The embers of pain from his clash with Lucius still clung to Blaze's body. The memory of holy fire searing through his flesh lingered as a phantom ache, a reminder of how close he had come to destruction. And yet, as he stood in the hidden hall beneath Greywick, shadows curling around him like loyal hounds, he felt stronger than ever. The cursed ring pulsed faintly against his skin, its whispers content, almost pleased.
The burns had healed quickly—too quickly. Each drop of stolen blood, each victim drained beneath his fangs, had stitched him together faster than any mortal healer could dream. He flexed his hands, marveling at the smooth skin where charred ruin had once been. His enemies thought the duel had weakened him. In truth, it had taught him more than he could have hoped.
Holy fire burned. Pride blinded. And fear… fear fractured even the strongest.
Blaze stepped up onto the dais that served as his throne. The crimson banner of the Court—stitched hastily from captured silks, adorned with the symbol of the ring—hung behind him. At his gesture, the heavy doors of the chamber creaked open, and his lieutenants entered one by one.
Kael came first, silent as always, a hood shadowing his eyes. Garrick followed, his armored bulk filling the doorway, a wolfish grin flashing sharp teeth. Seren glided in, her beauty veiled by a cloak, the faint trace of incense still clinging to her. Ledo shuffled nervously, bowing deeply before daring to step forward. And finally Asha, her wolf ears perked, her eyes glowing faintly crimson, the predator's confidence evident in every stride.
They knelt before him. A mismatched pack of criminals, killers, and outcasts—his pack.
"Rise," Blaze commanded, his voice low but carrying. Shadows slithered down the walls in response, making the chamber feel smaller, more intimate. His court obeyed.
He let the silence stretch, studying their faces. They waited for orders, hungry for purpose. They had seen him survive the impossible. They had tasted his power. Now, they were ready to be guided.
"The Heroes have come," Blaze said at last. The word Heroes dripped with disdain. "My classmates. The empire's little chosen dogs. They are not invincible. You saw what holy fire can do to me… but you also saw how I endure. What they don't realize is that their greatest strength—their unity—is also their weakness."
Kael tilted his head slightly. "You mean to break their bonds."
A faint smile touched Blaze's lips. "Exactly. Steel can be blunted. Faith can be burned. But trust… trust is fragile. And once it's broken, it can never be restored."
Ledo shifted uneasily. "They're backed by the church, the kingdoms. You're saying we fight them head on—"
"No." Blaze's gaze pinned him in place. "We do not fight them head on. Not yet. We will fight from the shadows, from their blind spots, until they can't tell friend from foe. They will bleed without seeing my blade."
The shadows deepened at his words, as if the room itself approved.
Blaze began assigning tasks, his tone precise, cold, like a master weaving threads into a web.
"Kael. You will spread my eyes and ears further. Bribe the greedy. Threaten the fearful. Anyone who whispers in taverns or carries letters between camps now whispers for me."
Kael nodded once, already considering his network's expansion.
"Ledo. You will feed the underworld with lies. Rumors of traitors among the Heroes, whispers that one of them has already joined me. Be clumsy with it. Let the rumors contradict themselves—it will make them more believable."
Ledo's nervous smile widened a little. This was his realm.
"Seren." Blaze's eyes narrowed slightly as they fell on her. "You will walk among the faithful. Cloak yourself as a devout pilgrim, a servant of the church. Bring me their prayers, their gossip, their secrets. Let the priests think you a lamb… until I call for the wolf."
She inclined her head gracefully, her eyes flashing with subtle delight at the role.
"Garrick. Asha." Blaze's gaze swept over the two warriors, both already leaning forward with anticipation. "You will hunt their supply lines. Strike their patrols. Leave no survivors—except one. Always one. And break him before you release him. I want them doubting reality when their scouts return babbling nonsense."
Garrick grinned broadly, his fist slamming into his chest. "A pleasure, Lord."
Asha licked her lips, a low growl of satisfaction rumbling in her throat.
Blaze rose from his throne, stepping down so that he stood among them. The shadows clung to his frame, making him appear taller, less human, a figure half-born from nightmare. His voice dropped lower, intimate, like a whisper shared by a lover.
"I don't need to kill them all at once. I don't even need to kill most of them. All I need is for them to doubt. Doubt each other. Doubt themselves. Doubt their gods."
His gaze swept across his court. "When trust breaks, even the sharpest blade will shatter in the hand that wields it. And when that day comes, they will kneel before me—not as Heroes, but as prey."
For a moment, no one spoke. The room throbbed with the weight of his will, the taste of his ambition thick in the air. Even Garrick, usually quick with a crude jest, remained silent.
Then, as one, they knelt again, this time unbidden.
"Crimson Lord," Kael murmured.
