Kiss of the vampire (KOTV) volume 2
" The Girl with the Sharp sword"
Mission 11: The Scars of the Fallen King!
..every vein like lightning made of memory and vengeance. His hair lifted. His eyes glowed—not with his own light, but with something ancient, deeper. As if the blade itself was remembering who Kael used to be… and deciding to awaken that spark within Deyviel.
The air twisted around him. Not with heat. Not with cold.
But presence.
A gravitational pull that even Catherine instinctively reacted to, her arm freezing mid-swing.
> "Yamato…" she breathed. "No. That's his—"
Too late.
Deyviel moved.
Fast.
But not just fast—clean. His previous attacks had been wild, driven by emotion. This was different. Every step now was precise. Intentional. Not rehearsed—but remembered. As though the sword was guiding him, showing him echoes of a fighting style long buried in time.
The divine lightning struck—
But Yamato cleaved it in two.
A single upward draw slash, impossibly timed, bisected the bolt. The explosion carved craters into the dome behind him—but not a single spark touched Deyviel.
Catherine's eyes widened.
> "Impossible—!"
Deyviel didn't speak.
He didn't smirk.
He vanished.
Flash step. Reappeared behind her—blade already halfway through a horizontal arc.
Catherine parried—but her guard cracked. A sharp line of blood spilled across her cheek.
Deyviel followed through. Strike after strike, each one cleaner than the last.
Maya could only watch.
> "He's… adapting. No. Inheriting."
Catherine leapt backward, putting distance between them. Her breathing was sharp now. Nevan vibrated with erratic pulses, as though responding to a threat it hadn't felt in centuries.
Catherine staggered slightly, her breath misting in the cold air of her own domain. The freezing wind had stopped swirling. The snowflakes now hung suspended—frozen mid-air like the moment itself had hesitated.
Deyviel stood at the center of it all, sword pointed at her, eyes no longer trembling with fear, but burning with something deeper. Not just power. Resolve. Innocence wrapped in fury.
Then it hit her.
He's just a child.
Her eyes widened. For all his power, all his rage, all his unnatural presence—he hadn't matured. His frame was small. His stance... unrefined. She saw it now in his shoulders, the hesitation in his hands when he gripped the blade too tightly.
"Y-You're a—" she whispered, and stopped.
Her breath caught in her throat. Memories surged—memories she had sealed away. Her oath.
The Absolute Observance of Taboo.
A rule she engraved into her very soul the moment she became Progenitor: "Do not use the Blood Dome on children. Not human. Not vampire. Never."
A vampire child once begged her for mercy as she unleashed her domain, centuries ago. She had watched the light leave his eyes. The guilt never left. She made that rule after. A law above all her instincts. A commandment etched in her very nature.
And now?
Her will faltered.
Crimson Palace trembled.
"Why… Why are you inside my Dome…?" she muttered, more to herself than to him. Her knees buckled slightly as she clutched her chest, feeling the cracks forming not in the ice around her—but within.
This wasn't just hesitation. It was taboo.
She wasn't supposed to fight this. Not him.
"No…" Catherine whispered, her voice low, eyes unfocused. "He's not just a child. He's a threat. A weapon wrapped in soft flesh. This isn't mercy—it's war."
She took a step forward. The ice beneath her heel cracked like a gunshot. Her fangs clenched, breath steaming in the frozen air.
"If I hesitate... he'll kill me," she said aloud, trying to believe it. "He has the Yamato. He has that thing inside him. He's not a boy. He's a trigger."
Deyviel's eyes sharpened, but he said nothing. His silence was louder than a scream. He charged.
Their blades met.
Steel howled.
Catherine danced backward, sweeping a curtain of icicles like daggers across his path. Deyviel spun low, sliding beneath them, then launched upward with a vertical slash. She parried, but the force rattled her bones. His strength kept growing. The longer the fight dragged, the more unstable he became.
And yet…
Why do you still hold back? her mind screamed.
He lunged again. She twisted, blade flashing, and ice erupted in a jagged burst to throw him off. Deyviel took the hit to the ribs, gritting his teeth, but still closed the gap.
One cut grazed her cheek.
Blood hit the snow.
Enough.
She clenched her jaw, her left hand rising—not to attack, but to reinforce. She suppressed the part of her domain that resisted. She would pay the cost later.
With a roar, she dropped low, pivoted, then unleashed a savage sweep of her leg—faster than Deyviel could react.
Crack.
His footing shattered.
Boom!
