The path from the urn chamber narrowed into a black throat of stone. The air pressed heavy, cold, and metallic, as if the walls themselves had drunk blood for centuries. Noctis walked without sound, his footfalls swallowed by the silence. Behind his eyes, the Omen Eye throbbed faintly, threads of red-gold lacing across his vision. Weaknesses bloomed in the stone itself—veins of sanctity, fault-lines of force, cracks where essence had been patched over by time. The dungeon was no longer opaque to him. It was a corpse waiting to be dissected.
He stopped. The air shifted.
A vast chamber unfolded, wider than any before. Its floor was polished obsidian streaked with veins of silver script. Countless blades hovered in the air, suspended in invisible grip—swords, spears, axes, hammers, each sanctified, each humming with prayers etched into their edges. The walls dripped with chains that ended in hooks, from which hung shattered vampire bones.
No guardians walked the floor. No soldiers barred his path. Only the weapons themselves, waiting.
The first blade twitched.
The air shrieked.
A storm of sanctified steel descended.
[Skill: Wraith Step — Activated]
Noctis blurred sideways, reappearing five meters away as a spear skewered where he had stood. Blades rained like hail, clattering sparks from the floor. He raised a claw and the air trembled.
[Skill: Orbiting Arsenal III — Activated]
The scythe, guan dao, and sword-forms of the Bloodfang Reaper burst into orbit, circling him like crimson predators. In his hands, two additional Bloodfang Reapers shimmered into being, both locked in sword form. Dual blades. The arsenal was complete.
The storm hit. The orbiting weapons intercepted, steel screaming against steel. Sparks cascaded in bloody rain. Noctis's expression did not shift, but his eyes narrowed.
[Skill: Blood Lash — Activated]
A crimson whip cracked outward, coiling around a sanctified hammer mid-swing. He yanked, pulling it into the path of falling swords. They shattered against it in a flare of sparks.
The Omen Eye blazed. Illusions flickered apart; false blades dissolved in his sight. He stepped through them, silent as shadow.
[Skill: Ghost Vein II — Activated]
Mist coiled around his body. He phased between walls of steel, reappearing inside the storm.
His dual swords rose.
[Doctrine: Sword Doctrine — Piercer Thrust]
The twin Bloodfang Reapers thrust forward with perfect unity, driven by the Omen Eye into a glowing seam of weakness. The strike pierced through the core of a weapon cluster—the entire formation collapsed inward, shattering into shards.
But more rose. A thousand still hovered.
Noctis tilted the guan dao in orbit.
[Doctrine: Spear Doctrine — Impaler's Reach]
The weapon shot outward like a crimson comet, impaling a spear of sanctity and rupturing its glyph-core. The weapon screamed like a dying priest before disintegrating into shards.
Still they came.
[Doctrine: Hunter Doctrine — Predator's Mark]
A crimson rune lashed across the air, binding a cluster of floating swords. Their glow dimmed, regeneration suppressed.
[Doctrine: Assassin Doctrine — Shadow Veil]
Noctis vanished again, sliding between the storm unseen. The blades searched for him, but found nothing.
Then came the execution.
[Skill: Exsanguinate II — Activated]
The rune-marked weapons bled. Sanctified cores burst, spraying ichor across the chamber. The chains above rattled like laughter.
Yet amid the chaos, the Omen Eye revealed truth—at the far end of the chamber hung a chained greatsword, wrapped in thirty bindings, scripture burning along its edge. The source.
Noctis advanced.
[Doctrine: Shield Doctrine — Crimson Aegis]
A thorned aegis of blood flared before him. Weapons crashed against it, but every impact bled into crimson mist. Through that storm he walked, scythes, swords, and guan dao cutting down steel like stalks of grass.
At last, he stood before the chained greatsword.
The Omen Eye split its false sanctity open—it was no holy relic, but a vampire blade stolen and bound.
The scythe swung down.
[Doctrine: Predator Doctrine — Night Reaver]
One strike. Chains ruptured. The greatsword screamed, blood erupting from its inscriptions as the chamber fell still. Every other weapon clattered dead to the floor.
The blade drifted into Noctis's waiting hand, chains snapping like brittle glass. Crimson light pulsed along its edge, resonating with his veins.
He said nothing. The silence was his answer.
The silence after the storm was oppressive. Every fallen weapon lay scattered, stripped of sanctity, reduced to husks of lifeless steel. Only the chained greatsword pulsed in his grip, its crimson aura bleeding against his hand like a heart that refused to die.
The Omen Eye burned. Glyphs writhed across the blade, not as holy scripture, but as brands meant to cage it. Vampiric veins throbbed beneath, visible only to him—lines of power shackled in sanctified lies.
Noctis's claws curled tighter around the hilt.
