The coordinates led Jerry to the skeletal remains of the old alchemical research facility, a place known in vampire historical logs as "The Scar." Located in a forgotten buffer zone between the Bullpen and the wildlands, it was a graveyard of rusted metal and shattered concrete, bleached by the moon and scoured by the wind. The air here was dead, carrying the ghosts of old fires and forgotten screams. This was the source of the purge. The heart of the serpent.
He had slipped away from Crimson City using the advanced Shadow Melding he had always hidden, becoming one with the night in a way that would have made Instructor Valerius' head spin. He moved with a silence that was innate, not taught, his senses stretched to their limit, tasting the air for any sign of a trap. He smelled the cold stone, the metallic tang of decay, and... the distinct, sterile scent of the Hunters.
He found them in the facility's central courtyard, where a massive, shattered glass dome offered a view of the starry sky. There were three of them, standing in a loose triangle. The one in the center, shorter and slighter than the others, removed their helmet.
It was a woman. Her hair was cropped short, her face etched with the sharp lines of a hard life, but her eyes held a fierce, intelligent light. They were the eyes of the Hunter he had faced, the one he had let go.
"You came," she said. Her voice, unfiltered, was calm and measured, devoid of the fanaticism he had been taught to expect. "I am Elara."
Jerry remained at the edge of the courtyard, cloaked in shadow. "You said you had answers."
"We do," she replied. "But first, a question. Why did you spare me? A vampire's instinct is to kill. Yours was to... communicate."
It was the question everyone was asking. He gave her the same, partial truth he gave himself. "I'm not like them."
A grim smile touched her lips. "No. You are not." She gestured to the ruins around them. "This was not just a laboratory. It was a sanctuary. My ancestors weren't developing weapons. They were searching for a cure."
"A cure?" The word felt foreign on his tongue.
"For the Vampiric Curse," stated one of the other Hunters, a tall man with a scar across his jaw. "They believed it was a plague, a corruption of the natural order. They sought a way to reverse it, to restore humanity to your kind."
Jerry felt a cold disbelief. "The Council teaches that our form is an evolution. A blessing from the Blood Matron."
"The Council lies," Elara said bluntly. "They always have. The first Vampire Lords were humans afflicted with a terrible mutation. They conquered through strength and bred a mythology of superiority to justify their dominion. My people, the Alchemists of the Serpent, were close to a breakthrough. We found a retrovirus that could rewrite the vampiric genome, restoring the ability to walk in the sun, to digest real food... to die a natural death."
The implications crashed over Jerry. A cure. It would undo everything his society was built upon. It was the ultimate heresy.
"The Purge happened because the Council found out," Elara continued, her voice hardening. "They couldn't risk their power being undone. They didn't just kill the researchers. They burned the data, executed their families, and erased us from history. They called us 'Hunters' to make us sound like mindless killers. We are simply the inheritors of a lost cause. The last remnant of the Serpent."
She looked directly at Jerry, her gaze piercing. "And you... you are their greatest failure. Or their greatest success."
Jerry's breath caught. "What do you mean?"
"The retrovirus was never tested. But the theoretical models suggested a side effect. A vampire cured in utero, or one born with a natural immunity, would not simply become human. They would become something else. A being that no longer craves human blood, because its body rejects the curse. A being that instinctively seeks the most potent source of life energy available to sustain its new, unstable form." She paused, letting the words sink in. "The blood of its own kind."
The world tilted on its axis. Jerry staggered back a step, leaning against a crumbling wall for support. He wasn't a Revenant, a mythical monster. He was... an accident. A living, breathing testament to a cure that was never administered. A biological weapon that had turned on its creators.
"The sun... the hunger... it wasn't a curse," he whispered, the truth a painful, liberating wound. "It was the cure working."
"It was a theory. You are the proof," Elara said. "We've been watching you since the first rumors of a vampire who didn't burn reached us. When you didn't kill me in the Bullpen, we were sure. You are what my ancestors died to create. You are the hope they were murdered for."
The weight of it was crushing. His entire life, his self-loathing, his fear—it had all been based on a lie. He wasn't an abomination; he was a miracle. A unwanted, dangerous miracle.
"Why tell me this now?" he asked, his voice raw.
"Because the Council is closing in on you," the scarred Hunter said. "And because their purge is not over. They are planning a final solution for the Bullpen. A mass 'culling' under the guise of a Revenant panic. They will kill thousands of humans to root out a few dozen of us. You are the only one who can stop it."
"You have a foot in both worlds, Jerry," Elara implored. "You can walk in the sun and the darkness. You can help us expose the truth. You can help us finish what my ancestors started."
It was an impossible choice. To side with the Hunters was to betray his family, his entire species. To refuse was to condemn thousands to death and to live as a weapon for the Council, forever hunting the only people who understood what he was.
Before he could answer, a sharp, familiar voice cut through the night from the ruins above.
"I knew it."
Jerry spun around. Standing on a broken gantry, silhouetted against the moon, was Kael. His crossbow was loaded, aimed not at Jerry, but at Elara. His face was a mask of triumphant fury.
"I followed you, Ghost. I knew you were a traitor. Consorting with the enemy. Listening to their lies." He sneered. "The Grand Chancellor will reward me handsomely for your head. And theirs."
In that split second, Jerry saw the fragile future shatter. If Kael reported this, the Hunters were dead, and he was doomed. The Chancellor's "Project Daywalker" would become "Project Execution."
His body moved before his mind could fully process the decision. The Revenant instinct, the predator, surged forward, not with rage, but with a cold, terrifying clarity.
He didn't leap at Kael. He simply looked at him, and let the careful, lifelong dam inside him break.
He released his aura.
It was not the cold pressure of a vampire. It was a physical wave of primal dominance, a psychic shriek of ancient power that smashed into Kael. The air grew heavy, the very shadows seemed to writhe. Kael's eyes bulged, his triumphant sneer dissolving into pure, unadulterated terror. He stumbled back, his crossbow clattering to the ground. He wasn't facing a fellow student; he was facing the apex predator of his species' darkest nightmares.
"W-What are you?" Kael stammered, collapsing to his knees, unable to bear the weight of the presence.
Jerry took a single, silent step forward, his eyes glowing with faint silver light in the darkness.
"I am the truth they tried to purge," Jerry said, his voice the low rumble of an earthquake. "And you will forget you ever saw me here. You will return to the city and tell them you found nothing. If you speak a word of this to anyone, I will know. And I will come for you."
It was not a bluff. It was a promise etched into Kael's soul with the force of Jerry's will. The vampire boy scrambled backward, then turned and fled into the night, the sound of his panicked footsteps echoing through the ruins.
Silence returned. Jerry turned back to the Hunters. Elara and her companions were watching him, not with fear, but with a renewed, solemn respect. They had just seen what the cured vampire could do.
The choice was made. The line was crossed.
He looked at Elara, his new, terrifying resolve solidifying.
"Tell me everything," Jerry said, his voice now that of a soldier, not a student. "The Council wants a war. We'll give them one they never expected."