Her palm struck his chest in the same instant, ice exploding from the point of impact. He flew backward, smashing into the frozen ground, skidding across it like a thrown doll.
His blade slipped from his fingers.
He tried to rise.
She was already above him.
"Sleep," she said coldly.
And brought her elbow down on his temple.
Thud.
Silence.
The snow began to fall again.
Catherine stood over the unconscious boy, chest heaving, face torn between fury and something dangerously close to regret.
She whispered, barely audible, "I broke it…"
Then turned away, heart heavier than her crown.
The snow had started again.
Catherine stood over Deyviel's unconscious body. Wind howled beyond the broken towers of the Crimson Palace, but here—here, it was silent. A stillness that pressed on her chest like the weight of centuries.
She sank to her knees, her gloved fingers brushing through the snowflakes settling on his hair. Not as a queen. Not as the Ice Progenitor. Just as a woman clinging to the ghosts of three lifetimes.
> "Why do you bear his eyes…?" she murmured.
---
Millennia Ago – The Age of Primordials
Before kingdoms. Before gods. There were four.
The first creations of the Fallen Angel:
—Humanity, fragile but blessed with soul.
—The First Dragon: the Emperor, youngest of the Primordials.
—The Vampire King: Lancer, born of eternal hunger.
—The First Werewolf and the First Devil, titans of instinct and chaos.
Together, they fought alongside humans against the Outer Gods in the ancient war that scarred the world. The Emperor stood tall among them, not for his power—but for his heart. He dreamed of peace, of balance. He united the races under one banner.
And then Lancer betrayed him.
In a coup masked as revelation, Lancer stirred rebellion. He framed his brother, fractured the alliance, and left the Emperor vulnerable. And though the humans had once worshiped him, they turned their backs.
Only Lancelot, the First Hero—and the Emperor's dearest friend—learned the truth. Too late.
He struck down the Emperor himself.
And when he realized the lie… Lancelot's fury scorched the earth.
> The Devil Kingdoms burned.
Vampire clans were culled.
The Werewolf tribes were driven into extinction.
The survivors vanished into shadow.
Lancer survived. Of course he did.
---
Generations Later – A Flame Rekindled
The Emperor was reborn as a man.
Maya's father.
Kind eyes. Steady voice. The same spirit, reborn in a fragile mortal shell. He didn't remember his past—but Catherine did.
She felt it the first time she saw him. That warmth. That impossible familiarity.
And so did her sister.
They both fell for him. Again.
But history repeated itself.
Lancer, still lurking behind the veil, manipulated everything. Catherine helped him at first. Trusted him. Wanted peace. Believed he had changed.
She was wrong.
By the time she realized the truth, Maya's father was dead. Her sister gone. Lancer had orchestrated it all again. A second betrayal.
And when Kael appeared years later, wielding the same soul, the same aura—Catherine froze. She saw only rebellion. An echo.
She let Lancer kill him.
And when she found the Emperor's crest—shattered but unmistakable—she broke. Again.
---
Now
She pressed her forehead to Deyviel's, the cold biting through even her skin.
> "He keeps coming back…" she whispered. "To try again. To save us. And each time… I help kill him."
Her voice cracked.
> "I wanted to open the Hell Gate—not for power. Not for conquest. I wanted one wish… to bring him back. One last time. To say I'm sorry."
But now… she wasn't sure anymore.
Would he forgive her?
Would her sister?
Would Maya?
Would this boy—this trigger of fate—understand any of it?
---
She rose.
Not as a queen. Not as a villain. Not even as a sister.
But as a woman who had lost everything—twice—and was ready to burn down the world of the one who took it all.
> "I will not fail him again," she said. "And I will not let Lancer win a third time."
Snow swept around her like falling ash.
Catherine turned away from Deyviel, the first real tears in centuries freezing against her cheeks.
> "Sleep, child. You're not ready for the truth yet."
Alternate POV – "The Watcher in the Snow"
High above the battlefield—where frost bit through stone and silence reigned—something breathed.
A man cloaked in shadow leaned on a crumbling balustrade, his presence masked by the ancient magic of a forgotten bloodline. His cloak billowed in the wind, but his face… his face was ruin.
Half of it had melted in flame, scorched and twisted by divine fury—Deyviel's final strike from that legendary battle. His right eye glowed with a cold crimson hue, the other no more than a burned socket leaking steam.
Lancer.
Once king. Now ghost.
The world believed him dead—destroyed in Volume 1, Mission 48, when Deyviel stood against him and tore through heaven and hell to end the nightmare.
But Lancer endured.
He always did.