[Skill: Blood Forging — Activated]
The greatsword trembled. The blood essence within responded, threads of crimson peeling free from the inscriptions as if yearning for his command. The chains rattled in protest. His aura pressed back, sovereignty bleeding into the air.
It wasn't merely a weapon. It was a prisoner.
The chamber groaned. From the blade spilled whispers—shattered fragments of memory, not his own.
He saw a battlefield of old. Vampires wielding this blade had once stood against armies of priests, cutting sanctified legions apart until betrayal broke their lines. The greatsword's last bearer was dragged down, bound in chains of false light, sealed within this sanctum as punishment.
The memories hit him in waves. Blood. Betrayal. Silence.
He remained expressionless, but inside the Grid stirred. The Royal Blood Vein and Noble Blue Blood Vein resonated with the artifact, their fusion with Crimson Echoes pulling at its core.
The blade screamed.
[Doctrine: Crimson Echoes — Progenitor's Omen]
The Omen Eye flared, cutting past illusion. The sanctity binding the weapon cracked open to its truth—a relic of vampire sovereignty, twisted, inverted, made into a ward-binder against its own kind.
Noctis raised the weapon and pulled.
Chains shattered. Sanctified brands peeled away like burnt flesh. The chamber's walls shook, wards unraveling.
[Skill: Chalice of Apostasy — Activated]
The chalice materialized in his palm, siphoning the false light bleeding from the weapon. Threads of sanctity poured into him, dissolved into liquid crimson that burned through his veins. The greatsword thrashed once, then stilled.
Blood essence poured into him. The Grid shuddered.
Resource Gains:+500 Blood Essence+60 Faith Essence+30 Iron Essence+5 Soul Essence
The blade's glow dimmed. In his hands, it no longer hummed with false scripture—it pulsed with raw vampiric power, heavy, alive, bound only to him.
[New Relic Acquired: Sanguinastra, the Bound Sovereign]
The weapon's name flared into his mind like a brand.
As he tested its weight, the Grid rippled again. From the devoured sanctity and freed blood aura, new skills awoke.
[Skill Unlocked: Blood Resonance — Channel relic's pulse into amplifying doctrines.][Skill Unlocked: Sovereign Cleave — Wide arc strike, echoes through chained targets.][Skill Unlocked: Warding Bane — Weakens sanctified objects, wards, or holy constructs when struck.]
Noctis swung the greatsword once. The air cracked. Blood mist hissed across the chamber, every surviving glyph on the walls dimming in fear.
He lowered the blade slowly. The arsenal around him shifted—the orbiting scythe, guan dao, and sword trembled as if recognizing the new addition. The two locked Bloodfang Reapers at his sides hummed in sympathy.
Now, silence was no longer silence. It was recognition. The sanctum itself bent to him.
Noctis said nothing. He simply walked toward the next gate, the vampire relic in his hand bleeding a crimson trail that seared the floor.
The corridor narrowed into ribs of stone and scripture. Heatless light bled through hairline seams, pulsing like a buried heart. Sanguinastra lay across Noctis's shoulder, its edge drinking the pallor from the walls. He did not speak. The Omen Eye burned steady, and the sanctum answered.
The floor unfurled sigils. Iron coffers split open with a sigh of prayer. Six ward-knights rose—hollow suits bound by litany and furnace breath, each carrying a slab-shield engraved with a saint's wound and a mace heavy enough to crater bone. Chains webbed between them, alive with sanctity, tightening the lane into a killing chute.
He walked into it.
[Skill: Blood Resonance — Activated]
Sanguinastra's pulse synchronized with his veins. The chamber's wards flickered—half a heartbeat off. The first knight stepped, shield braced, mace rising in a benediction meant to break monsters.
The guan dao swept out from his orbit like a thrown moon.
[Doctrine: Spear — Rotational Bore]
Metal screamed. The shield convulsed as the bore chewed through its glyph-core and punched the hollow inside. The suit imploded. Chains recoiled like web burned by oil.
Three maces fell together. He didn't yield an inch.
[Doctrine: Shield — Crimson Aegis]
Thorns bloomed; sanctified iron shattered against them and bled back as red mist. Noctis slipped through the gap the Omen Eye painted across the floor—a seam where ward-runes overlapped out of phase.
Two more knights moved to close him. He lowered Sanguinastra until the flat kissed his thigh. The blade seemed to grin.
[Relic Trait: Warding Bane — Applied]
Sanctity guttered along the nearest chain. He cut once.
The chain died like a strangled hymn. The left knight fell out of formation.
His dual Bloodfang Reapers flashed into his hands.
[Doctrine: Sword — Piercer Thrust][Doctrine: Sword — Silent Sever]
The first thrust spiked the knight through the collar glyph; the second cut the prayer out of its spine. Armor clattered, already forgetting it had ever been holy.
