Contrary to what Maximus expected, there was no outburst of rage. No explosion of power. Not even a single gasp.
Just silence.
A deep, suffocating silence that was far more terrifying than any scream.
The air grew heavy. The snow around them stopped falling, suspended in midair as if frozen in time. The crimson glow in their eyes intensified, bathing the world in a hellish red light.
"...What... did... you... say...?" Veronica's voice was a whisper, but it carried the weight of a tombstone.
The air didn't just turn cold; it ceased to be air.
It became a physical weight, a liquid pressure that sought to crush the lungs of anyone foolish enough to breathe. The 700-foot wall of the Black Aegis, a structure designed to withstand the literal end of the world, let out a low, tectonic groan.
"Say it again," Vlad, Morgana's father, commanded.
Maximus didn't answer right away.
He couldn't.
For the first time in his life, he felt small, like a child standing before gods who had decided to wipe their creation clean. He could feel their gazes on him, not as family, but as a piece of evidence.
"She's dead," he repeated quietly. "Mother is dead."
Crack.
The sound was soft. Almost unnoticeable.
But the obsidian stone beneath Veronica's feet spiderwebbed outward, fractures racing across the Black Aegis like veins of broken glass.
Dmitri's grin was gone. Completely gone. The same went for Vlad, Maria, and Alexander; their faces were blank, devoid of any emotion.
"Who did it?" Dmitri asked, his voice dangerously calm. He didn't bother to entertain the idea that Morgana died of natural causes.
That woman was, and still is, a force of nature. A walking disaster. She can't die a normal death. Someone must have killed her.
And that someone was going to die a very, very painful death.
"..." Maximus remained silent, his mind racing for a solution to this mess.
He was surrounded by five of the most powerful vampires in existence. Each one of them could end the world on a bad day.
Together?
There wouldn't be a world left to end.
He could defeat one or maybe two of them if he broke his seals. But all five? The best outcome was surprising them.
"ANSWER ME, BOY!" Dmitri roared, finally losing his composure, releasing a small fraction of his power.
BOOM!
The small fraction of Dmitri's power manifested as a wave of pure force, not directed at Maximus, but at the sky. The clouds above them evaporated instantly, leaving a perfectly circular patch of clear sky.
"Sigh…." Maximus let out a sigh. He really didn't want to answer that question.
But he had to.
"Lucian Nosferat," he said, the name tasting like poison in his mouth. "My second brother."
"IMPOSSIBLE!" Veronica roared, her aura flaring violently. "Lucian would never— He adored her! He worshipped the ground she walked on!… I raised him! I KNOW HIM!"
"I wish I were lying… Grandma Veronica," Maximus's voice was laced with a cold, bitter irony. "But he did it."
Dmitri moved. This time, there was no restraint.
Space imploded around him as he crossed the distance in a single step, his hand clamping down on Maximus's skull. Not crushing. Not yet.
"Say it again," Dmitri growled, fangs bared. "Slowly. Carefully."
Maximus didn't resist. Didn't flinch.
"Lucian Nosferat," he repeated. "Killed our mother."
CRACK.
The sound echoed across the horizon. It wasn't bone.
It was concepts breaking.
The idea of family.
The idea of loyalty.
The idea that the Nosferat bloodline was untouchable.
Dmitri released Maximus abruptly, staggering back half a step as if struck.
"Lucian…" he muttered. "My boy… my sweet boy…"
He looked lost. Confused.
For the first time in centuries, Dmitri Tepes, the Lord of Wallachia, looked old.
Vlad stepped forward then, placing a hand on Dmitri's shoulder. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.
Then he turned to Maximus.
His crimson eyes were like two chips of ice.
"Where is he?" Vlad asked. "And where is she… your mother's body?"
A tense silence hung in the air, thick enough to choke on. This was the critical question. The one that would determine the next move.
"Lucian… escaped with…" Maximus said carefully, watching their faces. "He took some of her body."
"What do you mean, some of her body?" Veronica asked, her voice dripping with venom. "What is missing?"
"Everything," Maximus answered, not hiding the truth anymore. "He took everything except her head."
"!!!" A collective gasp of shock and fury escaped from the five elders.
The final straw.
This wasn't just murder anymore. This was desecration.
This was an insult.
Lucian didn't just kill their beloved daughter and granddaughter. He disrespected her. He mutilated his own mother.