Below him, through shattered windows, Catherine knelt in the ruins. Drenched in red, trembling as she held the dying boy—Deyviel, the one she once raised with pride. The one she betrayed.
> "You always were weak when it came to love," Lancer whispered, voice dry as bone and soaked in contempt.
She had once loved another. A better man. The Emperor reborn—Kael. Her sister's love.
And she had butchered her sister for him.
Not for love.
For Lancer.
He had whispered poison into her ear back then, when she was still just a girl burning with envy.
> "He could never love you while she lives."
He had molded her from jealousy. Shaped her into the Ice Queen with lies and ashes.
And now, she wept over a child who bore Kael's eyes. The Emperor's soul. The same soul that kept defying him—resurrected again and again like a curse he could never purge.
> "First your sister," he hissed to no one, "then her husband. Then Kael. And now this boy... You let me kill them all, Catherine. Because you needed me."
A flicker of something—rage or regret—flashed in his lone eye.
> "I told you what love brings. You didn't listen."
He turned from the scene. The old wounds in his chest burned. Not from guilt. From the cold hatred that never left him.
Deyviel. The next vessel. The next incarnation of the enemy he could never truly kill.
> "You're all just faces wearing his soul," he muttered. "But I will burn it all. I swear it. Even if I must rend the world itself."
He walked back into the shadows of the ruined spire, disappearing like smoke into the storm.
> The world thinks I'm gone. Let them.
The final act has yet to begin.
He stood in the shadows of the broken cathedral, a monument to a time the world had tried to forget.
Lancer.
The name itself once conjured images of regal command, untouchable strength, and a twisted sense of purpose. Now it carried something else. Fear, yes—but also confusion. After all, the world believed he was dead.
Deyviel had driven Yamato through his chest, rupturing his core. That battle—the climax of Mission 48—left him charred and broken, his once-perfect face now a ruin of melted flesh and clawed skin. His golden hair had burned away, replaced by coiled black tendrils that refused to regrow. He hid beneath layers of crimson bandages and tattered royal armor, watching the present from the cracks of the past.
"Fools," he whispered.
The flickering flame in his warped eye flared. He watched Catherine collapse from afar, feeling no pity. Only rage. And triumph.
She had failed. Again. Just like she failed her sister.
The memories stabbed deep.
He remembered when she stood before him, crying, trembling after killing her own twin—Maya's mother. She had done it out of love. Or what she thought was love. Twisted. Misguided. But Lancer had planted that seed. He had cultivated her devotion like a farmer tends his field of rot.
"You did well," he'd said that night, cupping her blood-soaked face with pride.
And she had smiled.
Now, she was breaking. Good.
Let her break. Let the child break her. Let the ghost of Kael haunt her until nothing remains. His plans were never about her anyway. She was a pawn. Loyal, yes. But pawns are meant to fall first.
The real game had begun long ago.
Lancer turned away from the vision of the battlefield. The snow around his cloak burned to steam from the heat that pulsed beneath his skin. Deep in the abyss below the cathedral, his new throne waited—surrounded by a growing army of beasts, revenants, and damned souls.
He had already opened several of the hell gates.
Each one had been sealed by ancient guardians, placed millennia ago by the Primordials who feared what they once caged.
But Lancer feared nothing.
He crushed each guardian in turn—silently, mercilessly.
And in their place, he claimed what had once been lost.
The weapons of the Primordial War.
Not just artifacts.
Hellforged Instruments of Cataclysm.
Alastor, the Wailing Blade that screams with every soul it consumes.
Artimist, the Hollow Bow that fires arrows faster than thought and deadlier than divine law.
Ifrit, the Living Gauntlet, burning with the eternal flame of the first demon.
Agane and Rudra, twin scimitars forged in the blood of the fallen angel himself, capable of splitting reality at the cost of the wielder's soul.
He had them all.
The world slept while he armed himself.
He did not conquer Hell. He walked through it.
He was not its prisoner.
He was its chosen king.
And he did not do it for power.
No.
He did it for the gods.
The Outer Gods—those sealed by the ancient war, exiled into the void.
They whispered to him across time, promising a new world. A world shaped by him. A world reborn in chaos.
And most of all… they promised her.
They would return Maya's sister. The one Catherine killed. The one Catherine now tries to mourn through regret.
But regret was weak.
Lancer would resurrect her.
Not out of guilt—but because she was his.
The world would learn.
Lancer never dies.
He waits.
He builds.
And when the last gate breaks and the gods return—
He will burn it all.
To be continued...