The remaining trio synchronized, shields touching, maces swinging in a punishment cadence. The lane narrowed to a coffin's width. The sanctum pressed its will through them like a hand on his throat.
He did not back away.
[Skill: Sanguine Crucible — Activated]
Blood light climbed the guan dao's spine. Edges reforged mid-motion; the haft hummed like a plucked vein. He set the point into the floor and twisted.
[Doctrine: Spear — Helix Bore]
The spiral drilled up through the shield wall, punching daylight where there had been prayer. The formation buckled.
Noctis flowed through the gap the instant it existed.
[Doctrine: Assassin — Assassin's Surge]
Time stretched thin. His body wrote a sentence the knights couldn't read.
[Skill: Marrow Spikes — Activated]
Spurs of bone-iron tore from the stone, pinning greaves and knees. Maces halted mid-arc. He raised one blade and then the other, and the air answered with red.
[Skill: Exsanguinate II — Activated]
Blood detonated inside hollow suits. Litany became scream, then silence. Sanctity ran down his boots in rivulets that never reached the floor.
Two remained. They tried to break contact—shields high, chains flaring, backing toward the next gate to lock it with their dying light. Sanguinastra's edge whispered.
[Relic Skill: Sovereign Cleave — Activated]
He cut in a wide, contemptuous arc. The strike didn't stop at steel; it echoed through the chain-web, rupturing links three, four, five points away. The last pair collapsed as if the sanctum had withdrawn permission for them to stand.
A final ward flared on the gate—a lattice of scripture designed to anchor the whole hall. Sanguinastra leaned toward it like a hound at a throat.
[Blood Resonance — Amplify]
[Progenitor's Omen — Activated]
True seams burned crimson-gold. He set the flat of the blade against the keystone rune and pushed. No thunder. No spectacle. The ward simply forgot how to exist and went out.
Silence returned—deeper now, attentive. The hall seemed to wait for a verdict only he could render. He gave none. He passed beneath the failing arch, Sanguinastra trailing a narrow line of red that did not drip.
The corridor beyond the shattered gate sloped downward, narrowing into ribs of stone banded by scripture. The deeper Noctis walked, the louder the silence became—an expectant hush, as if the sanctum itself had turned its head to watch.
Sanguinastra bled light with every step, crimson veins crawling from its edge across the walls. The air grew heavy, tilting toward him. The dungeon had been designed to resist vampires. Now, dragged into his resonance, it leaned closer as if trying to remember what it once served.
He passed beneath a vaulted arch.
The Omen Eye burned.
For an instant the vision ripped wider than his skull could bear—lines of weakness, layers of wards, pulses of essence interlocked like gears in a machine older than memory. At the core, buried deeper than this level, something vast pulsed once in answer. A heart. Not flesh. Not stone. Something bound. Something that remembered him.
The ground shifted.
Chains split from the walls, not dead like the ones he had broken, but alive with red fire. They whipped across the corridor and locked together, forming a lattice ahead. The sanctum had awakened a hinge—a trial meant for a sovereign of blood.
The floor cracked open. From the gap rose constructs older than the ward-knights: Obsidian Arbiters, towering figures of black stone veined with sanctified metal, each wielding twin glaives. Their heads bore no face, only a single brand burning: OBEY.
Noctis did not move. He let the resonance spread.
[Relic Skill: Blood Resonance — Activated]
The lattice shook. Chains groaned as Sanguinastra's pulse bled into them. The Arbiters froze for a fraction of a breath, as if some part of them wanted to kneel.
The sanctum crushed that hesitation. Their brands flared. Both glaives swept at once, arcs meant to scissor him in half.
Noctis stepped forward into them.
[Doctrine: Tempo Ledger — Cadence Step]
His movement locked with their rhythm, sliding between their strikes like ink between raindrops. Glaives clashed behind him. The corridor thundered.
His dual Bloodfang Reapers flared into his hands.
[Doctrine: Sword — Crescent Cut]
[Doctrine: Sword — Silent Sever]
One blade carved a sweeping arc through an Arbiter's waist, the second slipped into a seam the Omen Eye revealed behind its brand. Stone screamed, metal ruptured, the Arbiter collapsed into shards.
The second advanced, chains of sanctity erupting from its arms to bind him.
[Relic Trait: Warding Bane — Applied]
Sanguinastra cut once. The chains bled light and fell like withered vines. He pivoted.
[Doctrine: Predator — Night Reaver]
The scythe-form cleaved in a wide, spiraling execution arc. The Arbiter's torso split open, its brand sputtering into silence.
The corridor did not calm. The lattice of chains ahead thickened, layer upon layer of scripture burning. The Omen Eye showed him their truth—this was no simple seal. This was a lock on the sanctum's heart. Breaking it would wake whatever the dungeon had buried alive.
