. Calm. Watchful.
Vlad Nosferat. Morgana's father.
"Relax," Vlad said mildly, hands in his pockets. "We weren't spying. Your punch was… hard to miss."
"Heh…" Dmitri snorted. "That wasn't a punch. That was a polite suggestion to the sky. In my day, we punched holes through concepts, not just monsters."
"And in your day, the monsters were polite enough to stand still for you," Vlad countered, glancing at the empty space overhead. "These ones are learning. Adapting."
"Bah! Adapting? That's what you get for allowing all these… hybrids and half-breeds into the family." Dmitri jabbed a finger in Maximus's direction. "All that shitty second-product blood thins the potency. Makes you… soft, weak, and hit like a girl."
Maximus remained silent.
This was routine.
The bickering.
The nostalgia.
Yet inside, he was freaking out.
Last time he checked, his grandfather Vlad and great-grandfather Dmitri were still locked away in their tombs. What the hell were they doing out here, and… how did they get past the barrier? If the two of them were awakened, then the other three as well…
'By the old blood!!…' Maximus's eyes widened in horror as he realized something extremely important.
This was the worst time for them to awaken.
The five elders were extremely protective of a certain person.
His mother, Morgana.
If they learned that she was dead?
'We're fucked.'
Maximus still recalled the last time a rumor about her being killed spread when she visited a city in the west.
The result?
These two vampires standing before him paid a 'visit' to that city and… well, impaled every single living being in that city and left them to rot under the sun as a 'warning.'
And that was the 'kindest' of their reactions. Maximus didn't even want to recall the time they used gravity magic to pull a meteor down on a small kingdom because the king there said something bad about Morgana.
They loved her.
But their love was…
Vicious. Terrifying. Possessive.
It was a love that could level cities.
That's why Morgana 'kicked' them out of the capital, because they broke too many things.
They would never accept her death. They would rage. They would burn. They would hunt down every living thing they thought was responsible until the world was nothing but ash.
"MAXI!" another booming voice snapped Maximus out of his panic, this time a woman's voice.
His heart sank as he stared at the familiar face of his grandmother.
Veronica Nosferat.
Morgana's mother.
"Maxi!… tell me," Veronica said, a dark aura surrounding her. Her calm and composed demeanor was gone, replaced by a cold, deadly rage. "Where is my daughter?"
'Shit.'
That was Maximus's only thought as he stared into the eyes of a mother who had just woken from a long slumber to find her child missing.
"Where is she, Maximus?" Veronica repeated, her voice dropping to a dangerously quiet level. The calm was worse than the shouting. It was the silence before the avalanche.
"Where is your mother?"
Maximus swallowed. He saw the look that the two other vampires gave each other. The look that said, 'we're going to find out, one way or another.'
Woosh! Woosh!
He didn't even have time to answer before two other figures emerged from the shadows. A man and a woman.
Maria and Alexander. The remaining two of the five elders.
He was surrounded.
This was it.
He had to tell them.
But what could he say? That she was dead? No… killed by her own son.
'Sigh… at least I could suppress them after breaking my seals,' he thought, a plan slowly forming in his mind.
"Grandmother," Maximus began, choosing his words with the precision of a bomb disposal expert. "Mother is… on a mission."
"Stop yanking my pizzle!! Maximus Nosferat!" Dmitri roared, taking a step forward. "I have not felt your mother's presence for weeks! Not a single spark! So I'll ask you again… where is she!"
"…"
Maximus took a deep breath. His fists tightened at his sides, his knuckles white.
"You want to know where she is?" Maximus's voice was flat, stripped of all emotion. He looked from Dmitri's furious face to Veronica's chillingly calm one, then to Vlad, who was watching him with an unnerving stillness, to Maria and Alexander, who looked like they were ready to tear him limb from limb.
"Fine. She's dead."