The Acheron Cemetery lay thirty li north of Eden City. A perpetual white mist hugged the ground, rolling across the earth. The air was thick with the smell of damp soil and rotting pine needles. Eden City was a fortress surrounded by giant mechanical clock towers and towering smokestacks. By day, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people worked in factories — operating sewing machines, polishing brass gears — in exchange for rationed black bread and low-grade synthetic meat. After eight in the evening, air-raid sirens wailed across the city, and the streets emptied on schedule. The city was not ruled by a human mayor, but by vampire barons and viscounts who lived in the spires of the Inner City. The gears of technology had jammed in an era where steam and early electricity coexisted. Magic and vampire bloodlines were the core principles that kept the world running.
Lilith Nightshade drove a rusty iron shovel into the soil. She wore a black tweed coat with a worn collar, and her leather boots were caked with yellow mud. In her hand she carried a brass hurricane lamp. The flame illuminated a weathered granite tombstone in front of her. Moss covered the surface of the stone. She peeled away the moss with her deerskin-gloved fingers, tracing the carved lines with her fingertips. It was an ancient blood-rune script.
The Nightshade family had once been one of the premier vassal families in Eden City, serving the vampire nobility for generations by deciphering ancient incantations and historical texts. Three years ago, an internal power struggle broke out over succession. Lilith, a peripheral branch descendant, was bundled off to this abandoned Acheron Cemetery along with a few boxes of her deceased parents' old books. She became the graveyard keeper.
Lilith bent down and pulled a flat chisel from the side pocket of her boot. She aimed at a thick root wedged in a crack in the tombstone and struck hard. The root snapped, and green sap splattered onto the mud.
"Sector thirty-two, outer ring," she muttered under her breath. She unclipped a leather-bound notebook from her belt and marked an X on the page with a sharply sharpened charcoal pencil.
A hand gripped the iron fence surrounding the cemetery. Rust flaked off.
Lilith stopped writing and closed the notebook. She blew out the lamp. Darkness swallowed everything.
Twenty meters away, behind a headless angel statue, came the sound of heavy, wheezing breaths — like a leaky bellows. The wind carried a stench of strong sourness and rotting blood.
In human society, ordinary people were at the very bottom. A few, through brutal training, became vampire hunters, wielding silver weapons issued by the guild to hunt down low-level vampires who crossed the line. An even smaller number awakened weak special abilities and became awakened ones, fought over by various factions. The vampire race had an even stricter hierarchy. Newly turned fledglings — those just bitten and transformed — lacked reason and acted purely on bloodlust.
The creature that had climbed over the fence was a fledgling.
It crawled out from behind the statue. By the faint moonlight, one could see it wore a coarse canvas vest like a factory porter. Two canine teeth of uneven length stuck out below its lower lip. Drool dripped from its chin onto the grass. On all fours, it crawled along the ground, searching for the scent of living flesh.
Lilith leaned against the back of the tombstone. She undid a fastener inside her coat and pulled out a palm-sized crossbow. The tips of the bolts were a dull, matte silver.
The fledgling caught the scent of a human. It turned, kicked off with its hind legs, and lunged at the granite tombstone.
Lilith dropped low and rolled. The fledgling's claws scraped the edge of the granite, sending stone chips flying against her coat.
She knelt in the mud, raised the crossbow, and pulled the trigger.
*Thwip.*
The silver bolt pinned the fledgling's left thigh.
The creature let out a distorted scream. Where pure silver touched vampire flesh, the skin and flesh immediately bubbled and smoked, sizzling with a burnt stench that overwhelmed the sour smell.
The fledgling crashed to the ground. It clawed at the silver bolt. The moment its palms touched the silver shaft, the skin carbonized. It opened its mouth in a whistling, miserable howl. Giving up on pulling the bolt out, it scrambled on all fours and crashed through the iron fence. The barbs on the fence tore through its canvas vest, ripping off two chunks of flesh stained with black blood. It limped away into the thick fog beyond the cemetery, leaving a trail of blackish blood in the mud.
Lilith stood up. She brushed the withered grass and mud from her knees. She walked over, pulled the spare silver bolt from a tree trunk, wiped the sand off the tip with a piece of coarse cloth, and returned it to the quiver on her belt.
