The moon hung bright and full, stars freckling the sky as clouds drifted like slow ghosts.
Leaves whispered in a thin, cool wind.
The campfire at our center sent up a warm, orange halo that made the night smell of resin and charred wood.
From the left, about a hundred meters away, a shadow stepped from between the trees. At first I saw only a shoe caught in moonlight; then a figure followed—body cloaked in deep black, hood pulled low. The moonlight skimmed the fabric, revealing the angles of a hidden silhouette. Faces remained concealed beneath the hood.
'We were being tailed since we left the adventurer guild. Is it me or is it for her?' I thought, curiosity and caution coiling together.
Footsteps multiplied. One shadow, two, then another—until nearly eighteen figures lined the treeline, moving like a dark ripple. They fell into formation, a steady, dangerous rhythm. One man stepped forward and stopped at the center of the line, the obvious leader.
"I hope this much is enough to restore your full power." I asked quietly, as much to the night as to Eva.
"This is more than enough." Eva replied, voice low and steady.
"Why are you following us?" Eva asked the strangers.
Silence answered—taut, patient. The shadow-like figures murmured something.
They ran at once, a coordinated charge, but the man in front did not. Three emerged from each side of the tree line.
"Liora is sleeping; can I leave this to you?" I asked
"It won't be a problem as long as you can protect yourself." Eva replied.
"Don't worry about me." I said, and bent the light around us. The campfire's glow dimmed to all but us—the light bent, image blurred; our silhouettes dissolved into the night. Wind scrubbed our scent from the air. We sat camouflaged as the assassins closed.
Eva's hands moved with the ease of someone practiced in silence; she drew a dagger and slipped into shadow with an assassin's vanish. The nearest attacker slowed, sniffing the air, searching for a prey that had softened into invisible threads.
Six assailants formed a tighter ring. The first stooped, peering into the hollow; two flanked him, scanning the woods. Their breath came shallow, the only sound a dry rustle against husk-cloaks. They did not notice Eva shift behind them.
A bush rustled; every head snapped to the sound.
Eva flicked into motion. In one fluid heartbeat she was behind an assassin, dagger arcing into the chest. The silver blade, its guard filigreed in gold with a black hilt set with a small red gem, slid home. A hot arc of blood stamped the moonlight as the blade pulled free; the man did not cry out. He staggered, then Eva drove the blade into the next man's lower abdomen—an ugly, wet sound spoke for him.
The ring erupted. Assassins spilled forward, blades glancing and clashing, the night filling with the sharp, metallic note of combat. Eva moved like a shadow given teeth—cutting, throwing, vanishing again. One assailant tried to circle her; she vanished and crouched with a dagger lodged in his belly. He breathed raggedly, eyes wide and surprised.
No one noticed the small, precise flick to the side—the throw of a second dagger from unseen hands. A body slumped, a black stain spreading across his tunic.
Two attackers rushed her in succession. The first swung horizontally; Eva ducked and left a shallow cut along his side. Blood sprayed, a fine fan that arced through the air toward his companion. As the second raised his arm to block, Eva's punched upward through the soft under-jaw in a sick, decisive motion. He crumpled, choking.
"How long until backup arrives?" the leader murmured, voice rough as gravel.
"One hour, two at most. They're moving as fast as they can." replied an assassin stepping forward.
"Formation Silver." the leader ordered. "You saw her style. Don't go for the kill. Block and hold. Wear her down. Hold until they arrive."
'Backup? I guess I'm not sleeping tonight.' I thought, irritation sharpening.
Eva slid back, drawing the first blade free from a dying man's head. The other satrted closing in. They moved as one and halted—as they saw, a ripple, the blood from the corpses began to ripple upward.
The dead's blood lifted, a viscous current that trembled through the moonlight. It pooled toward Eva's blade as if called by a hungry gravity. The dagger drank; crimson slicked the guard and trickled into the red gem, which pulsed like a beating heart.
The blade shuddered. Gold darkened to a red-streaked hue; the metal itself lengthened and thickened with a wet, obscene growth. The air smelled sharply of iron and sweet rot. The survivors stared, disbelief warring with fear.
Eva's face went unreadable. She raised the transformed dagger and pointed toward a wounded man—his side gaping. Blood flowed from the wound and ran to the blade as if pulled by a string. The assassin screamed as his blood drained, leaving the shell of a man to collapse into a heap.
Panic cracked across the attackers' faces like shattered glass. For a breath they stood, hollowed by horror and a sight older than most of their stories. One recovered faster than the others.
"ATTACK!" the leader roared, and the ring surged forward again.
Eva hurled the blade. It flashed, a dark comet tracing a crimson arc through the air. It struck ground between the assailants and vanished into soil with a wet thunk. The earth answered.
From the dirt, blades erupting like black reeds—twisted shapes of coagulated blood—sprang upward and found flesh. Five assassins dropped, sharp fangs of blood rooting into chests and throats with a sick, sticky violence. The survivors leapt back, panic-spattered and staggering.