"My fangs are yours," Asha added.
One by one, the others echoed.
Blaze let the chorus wash over him, a tide of loyalty born from fear, hunger, and awe. He felt the ring pulse again, as if savoring the devotion like blood. The whispers brushed against his mind, encouraging, promising more.
Yes, he thought. This is the beginning.
And somewhere beyond the mountains, the Heroes set their campfires, still believing themselves chosen saviors. Blaze's lips curved into a smile sharp as a blade.
Let them come. By the time they reach me, their trust will already be ashes.
The Heroes' camp sprawled across the hills like a small town, with banners of the Empire and the Church fluttering side by side. White tents lined the slopes, soldiers and knights moved in disciplined rotations, and holy wards shimmered faintly along the perimeter. To a casual eye, it looked impregnable. But to Blaze, watching through the senses of a shadowy familiar perched on a tree branch, it looked fragile.
The tension was almost palpable.
Lucius sat near the center fire, the golden flames of his blessing flickering faintly from his skin even at rest. He stared into the fire, his jaw clenched, his pride still bleeding from their last encounter. Every time he shifted, the knights around him stiffened, as though expecting another outburst of fury.
Near him, Marian, the healer, knelt over a wounded soldier, her hands glowing faintly with soft light. Sweat beaded her brow; she had worked nonstop since arriving in beastfolk lands. Her eyes, however, kept flicking toward Lucius. Worry, or distrust—it was hard to tell.
Beyond them, Darius, the self-proclaimed strategist of their class, argued with two church paladins over maps spread across a wooden table. His voice carried, sharp and impatient. "We should strike at Greywick now. Letting that parasite fester will only embolden him."
One paladin nodded, the other frowned. "And walk into shadows? He's baiting us."
Darius's fist slammed the table. "He's one man!"
"Is he?" murmured the paladin. "Or is he already more?"
The argument dissolved into low mutters, but Blaze heard every word through the shadow's ears. He smiled faintly. Doubt had already seeded itself among the faithful. All it needed was water.
The first threads of the web were subtle. A merchant caravan carrying food to the Heroes never arrived. At first, it was blamed on rough terrain. Then a second disappeared, this one guarded by armed escorts. When the third failed to appear, even the most optimistic knights began whispering.
Scouts sent out to investigate vanished. One returned, eyes hollow, words broken. He spoke of a darkness that swallowed the road, of voices whispering in his skull. He clawed at his ears until Marian was forced to sedate him with holy magic. The others watched in unease, pretending not to be afraid.
The next night, Garrick and Asha struck.
They came with silence, slipping through the hills like wolves. Their squad of vampires fell upon a patrol with precision. There was no clashing of steel, no cries of warning—only muffled gurgles, the wet sound of flesh torn, and then silence. When dawn rose, a single soldier stumbled back into camp, bloodless but alive. His mind was shattered. He spoke of shadows moving like beasts, of glowing crimson eyes, of his comrades screaming before vanishing into the dark.
The priests declared it hallucination, yet the fear was real. Blaze felt it through the shadows, tasted it on the air.
The paranoia began to grow.
"Where are the supplies?" one Hero demanded.
"Why didn't your scouts return?" another countered.
"Maybe the beastfolk are hiding him—"
"No, he's closer. He's already inside the hills."
The bickering was constant. Lucius roared at them to shut up, but his authority no longer held the same weight it had weeks ago. Every failure was a bruise on his pride, every whisper of Blaze's name another cut on his honor.
Then came the false trail.
Kael and Seren had prepared it well: a forged message, intercepted and planted among the Heroes' supply captains. It spoke of a village harboring Blaze, a "cleansing nest" where the vampire lord fed on innocents. It was bait, nothing more.
The Heroes marched on it with holy fury.
They found the village quiet, its people smiling and humble. Too humble. Too quiet.
When the priests began blessing the houses, the truth spilled out. The villagers' eyes glowed faintly crimson in the candlelight. Their prayers turned to laughter. And when the holy wards cracked under invisible pressure, the thralls attacked.
The fight was vicious. Children with fangs leapt at armored paladins. Mothers clawed knights' throats. The heroes burned the village to ash, but not without cost. Blood stained their armor, screams haunted their ears. And in the smoke, they caught glimpses of shadows retreating, as if laughing at them.
Blaze had watched it all, standing unseen in the branches of a dead tree beyond the village. He didn't raise his hand. He didn't need to. His thralls had played their part. The Heroes had been forced to slaughter villagers, whether enthralled or not. The guilt was another cut, another seed of doubt.
By the time the survivors returned to camp, the arguments had worsened.
"You led us into a trap!" one Hero spat at Darius.
"And what would you have done? Let him feed?" Darius shot back.
