The frigid aura spread across the stone floor like a tide, frost-white traces swiftly creeping toward the tips of Lilith's boots.
The man walked slowly, each step falling on some invisible rhythm. His bare soles pressed against the hard obsidian without making a sound—only a series of faint, barely audible crackles of ice.
Lilith's fingers clamped down on the grip of her crossbow, her knuckles bone-white from excessive force. She wanted to retreat, to turn and flee back through that bronze door, but the oppressive pressure radiating from the man's pupils pinned her feet to the ground like a thousand-pound chain.
"Damn it…" she hissed through clenched teeth, her heart pounding as if about to burst.
The man stopped three paces away from her.
The height difference forced Lilith to tilt her head back slightly. Up close, the man's skin had an unreal, translucent quality. The chest exposed by his open collar showed no rise or fall. He didn't need to breathe. He looked like an artwork carved from moonlight and ice.
He slowly extended his right hand.
Lilith jerked up her crossbow. The silver tip of the bolt quivered in the dim lamplight. "Don't move! Whoever you are, take one more step and I'll shoot you through the heart!"
Her voice came out hoarse, trembling unmistakably.
The man tilted his head slightly, his silver-gray hair sliding off his shoulder. He seemed utterly uninterested in the silver crossbow—a weapon capable of killing mid-level vampires. His crimson pupils contracted faintly, his gaze falling on Lilith's shaking crossbow mechanism.
"Silver?" the man spoke again, his voice still low and dry, with a metallic, grating quality. "An inferior alloy, and you think it can stop me?"
His tone was ancient and ornate, every syllable seeming to flake off the pages of a heavy history book.
Before Lilith could react, the man moved.
Fast—too fast for the eye to catch.
Lilith only saw a blur of shadow before her crossbow was ripped from her hands by an overwhelming force. The heavy iron weapon crashed against the distant obsidian wall with a sharp clatter, the silver bolt snapping into several pieces.
At the same time, an icy, iron-hard palm clamped around her throat, pinning her entire body against the thick stone pillar.
*Thud!*
The pain of her back slamming into the pillar made Lilith grunt, the air in her lungs forced out in an instant. She instinctively grabbed the man's wrist, trying to pry the hand away, but his fingers didn't budge—not even a hint of warmth.
"A descendant of the Nightshade family?" The man lowered his head slightly, his nose almost touching Lilith's.
He sniffed.
Lilith felt a chill carrying the scent of cold cedar wash over her. Then, a flicker of complex emotion passed through the man's crimson eyes—hunger, and a long-unseen scrutiny.
"Your blood… carries the taste of traitors." The man leaned closer to the small wound on her left cheek.
Bright red blood oozed from the cut, stark against her pale skin.
Lilith felt the man's icy fingertip brush against the wound. A faint, tingling numbness spread from the injury, followed by a sharp sting.
"Let… me go…" Lilith forced out the words, her right hand quietly reaching for the inside pocket of her coat. There was a short dagger there, the blade coated with a high-concentration holy water extract.
As if sensing her movement, the man's fingers tightened slightly around her throat. The suffocation came in waves; black spots began to appear in Lilith's vision, her brain ringing with the clamor of oxygen deprivation.
"In the age when Valerians ruled the Council, the Nightshades were nothing but lackeys licking scraps at the foot of the steps," the man murmured close to her ear. "What gave you the courage to awaken a nightmare that your own kind sealed away?"
Lilith's pupils dilated sharply.
Valerians? That was a name that appeared only in the three-thousand-year-old vampire chronicles.
She struggled desperately, her right hand finally closing around the dagger's hilt. Just as she was about to draw it and stab at the man's chest, he suddenly released her.
Lilith fell to the ground, hands braced on the stone floor, greedily gulping down air. Cold sweat dripped from the tip of her nose, shattering into countless tiny droplets.
"Cough… cough…" She coughed violently, her eyes fixed on the man before her.
The man stood at the center of the hexagram, looking at his fingertip. On it was a smear of Lilith's blood. He did not bring it to his lips. Instead, he pressed the bloodstain against an ancient runic mark on his collarbone.
It was a dark red brand left by the seal—originally dull and faded, but the moment it touched Lilith's blood, it glowed faintly with an eerie purple light.
"So that's it." The man lowered his hand. His crimson eyes turned to Lilith, the corner of his mouth curving into a faint, ambiguous smile. That smile carried no warmth; instead, it made Lilith feel as if she had fallen into an ice cellar. "The chains of the curse. You are the final piece of the key."
Lilith stood up, leaning against the pillar, the short dagger held across her chest. She was much calmer now, fragments of what she had read in the tattered *Dictionary of the Dark Ages* flashing through her mind.
"Are you Kane Van Helsing?" she asked loudly.
The man paused at the name.
"Van Helsing…" He repeated the surname softly, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "That madman who fancied himself the incarnation of a god—he actually passed my name down to the present?"
"So you really are the rebellious duke whose every record was erased by the Vampire Council." Lilith's grip on the dagger tightened. In the family's secret files, the name Van Helsing represented taboo. Legend said he had tried to overthrow the bloodline hierarchy of the vampires, to divide the power of the Progenitor equally among all kin, and had ultimately been sealed deep in Acheron by the Council and allied forces.
"Erased?" Kane let out a cold laugh. He looked up at the broken chains hanging from the dome of the hall. "They were afraid. Afraid that I would crawl out of the abyss and take back what is mine."
He turned and walked barefoot toward the heavy blood-jade coffin in the center of the hall.