The leader barked an order; the formation shifted. They reformed into pairs, spreading out with deliberate distance and methodical menace. Two men advanced, measured, circling Eva.
She lunged for the dagger embedded in the ground. When she seized it, the blood-sword pulsed and the blades that had risen from the soil vanished, leaving bodies slick.
One assassin spun to face her. Eva hurled the dagger. It struck with brutal force, pinning the man back against a tree. The impact drove him through bark; he trembled, half-off the ground, a red river pooling beneath his boots. The other assassin froze, watching his comrade's life ebb.
Before he could react, Eva was there. Hands grabbed his head and shoulder. She moved with the cold precision of a predator—fangs ready. But before she could bite.
The man's skull detonated in a horrible bloom of bone and gore. Eva ducked back, clean and composed, as the assailants reeled from the sudden, savage rupture.
"They carry poison within their teeth, prepared to seep into the blood the moment you attempt to drink it." I warned, my voice reaching only Eva's ear.
'The leader had ordered them to use the toxin right before she drank. They didn't expect a blade to steal the blood; they were caught off guard before.' I thought, replaying the detail.
"Cut the head and keep the rest for later." I said. "Or drink from the ones already bleeding out."
"And they've called for backup. We need to leave soon." I added.
Eva's reply was a short, annoyed, "Fine."
She extended her hand. The dagger that had pinned the man slid free of the tree and flew to her palm as if it were a living thing answering its mistress. She cradled it to her chest, hands wrapped around the hilt like prayer, the gem in the guard catching moonlight.
Eva's voice fell into something ceremonial, old and wound tight with fury.
"Serenity to thy mind,
Elation to thy heart;
Blood to thy craving body.
As the Blood-Moon doth arise,
let the slaughter of sinners commence,
and the sacred form be restored unto this realm.
I, Evangeline von Bloodrose,
shall veil myself no more.
By crimson moon and ancient oath —so let my vengeance be born."
The jewel in the dagger flared. The assassins snapped to it—then surged forward in a last, desperate lunge. Eva did not flinch. Before i could do anything. She drove the dagger into her own chest.
For a beat the world froze. Then everything accelerated.
Blood wept from the blade in a thin, living thread. It crawled up, silk-thin, and wrapped her like a cocoon—except it was not silk but coagulating life. The thread thickened and braided, swallowing her form in a wet, clinging shroud.
Around us, heartbeats hammered—a dozen rhythms in the dark. The blood-sphere lifted, bobbed, and began to thrum with a sound that was almost a heartbeat of its own. A muted light gathered within, ghosting the shadow of Eva's silhouette inside.
Someone flung a blade; it struck the sphere and skittered off like a pebble off a shield. The sound rang thin in the enclosed space. The sphere pulsed: thump… thump… thump. Each beat made the inner glow flare.
Silence fell—heavy and brittle—until a woman's voice, high and delighted, slipped from nowhere: "Ehehe." It was a sound that did not belong to the night, coy and ancient.
Eyes darted, weapons rose. No one could find where the voice had come from. Then, without warning, the blood-ball detonated.
The explosion was not merely force—it was a reshaping of the night. I slammed my eyes shut. When I opened them, the world had been washed red. The moon itself seemed to have bled; its silver had turned marrow-deep crimson, casting the trees and ground in wine-dark light.
I spun and peered at the spot where the crimson sphere had been—only to find a woman standing there.
She stood as though sculpted from moonlight and shadow, her long white hair tumbling in silken waves down her back, contrasting starkly with the abyssal tones of her gown. Against that pale halo of hair, her crimson eyes gleamed like embers caught in snow—piercing, regal, eternal.
Her dress was a dark symphony of aristocratic design. Layers of black ruffles billowed and folded into a skirt that drank the night, while deep wine-red glimpses flashed from beneath like hidden blood. The corseted bodice—black silk threaded with burgundy—clung to her form; silver embroidery crawled across it in vine-work, as if twilight itself had been stitched into fabric. She wore sheer, gossamer sleeves that flared at the wrists in delicate lace, and chains and roses wrought of silver and obsidian wreathed the skirt, a marriage of beauty and constraint. Fine lace fringed the hem like frozen raindrops, whispering menace with every motion.
When she stepped forward her boots clicked with cold precision beneath the storm of fabric. A high ruffled collar framed skin the color of porcelain, and a small garnet at her throat caught the moonlight with a faint, inner glow.
With her white hair flowing like a silver river and those crimson eyes burning like eternal fire, the ensemble did not merely clothe her—it anointed her. She was no maiden in finery, but a blood-borne aristocrat, a vampiric princess whose elegance was honed to a fang-sharp edge.
She did not look like someone who had simply appeared. She looked like a verdict.
For a moment I could do nothing but stare. Around us, the assassins staggered, the wound of surprise wide in their eyes.
The woman's smile was both invitation and condemnation. She tilted her head, and the red moon bled a little brighter.
to be continued…