The scent of death in the Academy courtyard was not the familiar, almost sweet aroma of spilled vampire blood. This was different—a sterile, acidic odor that clung to the back of the throat, the scent of life not just taken but utterly annihilated.
Chaos reigned. Students were herded into the main hall, their whispers now full of genuine terror. The bodies of the two drained vampires—Elias and Finn—were covered with black shrouds, but the image of their desiccated forms was burned into everyone's mind.
Jerry stood frozen amidst the crowd, Laura's question—"What are you?"—still echoing in his ears, now drowned by the louder, more dangerous question hanging over the entire Academy: What could do this?
Council guards in obsidian armor sealed the broken gates, their faces grim. Instructor Valerius addressed the panicked students, his voice cutting through the noise like a blade. "Silence! The perimeter has been breached by an unknown force. Until we determine the nature of this threat, all students are confined to the dormitory wings. No one enters or leaves."
The official story was a "rogue entity." But Jerry's mind, sharpened by a diet of ancient, powerful vampire blood, was already connecting the dots. The dissolved gates... the precision of the wounds... the complete desiccation. This wasn't the work of a feral beast. This was methodical. This was professional.
Later, confined to his room, he accessed the Academy's secure archives on his crystal slate, using the advanced clearance codes his father had secretly given him for emergencies. He bypassed the sections on Revenants and ancient curses, heading straight for the records his kind feared most: The Blood Hunter Database.
The files were sparse, compiled from rare, fragmented encounters over centuries. The images were grainy, but they showed symbols: a silver dagger piercing a crimson drop. The texts spoke of humans who were not cattle. They were zealots, infused with alchemical serums and sacred geometries that allowed them to fight vampires on equal footing. They used weapons forged in sunlight, blades that could prevent a vampire's natural healing, and relics that could dissolve their flesh.
One line in a mission report sent a chill down his spine: "Targets exhibit extreme precision. Preferred method: exsanguination via dual cervical punctures, mimicking legendary 'Revenant' lore to sow discord and paranoia within covens."
It was a setup. A brilliant, brutal one.
The Hunter—or Hunters—hadn't just killed two vampires. They had staged the scene to make it look like the work of the one creature the Vampire Council truly feared. They were turning the vampires' own superstitions and power structures against them. The Council would tear itself apart looking for a monster from the inside, while the real enemy watched from the shadows.
A soft knock on his balcony door made him jump. He quickly shut down the slate. It was Laura. She slipped inside, her face pale, her arms wrapped around herself.
"I couldn't stay in my room," she whispered. "Everyone is just... scared. They're saying it's the beast from the stories. The one that bit Marcus."
Jerry remained silent, his heart pounding. He watched her, seeing the fear in her eyes, but also a sharp, analytical light.
"But it's not, is it?" she said, her voice dropping even lower. She stepped closer. "The gates, Jerry. They weren't broken. They were... dissolved. I heard the guards talking. They found traces of alchemical agents. Holy water, concentrated by some kind of catalyst."
He stared at her, stunned. She had been piecing it together too.
"Vampires don't use holy water," she stated the obvious, her amethyst eyes locked on his. "And a mindless beast wouldn't either." She took a shaky breath. "The Bullpen. The human districts. There have been rumors. Whispers of disappearances, not of humans, but of our kind who patrol the perimeter. The Council hushed it up to avoid panic."
The human world. The Bullpen. It was the name for the heavily controlled sectors where the human population lived, providing the blood tithes that sustained the city. They were docile, compliant, their memories wiped regularly by blood magic to ensure obedience. Or so they had all been taught.
But what if a resistance had been growing there all along? What if the cattle had learned to sharpen their horns?
"Laura, you can't—"
"Tell anyone?" she finished for him. "Do you think I'm a fool? If the Council is covering it up, saying it's an internal monster, then pointing fingers at humans would just mark me as a traitor or a lunatic." She looked at him, a new, painful understanding dawning in her eyes. "This is what you were afraid of, wasn't it? Not the monster... but this. The blame. The panic. They're looking for a scapegoat, and you..." Her voice trailed off, the unspoken words hanging between them: And you are different. You would be the perfect scapegoat.
In that moment, Jerry realized the terrifying truth. Laura didn't know what he was, but she had correctly identified the danger he was in. She was trying to protect him from a threat she didn't fully understand.
Suddenly, a commotion erupted from the courtyard below. They rushed to the balcony, hiding in the shadows. A squad of Council Guards was marching a figure in chains toward the Citadel. It was a vampire, one of the junior gatekeepers. He was bloody and battered.
"I saw nothing! I swear!" the gatekeeper cried out. "Just a light... a silver light! It burned my eyes!"
But the Captain of the Guard backhanded him into silence. "Save your lies for the Inquisitors," the Captain snarled. "Two students are dead, drained by a Revenant. And your post was left unguarded. Your cowardice allowed the beast to enter. You will confess your collaboration."
Jerry's blood ran cold. They were already fabricating the narrative. They needed a neat, internal enemy to execute, to restore a sense of order and control. The truth—an organized, external threat from the humans they subjugated—was too terrifying, too destabilizing for their entire society to accept.
The gatekeeper was a pawn. He was the story the Council would tell.
As the prisoner was dragged away, Jerry's enhanced hearing caught the Captain's final, muttered words to his lieutenant.
"The Inquisitors will get a confession from him by dawn. The case will be closed. As for the real investigation... the Grand Chancellor has authorized Phase Two. Send a Deathstalker team into the Bullpen. Find the source of this heresy and cleanse it. No witnesses."
The scene below clarified the brutal new world Jerry now inhabited. The vampire society was closing ranks, willing to sacrifice its own to maintain the illusion of invincibility. And they were about to launch a secret war against a human resistance they refused to publicly acknowledge.
He looked at Laura, who was trembling beside him. The secret of his nature was now entangled in a web of political lies and a looming species war. He was a hidden predator caught between two worlds on the brink of collision—the vampire society that would destroy him if it knew the truth, and the human hunters who had just framed him for murder.
The Council had its pawn to execute publicly. But in the shadows, the real hunters were moving, and their next target could be anyone—even a boy hiding a monstrous secret in plain sight.