The outer compound of the Abyssal Gang felt smaller than usual. Ezekiel huddled in his corner, a shadow among shadows, his knees pulled tightly to his chest. The silence of the night was a thin veil that did nothing to mask the cacophony in his mind.
He stared down at his palms. In the dim, ambient light of the compound, his skin looked translucent, like aged parchment stretched too thin over bone. He couldn't stop replaying the scene in the dining hall—the way the bioluminescent blood, a delicacy he had once only dreamed of tasting, had turned into liquid fire in his gut.
That blood was pure. It was freshly harvested, rich with the nutrients that sustained the high-ranking members of the gang. It was leagues above the stagnant, metallic sludge his father had occasionally managed to scavenge in the slums of Fluxton. Yet, his body had reacted to it as if it were a hemlock.
Am I even a vampire anymore? the thought whispered through his mind, cold and terrifying.
He ran through the checklist of his existence. Vampires drank blood to live; he had just vomited it back up. Vampires wielded crimson magic fueled by the malum in their cells; his light was a violent, sun-like yellow. When a vampire pushed their limits, their eyes bled red; when Ezekiel pushed his, his hair turned a ghostly white and his eyes glowed like dying stars.
Vampires were children of the night, warding off the dark with decorative lanterns. But Ezekiel felt like he was becoming a lantern himself—a beacon of something alien and ancient that didn't belong in the lightless world of Nefaria.
A sudden shout shattered his introspection.
In the center of the compound, the heavy atmosphere of boredom had finally broken. Savier and Hemlock stood facing one another, the air between them already beginning to hum with the static of unsheathed power. A duel. It was the only currency of respect the gang recognized.
Savier's hand blurred as he summoned a long, luminescent blood sword. He gave it a predatory whistle through the air, the sound sharp enough to cut. Opposite him, Hemlock's fingers twitched, manifesting the twin daggers he had used to hunt Gunther.
"Why the small toys, Hemlock?" Savier teased, a sharp glint in his eyes. "Why not show the boys that little trick you used at the border? The one with the wings."
Hemlock shrugged, his expression weary. "That was for the hunt, Savier. Efficiency over style."
"Or maybe," Savier chuckled, stepping into a low crouch, "you're just afraid of scaring the help."
The surrounding vampires leaned in, their interest piqued. They had heard rumors of a transformation. Hemlock felt the weight of their collective gaze—a hungry, relentless curiosity that wouldn't be satisfied with a shrug. With a heavy sigh of resignation, he closed his eyes.
He concentrated, channeling his *malum* into a concentrated burst along his spine. The air rippled. With a sickeningly wet sound of magical friction, the jagged, crimson bat-like wings erupted from his back. But he didn't stop there. He pushed the imitation further, manifesting the curved, demonic horns and the long, arrowhead tail of the Shadow Fiends.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Audible screams tore through the compound. Several vampires scrambled backward, their faces pale with a primal terror. For the inhabitants of Nefaria, that form wasn't just a magical construct; it was a living nightmare. It was the silhouette of the insurgent war that had threatened to erased Fluxton from the map.
Even Ezekiel felt his pulse spike. His breath hitched as the sight of those wings flooded his mind with memories of fire and the sound of screaming in the dark. He forced himself to breathe, grounding himself in the present. It's just blood magic, he told himself, though his hands wouldn't stop shaking. The war is over.
Savier let out a long, appreciative whistle. "Beautiful. Can you keep it up while I'm trying to take your head off?"
"No," Hemlock snapped, the wings already beginning to flake away into glowing red dust. "It drains me too fast. I'm not a Fiend, Savier. I'm just a man who remembers how they looked."
As the demonic features faded, a collective sigh of relief swept through the spectators, though many still clutched their chests.
"Enough talk," Hemlock growled.
They lunged.
They met in the center of the yard with a deafening *crack*. Crimson lightning arced from the point of impact as sword met daggers. Savier gritted his teeth, the adrenaline finally washing away the tedium of the estate. He poured power into his blade, forcing Hemlock back, only for Hemlock to use the momentum to spring away and reset.
They collided again and again, a blur of motion and light. The tenebrous compound was illuminated by the flickering strobes of their magic. Ezekiel watched with a hollow, clinical detachment, his mind drifting back to his own goals even as he tracked their movements.