"You call yourself a strategist, but you've done nothing but bleed us!"
"Better than hiding behind your blessings!"
Even among his classmates, suspicion festered. Had one of them leaked the information? Had one of them been turned already?
Blaze smiled through his familiar's eyes. It was working.
He pulled back from the vision, letting the shadow disperse. In his throne beneath Greywick, his court waited for his report.
"They're unraveling," he murmured.
Ledo grinned nervously. "Already? That easy?"
"They are children playing at war," Blaze said softly. "All it takes is the right whisper, the right wound. They think me a beast to be slain. But I am the spider. And they are already in my web."
Shadows rippled across the walls as though in approval, and the ring pulsed faintly against his hand.
The air in the Heroes' camp had changed. It no longer carried the crackle of divine zeal but the sour reek of fear. Soldiers whispered behind tents, glancing nervously at one another as though the enemy might already wear their face. The firelight seemed dimmer, even when Lucius raged and threw sparks of flame into the sky to prove otherwise.
Blaze drank in the unease through his shadow familiars, each tethered like a string in the web he wove across the hills. He didn't need to strike with fangs or claws—their own distrust was sharper.
The breaking point came three nights after the burning of a village.
A message slipped into the camp. Folded parchment, stamped with a false seal of the church. Its words were simple:
"The vampire walks among you. He has already claimed one of your Heroes."
No signature. No proof. Only the seed.
The paladins seized it, but too late—the rumor spread like wildfire. Who among them had Blaze whispered to? Whose heart had already turned? When one soldier swore he saw crimson glimmer in another's eyes, the camp nearly erupted in violence.
Lucius tried to restore order by roaring his defiance. He lit half the campfires with his own flames, shouting, "I will burn him out, even if he hides in your very shadows! He's nothing but a rat scurrying before the light!"
But his words rang hollow. Every time a soldier's gaze lingered too long, every time a Hero shifted in the dark, unease rippled through the ranks.
Blaze let the paranoia steep. He didn't strike. He only pulled back his shadows and let silence work its poison.
Meanwhile, his court beneath Greywick was thriving in the tension.
Kael returned with new maps of the empire's supply routes, his face a mask of quiet pride. "Every caravan they send, I'll know before they leave their gates."
Ledo spread his hands in nervous glee. "The gangs are whispering already. They say the Heroes kill their own. They say the Light's chosen are cursed."
Seren, dressed in the plain robes of a novice priestess, knelt at Blaze's feet. "The churches bicker. Some say the Heroes are faltering. Some wonder if the gods truly blessed them."
Garrick stood silently, his armor flecked with the dried blood of another raid, while Asha crouched at his side, her eyes gleaming wolf-red. Neither needed to speak—their presence was proof of his growing power.
Blaze leaned back on his makeshift throne, fingers drumming the armrest. "Good. Let them doubt. Let them gnaw on their own faith until it tastes of ash."
Back at the Heroes' camp, paranoia peaked.
Darius accused Marian of holding back her healing. "You let those men die in the ambush! Maybe you're already one of them!"
Marian snapped, her voice raw. "Do you hear yourself? I've saved more lives than your tactics ever did!"
Others joined in, the argument spreading until fists flew. Priests tried to intervene, but Lucius's temper flared hotter than any fire. He unleashed a wave of flames that licked the night sky, silencing all but the sound of crackling tents.
"ENOUGH!" he roared. His voice cracked under the weight of fury and desperation. "We are the Heroes of the Light! We were chosen to bring down monsters, not squabble like them. He wants this. He wants us afraid."
For a moment, silence. The firelight painted his face in gold, but Blaze, watching from afar, saw the tremor in his hand. Saw the shadows behind his eyes. Lucius was bleeding inside, even if he refused to admit it.
And doubt, once tasted, never left.
That night, Blaze whispered through the dreams of a soldier. Not words, only the soft brush of laughter and the vision of crimson eyes in the dark. When the soldier woke screaming, no one believed him. And yet, all believed enough to sleep with their weapons clutched close.
By dawn, the Heroes were exhausted, divided, brittle. Perfect.
Blaze stood once more in his throne room beneath Greywick. Shadows draped the stone walls like webbing, flickering with faint crimson light. His court knelt around him, their faces turned upward.
"They will come for me again," Blaze said softly, his voice echoing in the chamber. "But they will not come as one. Not truly. Every step they take, they bleed trust. Every fire they light, the shadows grow longer."
He rose, the cursed ring pulsing against his skin. The weight of it no longer felt foreign—it felt natural, as though the shadows themselves belonged to him.
"Let them march," he whispered. "By the time they reach my door, they'll already be broken."
His eyes glowed faintly crimson as the shadows rippled outward, spinning across the chamber like a spider's web stretching to every corner of Greywick.