Crimson bled across the world; the moon's light ran red and everything it touched took on the color of blood.
Darkness deepened, as if the sky itself had been carved to let the red through.
A figure announced herself in the heavens—a silhouette threaded with silver hair and eyes like twin blood-moons. Her lips were the hue of spilled garnet. She hovered above the ridge, smiling, and the air around her chilled to a precise, lethal cold. The smell of blood sharpened the night.
A single presence pressed down on me. For a moment I sat, rooted, with Liora sleeping in my lap. I could feel the world tilt toward that one image.
'She….. looks beautiful.' I thought, and my heart skipped a beat.
Assassins froze where they stood. Some collapsed to their knees, not wounded but locked in a paralysis of fear. Silence fell like a blade.
A woman's laugh—soft, delighted—rippling through the blood-lit air. Evangeline von Bloodrose. She raised a hand to her face, and elegance wrapped the clearing as surely as fear did.
"This scent of blood… it has been so long." she breathed, inhaling as if it were a rare perfume. She surveyed the assassins with detached curiosity. "Such terrified faces." she mused.
Her fingers rested lightly against her chin—an aristocratic gesture, not uncertain but deliberate. The tilt of her hand lent her an air of refinement; her expression softened into something like ecstasy, as if she alone had discovered an answer hidden in the night. The look was not mere pondering. It was sovereignty.
"You tried to kill me. Why do you stand frozen?" Evangeline asked.
No one answered. They remained statues, eyes wide and empty.
She opened her eyes and let out a small, contemptuous "Hmph." She snapped her hand away and extended a single finger. A bead of blood welled and dropped to the soil below.
The pause that followed was full of small, treacherous sounds; then the ground beneath that drop began to crack. Fissures split the earth as if something beneath strained to emerge.
The assassins staggered back—some tried to rise, but their legs failed them. Then, just as suddenly, the cracks in the earth stopped spreading.Silence reclaimed the air."AAARGHHH!" A scream shattered it.
Then another, and another, until the chorus cut out as quickly as it had begun. Where comrades had stood there were now yawning holes. Flesh, bone, and clothing had been swallowed by the earth; empty sockets of soil marked the places where men had been. The remaining assassins froze in shock as blood-red threads burst from the ground, snaring those who stood at the back of the group.
Those who were ensnared clawed at the threads, but each broken strand was silently absorbed back into a growing, wet cocoon. In moments, bodies were wrapped whole in blood-slick bind, then the cocoons sprouted jagged needles—spines that erupted outward with the wet sound of tearing flesh. Agonized screams shredded the night.
While the others watched their comrades murdered in a ritual of red, Evangeline smiled down from her height. She turned her face towards me.
'Our eyes met.' I thought, the moment sharp and bright as a struck blade.
"Let's finish this." she said, raising her hand as blood gathered into multiple small orbs above her.
Blood gathered into dozens of small spheres above her palm—first two, then five, then ten, then twenty—their crimson glow multiplying until forty globes hovered like terrible fruit. Then, before my eyes, their shapes shifted. Each sphere stretched into a long, deadly line, their tips sharpening into wicked points. They were no longer mere droplets of blood, but spears—blood spears.
Eva gave a single, fatal motion; Evangeline moved her hand down, and the line broke.
A volley of blood-spears launched with speed and precision. They impaled men through backs, chests, and throats; All of them were skewer-pinned to the soil, gasping a last, wet breath. The massacre was clinical and fast; the light flared off blood and metal until there was nothing left but ragged bodies and a slow, spreading dark.
One man remained alive—he was the leader. Perhaps she had spared him for a purpose. Because after that. The Lady of Death descended.
She stepped from the air as though walking from the pool of the moon itself. The places the assassins had vanished into belched wet blood up through the soil and pooled, and crimson began to leak along the ground, joining the spears' gore into a widening river.
Her boots found earth with a deliberate, sovereign click. With each step she took, the blood at her feet transformed: from puddles, crimson roses grew—petals slick with red, vines curling like the fingers of old gods. The scene shifted into a nightmare garden, a warped court of blooms born from slaughter. A single dark path remained for her to cross from the point of her descent to the lone leader.
She paused before him, the surrounding roses reflecting the moon's new hue. The leader stared up; his face was slack with terror and a dawning understanding of things older than his craft.
The Lady of Death did not speak at once. Her presence was a verdict. The crimson moon hung above, steady and cold, scattering its light over the ruined clearing.
The assassin leader sat slumped against the tree, legs straight out and bleeding, bark gouged into his back like a crude shackle. His eyes—wild, hollow—tracked Evangeline as she approached.
"I wanted you to suffer more." she said softly, meeting his gaze. "But this will do."
"I wished to make you suffer far longer," she murmured, her crimson gaze piercing into his hollow eyes. "But this much will suffice."