Hemlock swung a dagger in a tight arc aimed at Savier's throat. Savier leaned back, the blade hissing past his skin, and countered with an upward slash toward Hemlock's chest. Hemlock twisted mid-air, flinging one of his daggers with a flick of his wrist.
Savier grinned. "Predictable!"
He leaped, the dagger whistling beneath him. But as he reached the peak of his jump, the dagger snapped upward, pivoting in mid-air to strike at his legs. Savier spun like a top, catching the flying blade with his free hand and attempting to override Hemlock's magical signature with his own.
He almost had it, but Hemlock launched his second dagger immediately. Savier was forced to drop the first weapon and plummet back to the earth to avoid being skewered.
He hit the ground and charged, the two homing daggers screaming toward his back. He didn't look. Just as the points were inches from his spine, Savier spun on his heel, his sword a red blur that parried both daggers away in a shower of sparks.
He didn't stop the rotation, using the force to drive a thrust toward Hemlock's heart. Clang! The sword didn't find flesh. It struck a solid, reinforced crimson shield that Hemlock had conjured just in time. The two men stood locked in a stalemate of vibrating magic, their faces inches apart, neither willing to yield an inch of ground.
The stalemate didn't last. Savier's face contorted with effort, his boots skidding against the dirt as he threw the full weight of his torso into the thrust. He wasn't looking for a finesse kill anymore; he wanted to see the blood shield shatter like glass under the sheer pressure of his malum.
Hemlock met the surge with a grunt of defiance. He planted his back foot, bracing the shield with both forearms as he funneled a torrent of crimson energy into the barrier. The air between them hummed a low, violent frequency, the two forces grinding against each other in a shower of sparks that cast jagged shadows against the compound walls.
But Savier had forgotten the daggers.
Behind him, the two crimson blades he had parried earlier didn't tumble to the ground. They hovered, vibrating with Hemlock's lingering will, before snapping back toward Savier's exposed spine with a predatory whistle. Savier's ears caught the displacement of air a split-second too late. He ducked, his instincts screaming at him to use Hemlock's own shield as a backstop, hoping the projectiles would slam into the barrier before Hemlock could pivot them.
Hemlock was faster. With a sharp flick of his fingers behind the shield, he tilted the trajectory of the blades. Instead of overshooting, the daggers dived, embedding themselves deep into the muscles of Savier's lower back.
A raw, jagged scream tore through the compound, silencing the onlookers. Savier leaped away, the shield-clash broken as he reached frantically over his shoulder to rip the conjured steel from his flesh.
"Not yet," Hemlock whispered.
Before Savier's fingers could even brush the hilts, Hemlock clenched his fist. The daggers didn't just sit in the wounds; they acted as lightning rods. Arcs of crimson electricity discharged from the blades, surging through Savier's nervous system. The smell of scorched ozone filled the air as the electrocution locked his joints.
Savier's veins bulged furiously across his forehead, his face a mask of electrified agony. He stumbled, his legs turning to lead, and collapsed onto his knees with a heavy, wet thud.
But even through the haze of pain, Savier's spite burned bright. He forced his right arm to move, his hand trembling as he summoned a circular maw of jagged crimson spikes. With a guttural roar, he launched the cluster toward Hemlock's chest.
Hemlock didn't flinch. He retreated in a smooth, sliding motion, conjuring a volley of spikes of his own. The two sets of projectiles collided in mid-air, a rain of crimson sparks and mini-explosions that lit up the compound in strobing flashes of red. The concussive force rattled the windows of the estate, sending a cloud of dust and grit into the air.
It was a final, desperate gasp of resistance. As the blood magic electrocuting his body intensified, Savier's concentration finally snapped. The crimson spikes he was preparing to launch flickered and died, dissolving into harmless red mist. He couldn't even keep his head up; the weight of the daggers and the constant drain of the electricity had hollowed him out.
Gritting his teeth so hard they threatened to crack, Savier bowed his head toward the dirt.
"I... yield," he wheezed, the words sounding like they were being dragged over gravel.
The daggers in his back immediately dissolved into particles of light. Hemlock stood over him for a moment, his breathing heavy but controlled, before offering a curt, respect-filled nod. The duel was over, but for Ezekiel, watching from his lonely corner, the lesson was clear: in this gang, power wasn't just about strength—it was about who could endure the most pain before they finally broke.