She walked to the gap in the iron fence. Squatting down, she picked up the torn piece of canvas vest. A string of black numbers was printed on it: 08-Weaving Mill No.2.
"A laborer from the eastern factory district," Lilith muttered, tossing the scrap into the grass. For the past half month, a large number of people had been disappearing from the slums of Eden City, only to reappear days later as mindless fledglings wandering the outskirts. Some vampire kin were illegally turning civilians. The vampire hunters' guild spies would soon find that kin and burn him to ash. The graveyard keeper's job was merely to clear weeds from the cemetery and guard against hungry vampires that couldn't find prey in the civilian districts and came out to the suburbs to try their luck.
Lilith struck a match and relit the hurricane lamp. She unhooked a canteen from her waist, poured out clean water, and washed the mud off her fingers. Raising the lamp, she walked past the outer ring and followed a gravel path deeper into the cemetery.
The Acheron Cemetery was divided into an outer ring and an inner ring. The outer ring held the graves of human merchants, low-ranking vampires, and vassal family members. The inner ring was separated by a tall hedge of blackthorn bushes and a crumbling stone wall. The inner ring was a forbidden zone for all of Eden City. Lilith's nightly patrol always ended at that stone wall.
Lilith's cabin was halfway up the eastern hill of the cemetery. Inside, it was packed with moldy parchment scrolls and thread-bound books. By day, she sat by the window, translating ancient vampire script that even the Nightshade family elders couldn't read, word by word. Her parents had died in the family power struggle; her relatives had stripped her of her inheritance and driven her out of Eden City. The exile document was tucked under the leg of the cabin's table. Far from the family's political infighting, she had plenty of time to study the books. Hidden in her bloodline was a latent power. Whenever she approached stone tablets carved with ancient blood-runes, her heartbeat would resonate with the surrounding magnetic field. It was an unconfirmed awakened ability.
Continuing along the gravel path deeper in, the white mist turned pale gray. The tombstones in the outer ring bore crosses or ordinary human script, but at the edge of the inner ring, the headstones became tall obelisks covered in tangled ancient vampire runes.
The blackthorn bushes grew as high as two men. Their thorny branches intertwined, forming a natural barrier.
Squeezing through a gap in the bushes, Lilith stopped.
A broken circular stone wall stood before her. The wall's surface was covered with sword marks and glassy traces left by intense heat. They testified to a fierce battle long ago.
Set into the center of the stone wall was a massive bronze door five meters tall.
The door was crusted with thick green patina. On either side of the frame were carved two winged, hideous gargoyles. Their eye sockets held two cloudy pieces of obsidian.
In the middle of the door was carved three concentric circles. Inside the circles, an inverted cross was deeply recessed into the bronze plate.
Lilith raised the hurricane lamp higher. The flame reflected off the inverted cross.
The three concentric circles represented the highest prohibition of the Vampire Council: the outer circle stripped power, the middle circle imprisoned the body, and the inner circle sealed the soul.
Only a marquis or duke guilty of high treason would deserve such a seal. A thousand years ago, the Vampire Council underwent a great purge. Several founding dukes, accused of betraying the vampire race, were jointly suppressed by the other princes and elders.
Lilith pressed her left hand against the bronze door. The metal surface was extremely cold; even through her leather glove, her palm went numb.
A faint vibration traveled through the glove to her palm. The frequency was very low — one pulse every three seconds. The same rhythm as a massive heart beating at the bottom of an abyss.
For the past three years, the door had been silent, making no sound at all. Then, three months ago, a rare total solar eclipse occurred over Eden City. From that day on, a regular vibration had begun from inside the bronze door.
Lilith withdrew her hand. She unbuttoned the collar of her coat and pulled out a thin black cord from her coarse undershirt.
Tied to the end of the cord was an irregular black bone fragment. It was only half a palm in size, with sharp edges and a surface covered in dark red veins finer than a strand of hair. This was a heirloom passed down from the first head of the Nightshade family. Generations of family heads had worn it as a protective charm. It was passed down to Lilith's generation.