She turned, her cloak trailing, and began to walk away.
Crackling.
The ground split with a jagged noise. Thorned roots, black and wet with sap, pushed up from the soil. Slowly, deliberately, they coiled around the assassin leader's leg like serpents hungry for prey.
Evangeline did not look back. She kept walking, unhurried.
The man's scream shattered the silence. "Ughhh—huff—arghhh! HUFF! AAAAAARRRGHHHHH!" His voice tore his throat raw as the roots climbed higher, digging barbs into flesh. They wrapped his thighs, his chest, until his body was lashed tight against the tree as though bound by living ropes.
His cries faltered into wet gasps. The thorns dug deeper. Blood ran down in thin streams, soaking bark and pooling at the base of the tree until the ground itself looked as though it were drinking him alive.
Then, at last, the screaming stopped.
I rose with Liora still sleeping in my arms and made sure the child saw nothing. Footsteps approached; Evangeline drifted to my side. I glanced at her and then turned my face away, unwilling to meet that calm, terrible composure full on.
"Do you dislike this guise of mine?" Evangeline asked, tilting her head with a smile.
My voice stuttered when it came. My thoughts scrambled—'Are you hurt anywhere? Does it still hurt? Do you need a potion?'—but nothing formed that I could speak. Evangeline closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again.
"I understand." she said.
My mouth moved of its own accord. "How could you do that?" I asked, the weight of my words heavy in my throat.
"They were tied to my family's massacre." she replied, flat.
"Why did you do that?" I pressed, the question growing harder in my chest.
"It is fine if you don't understand." Evangeline said, looking down. The lines around her mouth were small, almost gentle.
"You did not need to fight them alone. You could have asked for help." I said, too low.
She blinked.
"Why? Why did you harm yourself?" I asked again, more urgently now, my concern breaking past my reserve. Her eyes glistened; my teeth clenched against something close to anger.
"Huh?" she answered, as if surprised by the depth of my worry.
We stood in a brittle silence. I forced myself to regain composure.
'I'm sorry you got hurt because of me.' I thought, but I could not voice it.
"Does it still hurt?" I asked.
"N-no." Evangeline stammered.
"Why did you do that?" I repeated.
"To conceal our nature, we of the Bloodrose possess a technique by which we seal away much of our vampiric essence—our power, our instincts, even fragments of our very selves—within a dagger. Ordinarily, such a blade is pre-filled with blood. But during the attack, we expended nearly all of it in battle. I had no choice; to restore what was bound, the dagger needed to be replenished.
For months I have been feeding it the blood of monsters, but such creatures provide little nourishment. To use humans would have exposed my traces to the enemy, so I endured the slow path instead. Today, at last, the vessel was filled. To reunite with my sealed self, the act of stabbing and the accompanying chant served as the ritual." Evangeline explained.
I released a slow breath.
Evangeline giggled softly, the sound delicate yet laced with mischief.I glanced at her—she covered her mouth with slender fingers, shoulders trembling with quiet laughter.
"You looked so terribly worried… and very serious." Evangeline said between her giggles, crimson eyes gleaming with amusement.
She laughed, then leaned forward, studying my face as if cataloging features. "Why such a face for someone you just met?" she asked, genuinely curious.
"I despise being hurt." I answered.
She tilted her head and took a step closer, "Hmm… is that so?" she murmured and then stepped back.
"And maybe… I get attached quickly." I admitted in a low voice.
"Is that so?" Evangeline murmured, her tone soft.
We watched the surroundings for a moment, the embers of the massacre cooling into a thin steam. "We should move." I said at last.
"It will be troublesome to cross Lizardmen territory at night—less difficult than annoying." Evangeline replied
"You regained your power, yes? Then we can fly and bypass their territory." I proposed.
"I cannot carry both of you." Evangeline replied.
"What do you mean? I can fly." I said.
She looked surprised. "What?!"
"Let us depart. I will explain on the way." I said.
We went to the cliff's edge. The air tasted of blood and cold sap. We leapt, falling into sky before catching the currents. I shaped the wind to cradle us; Evangeline flew at my side. The moonlight smoothed over everything, silvering her hair.
"You fly well." she observed.
"I manipulate the air around me." I replied.
"Hmm… your control over the wind is remarkable," Evangeline murmured as she flew at my side. "You must have a deep understanding of mana flow and its properties."
Under that lunar glow she looked—improbably—beautiful. The words surprised me as they left my mouth. "You look beautiful." I said in a low soft voice.
"Huh?" Evangeline asked, startled.
"Nothing." I answered, turning my face forward and increasing our speed.
"Wait," Evangeline called, catching up. "Tell me—what was that?" she asked, breathless, as we slipped between the stars. The endless night closed around us, yet for the first time since she entered my world, I felt a strange calm bloom inside me.
to be continued…