The freezing cold bit into Adrian's skin, pulling him back from darkness. His eyes fluttered open to a blur of trees swaying above. The ground beneath him was hard, damp, and covered in frost.
He shivered violently as the realization hit him—he was half-naked. What remained of his clothes were nothing but singed patches of ash clinging weakly to his skin. His body ached all over, each breath scraping through his chest like glass.
He groaned and forced himself up, staggering to his feet. Every step felt like dragging iron chains, but somehow, he managed to stumble through the woods, retracing his way home. The sun was already low in the sky when he reached the edge of town.
By the time he walked into the house, he was trembling from exhaustion.
"Ethan?" he called weakly. Silence.
The house was empty. He dropped his torn pants by the laundry basket, went straight to the shower, and stood under the warm water for what felt like forever. The water ran red for a few seconds—mud, maybe blood—he wasn't sure anymore.
Afterward, he wrapped a towel around his waist, poured himself a glass of juice, and collapsed on the couch. The world was spinning slightly, his eyelids heavy. Within minutes, he drifted into an uneasy half-sleep.
The sound of the door unlocking jolted him awake.
Ethan burst in, cheerful as ever. "What's up, bro?"
Adrian rubbed his eyes. "Hey…"
Ethan frowned. "Why do you look so tired? You went somewhere?"
Adrian shook his head slowly. "Nah… just feeling a bit sleepy."
"Oh." Ethan's expression shifted from concern to excitement in a blink. "Bro, guess what!"
Adrian groaned. "What."
"I said guess."
"Look—if you've got something to say, just say it. You know I'm trash at guessing."
Ethan grinned. "I met a girl today. At the mall."
Adrian stared blankly. "Oh my God." He ran a hand down his face. "All this excitement for a girl you just met?"
Ethan threw a pillow at him. "C'mon, man. She's not just any girl! I think I'm gonna ask her out."
"Do whatever you want," Adrian muttered, already heading for his room. "I'm going to bed."
"Bed? You haven't even had dinner," Ethan called after him. "And what were you doing while I was gone? You look like crap."
Adrian didn't answer. He just shut the door behind him, stripped, and stumbled into the bathroom again. The water hit his skin like needles, but it soothed the ache. Afterward, he barely made it to the bed before collapsing, asleep within seconds—completely naked, lost in dreamless dark.
---
General POV
Far beneath the realms of vampires, deeper than even their oldest tombs, the underworld stirred.
It began as a whisper—low, ancient, and trembling through the dark like a sigh from a dead god. The walls of black stone quivered. Cracks spidered through the obsidian ground.
The chains that had held for millennia began to tremble.
Something was waking.
Long ago, before human civilization touched its first dawn, when vampires were still kings of the earth, there existed a species feared by all—**the Infinites**.
They were the first vampires—untamed, ungoverned, divine in power and demonic in nature. They had no limit to their strength, no conscience to restrain it. Their thirst was endless.
Among them was one whose name became legend and curse alike—**Zucrus**.
He was born of sin itself. A fallen demon and a vampire queen defied heaven and the natural order, and their unholy union birthed the creature that would one day devour nations. Zucrus was no ordinary vampire; he was power made flesh, cruelty with a heartbeat.
When he rose, the world bent beneath him. He murdered the reigning underworld king, **Vladimir**, seizing the throne and commanding the legions of darkness. He waged wars not for conquest—but for pleasure.
The blood of thousands stained his name. The sky itself turned red during his reign.
Vladimir's only son, **Valen**, barely escaped with his life. In exile, Valen gathered what remained of the vampire loyalists and formed a rebellion known as **The Elite**. For centuries they fought, each battle more hopeless than the last.
But Valen would not give up.
He sought forbidden magic, traveling to the edges of existence until he found a way to stop Zucrus—not to kill him, for the Infinite could not die—but to **imprison him**.
The spell demanded a sacrifice.
To bind the Infinite, royal blood must be spilled.
Valen offered his own life to seal Zucrus away, plunging a blade through his heart as he chanted the ancient words of binding. The earth split open, swallowing Zucrus and his kind into an eternal void. Their names were erased from history.
Or so the vampires believed.
Until now.
The chains that had held him cracked. The final seal shattered with a tremor that rippled across realms—born from a burst of impossible power. A human scream that echoed through worlds.
Adrian's scream.
The shockwave that tore through the forest had reached beyond the veil, tearing open the gate of Zucrus's prison.
Inside that black abyss, a single red eye flickered open.
A low, guttural voice echoed through the void.
"Finally… after five hundred million years… I am free."
The figure slumped forward, his body frail and mummified, skin stretched tight across bone like dried leather. His once-mighty frame was reduced to a corpse that refused to decay.
He stumbled to his feet, chains falling away with a sound like thunder.
"I counted each day," Zucrus rasped. "Every second… I remembered."
His voice deepened, resonating through the cavernous dark. "I will make them all pay."
But he was weak. Too weak. The hunger gnawed at him, an endless emptiness clawing inside.
He could not face the vampires yet—not in this state.
He needed life. Blood. Human blood.
His eyes, dim like dying coals, flared once more as a plan formed in his mind.
"The human world…" he whispered. "Soft, fragile, and unguarded."
His cracked lips twisted into a grin.
"Perfect."
He raised his skeletal hand, and the air around him shimmered. Shadows began to move, whispering, slithering, forming faint outlines of soldiers long dead—his forgotten army beginning to stir once more.
And somewhere far above, in the quiet town of Blackville, a faint tremor rippled through the air.
Adrian shifted in his sleep, unaware that his scream had awoken something the world had buried for half a billion years.
The true nightmare had only just begun