Kael slept poorly that night.
The shattered observatory offered little comfort—wind whispering through the cracks, the red moons spilling their cold light across the metallic floor. But it wasn't the cold that kept him from rest. It was the pulse. That ever-present thrum, like a second heart beating beneath his own.
He pressed a hand to his chest. The Vyr seal shimmered faintly beneath the skin, a slow-burning ember refusing to die.
What are you? he thought.
Sleep came eventually—slow, reluctant. And when it did, it brought something stranger than dreams.
He stood on a battlefield bathed in red sky.
The ground was cracked and blackened, still steaming from a war long ended. Mountains of broken armor lined the horizon, most bearing the twelve-fold sigil of the Bloodline Houses. But they were unmoving. Hollow.
A woman stood at the center, her white armor stained with blood. Her long, silver hair danced in the hot wind. A symbol glowed on her back—the same mark now etched into Kael's chest.
The Vyr seal.
She knelt, hands bound in glowing iron. Before her stood the twelve lords of the world, their faces masked and distant. A massive tribunal platform loomed behind them, runes carved deep into its stone.
"You stand accused," one of them intoned, "of crimes against the blood. Manipulating the sacred Code. Reshaping forbidden veins. Claiming dominion over what was never yours."
The woman did not flinch. Her eyes blazed like stars behind her pale lashes. "We didn't claim it. We were chosen. You fear what you don't understand."
The masked figures conferred in silence.
Then, without ceremony, one stepped forward. "You will be unmade."
Runes flared around the woman, chains tightening. She looked up—past her captors, past the sky. Right at Kael.
Her lips parted.
"Wake up."
Kael gasped, bolting upright. His skin was drenched in sweat, breath ragged. The seal on his chest pulsed violently, and for a moment he felt as if his body weren't his own. A flicker of her strength remained in his limbs. Her fury.
Duran was already beside him, clutching a glowing device. "Another memory flare?"
Kael nodded. "She was Vyr. Executed. I saw her."
Duran looked grim. "Blood memories. The stronger your awakening, the more your blood connects to the echoes of those who came before. The Vyr didn't just pass on genes… they passed on experience."
Kael's hands trembled. "She knew I was watching. She spoke to me."
"That's not possible," Duran said. "Memories aren't sentient."
"Then what was it?" Kael demanded.
Duran hesitated. "…Sometimes, the First Vein doesn't just echo. It responds. Especially to Vyr-blooded hosts."
Kael stood, the vision still haunting him. "She wasn't afraid. Even when they executed her."
"She wouldn't be," Duran said. "If she was Vyr, she likely believed death wasn't the end—just another strand in the Code."
Kael moved to the broken window. The city was distant now, smoke curling in the air, but still visible. "Why were they hunted down? Was it because of what they could do—or what they might become?"
Duran joined him. "Both. The Vyr bloodline was the only one not born from one of the Twelve Cores. They were something else. Something the world couldn't control."
Kael clenched his fists. "Then it's no wonder they were erased."
Duran's gaze was sharp. "And yet, one remains."
Later that night, Kael couldn't sleep again. He sat in the lower levels of the observatory, staring into a pool of old, dried blood Duran kept preserved for analysis. It shimmered oddly now, reacting to him, swirling without wind or motion.
He dipped a finger into it.
Pain flared—sharp, cold, electric. And then—
A flash. A blade drawn in silence. A man kneeling before the woman in white armor. "We are yours, until the moons fall."
Kael yanked his hand back.
Breathless. Shaking. But alive.
The blood remembered.
Not just facts. Loyalty. Love. Death.
Kael looked down at his palm. The dried blood crackled and hissed, forming her face—just for a second. Then gone.
He whispered into the dark, "Who were you?"
And somewhere, in the ruined systems beneath the city, the First Vein pulsed once more.
***********
The silence before a raid is a strange kind of quiet - too still, like the world is holding its breath.
Duran's eyes snapped open as the scent hit the air: iron, gunpowder, ozone. He scrambled from his cot, grabbing the old sensor rig on the wall. The green lens flickered to life and blinked - three pulses, then six.
"Kael—wake up. Now."..
Kael sat up groggily on the stone floor, still shaken from the vision the night before. "What is it?"
"Enforcers. Blood Reapers. They're sweeping the ruins."
Kael was on his feet in a second, adrenaline burning away fatigue. "They found us?"
Duran nodded grimly. "The flare you gave off yesterday wasn't subtle. Bloodline detection runes catch echoes. They'll have triangulated the pulse by now."
Footsteps echoed above. The crunch of armored boots against gravel. Then a low hiss—glass cracking. Smoke slipped down the stairwell, dark red and laced with chemical hexes.
"They're sealing the exits," Duran muttered, pulling Kael toward the back of the observatory. "There's a maintenance shaft—old, narrow, unstable. But it'll get us out."
They ran.
The observatory groaned as an explosive blast rocked the main level. Metal screamed. Kael glanced back—too late.
A Reaper dropped from the ceiling like a spider in black armor. Eyes glowing crimson. Voice hollow.
"Target acquired. Vyr-mark confirmed."
Kael froze as the soldier raised a blade-like device, humming with bloodline energy.
Instinct roared inside him.
His hand moved before his mind could catch up—grabbing a shard of broken pipe from the floor, he ducked under the blade and drove it upward into the Reaper's ribcage. The armor cracked with a hiss. The man staggered.
But something else happened.
The moment Kael's skin touched blood—warm, thick, alive—his veins lit up.
Power surged through him.
His vision blurred. His hearing exploded with detail—the heartbeat of the dying Reaper, the flicker of rune pulses in the air, Duran shouting from far away.
Then—he felt it.
The soldier's memories. His rank. His last mission. The last time he saw his sister. His fear.
Kael yanked his hand back, trembling. The Reaper slumped, unconscious.
"What did you just do?" Duran demanded as he pulled Kael away.
"I don't know," Kael breathed, shaking. "I took something."
More soldiers were coming. Two, maybe three. Their armor buzzed with detection energy.
"Through here!" Duran led them into a tight maintenance shaft, rusted and nearly collapsed. Kael ducked low, trying to steady his breathing.
But inside him, the Reaper's essence still burned.
He could feel it—muscle memory, reflexes, even a glimpse of trained combat discipline. His own body adjusted subtly—stance correcting, shoulders tensing, center of gravity shifting.
"What is this?" Kael whispered.
Duran looked at him, horrified. "You absorbed him."
Kael stared. "Is that what the Vyr could do?"
"No," Duran said. "Not like that. They could manipulate blood, yes—but direct absorption? Taking strength like that? It's closer to… mutation."
Kael touched his chest. The seal pulsed once, dark and red.
"I didn't mean to. I just—reacted."
The tunnel opened into a collapsed skybridge. The city's ruins stretched below them, the dying light of dusk casting deep shadows.
Duran was panting. "You'll have more of them after you now. What you did—that's not just a latent trait. That's a bloodbound assimilation. If word of this reaches the Inner Spires…"
"I'll be hunted."
"You already are. Now you're just more valuable."
Kael stood over the ledge, his body humming with unnatural calm. "He wasn't strong. But I felt what it could be. If I can absorb more…"
"Don't think like that," Duran snapped. "It's not a gift. It's a curse."
Kael turned toward the city. "A curse is something you can't control. I think this is something I'm meant to master."
They descended deeper into the ruins, vanishing into the alley veins of the Outskirts.
But far above them, on the black iron rooftops, a masked woman watched their trail vanish.
She whispered into her comm: "Vyr-blood confirmed. He's awakening faster than expected."
And then she vanished into shadow.