Lilith watched his back. This was a perfect opportunity. If she ran back now, she might escape before the bronze door resealed.
But her feet didn't move.
The black bone fragment lay quietly at the edge of the hexagram—the only heirloom left by her parents.
Kane stopped beside the coffin and waved a hand casually. A visible wave of dark energy burst from his body, instantly shattering the scattered heavy chains on the ground into powder. Amid the dust, he bent down and picked up the black bone fragment.
"That's mine!" Lilith couldn't help shouting.
Kane turned around, the bone fragment spinning deftly between his fingers. The red light reflected off his almost eerily beautiful face. "Yours? What's engraved on this is one of my ribs. Nightshade girl, you've worn this 'keepsake' for three years without even knowing what it really is."
Lilith froze. Rib?
"Come here." Kane gave the order again.
This time, there was no suffocating pressure, but his voice carried an irresistible force. Lilith felt her legs move uncontrollably, step by step toward him.
This wasn't magic. This was the absolute dominion of a high-ranking vampire over lower beings—no, over a 'vessel' he had chosen.
When Lilith stopped in front of him, Kane extended his other hand and lightly lifted her chin.
"If you run out of here, the hounds chasing me will immediately smell my scent on you. They'll capture you, tear apart your soul, just to find a single clue about my awakening." Kane's voice echoed in the empty hall. "Do you think your fallen family can protect you in this world of steel and steam?"
Lilith was silent. She thought of the relatives who had exiled her for the sake of inheritance, of the vampire kinsman who had tried to hunt her just outside the cemetery.
Eden City had never been a safe harbor. It was another jungle full of predators.
"What do you want me to do?" Lilith took a deep breath and forced herself to meet those crimson eyes.
"Be my eyes. Be my hands. Until I reclaim my authority." Kane released her and pressed the bone fragment back into Lilith's palm.
The burning heat returned, but this time the bone fragment quickly dissolved into a dark red stream of light, burrowing under her skin through her palm.
Lilith watched in horror as a complex red pattern emerged clearly beneath the skin of her wrist—like a ring of thorns coiled around it.
"What… what is this?"
"A contract." Kane said flatly. "From now on, your life will resonate with my blood. If you die, I will be wounded. If I fall, your soul will be completely devoured by the darkness."
Lilith stared at the red mark on her wrist. This wasn't a partnership at all. It was a complete, take-it-or-leave-it coercion.
"It seems I don't have the right to refuse," she replied coldly.
"Smart people tend to live longer." Kane turned and looked toward the corridor leading to the surface. "Now, take me out of this moldy hole. I want to see if the world, three thousand years later, is as rotten as I imagine."
Lilith picked up the hurricane lamp from the floor. The glass cover was cracked, but the flame still flickered stubbornly. She glanced back at the bronze door, now closed again, and understood in her heart that the ordinary graveyard keeper who had pressed that bone fragment into place had died here.
"Outside isn't just rottenness," Lilith said, walking ahead with the lamp. Her shadow stretched long on the obsidian walls. "There are also weapons ready to bury you back underground at any moment. If you still think this is the era of spears and carriages three thousand years ago, you might not even make it through Eden City's gates."
"Oh?" Kane followed behind her, his gait elegant and unhurried, as if he were not escaping a prison but inspecting his own domain. "Then I look forward to it."
The two walked up the sloping corridor.
The cold cedar scent in the air gradually faded, replaced by the familiar damp soil smell of Acheron Cemetery.
When they reached the end of the corridor, the bronze door engraved with prohibitions once again sensed the power of blood, rumbling heavily as it slowly swung open.
Pale moonlight streamed in through the gap.
The white mist outside was still thick. The moment Lilith stepped through the stone door, she instinctively gripped the short dagger at her waist.
The cemetery was eerily quiet. The wounded vampire kinsman who had fled earlier was nowhere to be seen, but a strange sense of oppression hung in the air.
Kane walked out of the door and stood on the ruined altar. He looked up at the dark sky.
In the distance, the massive silhouette of Eden City loomed through the mist. That gigantic city, built of steel, brass, and gears, now looked like a sleeping mechanical beast. Huge exhaust pipes spewed dull red sparks into the sky. The grinding of giant clockwork gears, even from thirty li away, sent a faint, heavy rumble.
"So… that's Eden now?" Kane narrowed his eyes.
"Welcome to the new era, Duke Van Helsing." Lilith extinguished the hurricane lamp. The moonlight illuminated her cool, resolute face. "In this world, vampires are no longer gods. They're just parasites hiding in the shadows."
Kane let out an ambiguous, soft laugh. Those crimson pupils gleamed dangerously in the darkness.
"Parasites? Then I'll remind them what it feels like to be ruled by fear."
No sooner had he spoken than dozens of blinding searchlights flared up from behind the blackthorn hedge.
"There! Abnormal energy fluctuation detected!"
The piercing wail of sirens instantly shattered the cemetery's deathly silence. The roar of heavy steam-powered off-road vehicles grew closer, and rows of soldiers in silver-gray battle armor, wielding chainswords and high-pressure silver-bullet guns, emerged from the fog.
They were the "Crimson Guard" of Eden City—an elite force tasked with eliminating high-level vampire threats.
Lilith's heart sank.
"It seems your awakening has caused a bigger stir than I thought." She drew her short dagger and glanced sideways at the man beside her.
Kane simply stood there, facing the blinding lights and the dark muzzles. On his pale face emerged a chilling, savage smile.
"Too noisy."
He merely raised one hand.