He made a mockery of her memory.
And for that, he had to die.
"Are you sure it was him?" Maria spoke for the first time since she arrived; her tone was surprisingly calm given the circumstances. "He could have been controlled, or manipulated."
"I was there, Aunt Maria," Maximus replied, the memory of that day still fresh in his mind. "I saw it with my own two eyes. He—"
Maximus paused, struggling to recall the events of that day. No matter how hard he tried, all he could remember was the image of Lucian standing over their mother's corpse, a crazed grin on his face, and her head resting on the ground beside him, her beautiful silver hair stained with blood.
But besides that?
Nothing.
Just a black void. He couldn't even recall why he was there in the first place.
'Something wrong with my memories?'
"He what?" Vlad urged, his patience wearing thin. "Tell us everything."
"..." Maximus opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come. It was as if a wall had been erected in his mind, blocking him from accessing the full truth of what happened.
"I find it hard to believe," Maria said, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"What do you mean?" Veronica turned to her. "My daughter is dead! My grandson is a traitor! And you find it 'hard to believe'!?"
"Yes!… I find it hard to believe that Lucian could kill her," Maria repeated, her gaze unwavering. "We all know how terrifying Morgana was, even without her full power. It would take an army of gods to bring her down, let alone a single vampire, even if he is her son."
"Are you saying someone else killed her?" Dmitri asked, a hint of hope in his voice. He really didn't want to believe that Lucian could do something like that. He loved the boy.
"I'm saying that there is more to this story than what Maximus is telling us," Maria replied, her eyes narrowing. "A mortal that could stop alien gods from invading our world, even if she was weakened, would not go down so easily. There must be a third party involved."
"..." Maximus remained silent. He had considered that possibility himself. But there was no evidence. Just a gaping hole in his memory.
"Or… maybe," Alexander, the quietest of the five elders, finally spoke up, his voice a low rumble. "It was fake?"
"What do you mean by 'fake'?" Vlad asked, turning to him.
"I mean, what if she's not dead?" Alexander proposed, a glimmer of hope in his crimson eyes. "What if this is all a ploy? A trick? Morgana was always a bit of a trickster, wasn't she?"
The hope in Alexander's voice was contagious. For a brief moment, the suffocating atmosphere lifted. The idea that Morgana, the Blood Queen, the slayer of gods, the walking disaster, could have faked her own death was… plausible.
Very plausible.
She was, after all, a master of deception. A woman who could turn a battlefield into a stage and play with the lives of gods and mortals alike.
"What about your father, Lith? Where is he?" Alexander asked, turning to Maximus.
"He… he left," Maximus answered, a fresh wave of guilt washing over him.
"Left?" Veronica's eyes narrowed. "Left where?"
"I… I don't know," Maximus admitted. "He just… vanished after… after Mother died."
The hope that had just ignited was immediately extinguished. Lith's absence was another piece of the puzzle, and it didn't fit the 'it was all a trick' scenario.
Lith—who was Lilith pretending to be a man—would never leave Morgana's side. Not willingly.
Unless she was also dead.
But that was a possibility Maximus refused to even consider.
If his father were also dead, then the Nosferat family had truly lost its way.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the howling of the wind.
"We are wasting time," Maria declared, her voice like ice. "Whether it was a trick or not, we need to find out the truth. And the only person who can give us the answers is Lucian."
She turned to Maximus, her gaze intense.
"Where is he, Maximus? Where is Lucian hiding?"
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "I've been searching for him for fifteen years, but it's like he vanished from the face of the earth."
"Hm…" Dmitri stroked his chin, a thoughtful expression on his face. "That's not like him. The boy was always a bit of a show-off. He wouldn't just hide in a hole. He would be out there somewhere, making a scene, drawing attention to himself."
"Unless he's afraid," Vlad suggested. "Afraid of us."
"He has reason to be," Veronica's aura flared again, the cracks on the black wall beneath her feet widening. "B-But… maybe he really didn't do it… maybe he's just covering for someone."
She wanted to believe it. She needed to believe it. Lucian was raised by Veronica herself; she saw him as a pure soul, a child incapable of such a heinous act.
"We will find out," Dmitri declared, his gaze sweeping over the horizon. "We will tear this world apart if we have to, but we will find the truth. And whoever is responsible for my granddaughter's death… will pay."
His words were a promise.
A vow.
A death sentence.
"In Blood."