He raised Sanguinastra.
The blade pulsed in his grip, eager, hungry. The dungeon itself trembled as though in recognition.
He swung.
Chains screamed as if ripped from a throat. The lattice tore apart, dissolving into blood mist. Beyond it, the air howled, heavy with centuries of suppressed breath.
The sanctum had awakened something deeper. And it was no longer asleep.
The chains dissolved, leaving the corridor open. Noctis stepped through, Sanguinastra slung across his shoulder, its pulse still feeding into the walls. The air changed as he descended—the acrid tang of sanctity thickened until it stung his throat.
The passage widened, ribs of stone pulling back to reveal a cavernous chamber. Rows of crystalline coffins stretched into the dark, each suspended by chains that glowed with holy fire. Unlike the vampire tombs above, these were not bound in silence. Every coffin sang. Low, ceaseless hymns bled from within, hundreds of voices woven together into a single endless prayer.
The Omen Eye narrowed. The figures inside were not vampires. They were saints.
Their faces were carved in light, skin uncorrupted, bodies wrapped in ceremonial robes that had not rotted despite centuries sealed in crystal. Their wrists and ankles were shackled with silver, but no blood stained their chains. These were not prisoners of flesh—they were prisoners of faith itself.
Sanguinastra trembled, its resonance spilling into the chamber. The hymns faltered for the first time. Cracks spidered across the crystal. Dozens of saintly eyes fluttered open in unison, golden light searing the dark. They saw him.
The hymns broke.
"What stands before us?" one voice intoned.
"A blasphemy that walks."
"No—" another voice cracked, weaker, older. "A shadow of what we buried. The descendant… of the progenitor."
The choir fractured. Some voices condemned, others trembled. A handful whispered in tones closer to awe than hatred.
Noctis did not answer. His silence weighed heavier than any word.
Chains rattled. The nearest saint lifted his bound hands against the crystal wall, eyes blazing with fury. "Monster! The dungeon deceives you if you think you hold dominion here!"
Sanguinastra pulsed again.
[Relic Trait: Warding Bane — Applied]
The coffin's scripture warped and died. The saint recoiled as if struck. Others shrieked prayers louder, their hymns rising into a weaponized chorus. The walls vibrated, air burning with sanctified resonance.
Noctis stepped closer.
[Skill: Chalice of Apostasy — Activated]
The spectral chalice rose in his palm, siphoning hymn-light from the chains. Golden fire bled into crimson and flowed into his veins. The entire chamber groaned.
Some saints screamed in rage. Others fell silent, their eyes fixed on him in something that looked like recognition.
He set his hand against the coffin of the loudest voice—the one who had called him monster. The Omen Eye opened fully. The saint's body glowed with seams of weakness where faith had become chains rather than wings. Noctis's claw pressed against the crystal, and the scripture cracked.
"Do you know," he whispered at last, voice like frost, "what it means to be buried alive in your own faith?"
The crystal shattered. Light screamed.
The hymn shattered with the first coffin.
Crystal split beneath Noctis's claw, the surface cracking like ice across a frozen lake. Light bled in sharp lines, spilling warmth that was not warmth but sanctity, golden and thick as molten glass. The saint inside struggled against his bonds, eyes burning with judgment. When the coffin burst, the hymn of the entire chamber wavered.
Noctis seized the prisoner before the others could gather strength. His hand closed around the saint's throat. Flesh that should have been incorruptible burned beneath his touch, but his grip did not falter. Fangs pierced sanctified skin.
The taste was agony.
It was not blood that entered his mouth, but something older—prayer condensed into liquid faith, hymns distilled into marrow. It seared his throat as though he had swallowed fire and ice together. His body rebelled. His veins screamed.
But his Grid demanded.
[Skill: Devour — Activated]
Crimson threads burst across his skin, dragging sanctity down into the abyss of his blood. What would have incinerated another vampire became sustenance in his body, inverted, rewritten by the Omen Eye's cold guidance.
The saint's scream broke the harmony of the hymn. Golden fire sputtered. His body sagged, halo cracking like brittle glass. Noctis dropped the husk and wiped his mouth, crimson smearing across his chin. His silence weighed heavier than any roar.
The other coffins convulsed.
Hundreds of voices rose in one discordant blast. The chamber shook. Scripture across the walls burned like a furnace bellows, white-hot light blinding to mortal sight. Crystals cracked open, saints inside thrashing against chains. Silver bonds glowed red as sanctity surged.
One coffin exploded. A woman robed in radiant vestments stepped forward, chains dangling from her wrists, her eyes ablaze with gold.
"Monster," she spat, her voice a hymn and a curse. "You desecrate the holy. You defile what cannot be broken."
Her chains lifted, lashing toward him like whips of scripture.
[Relic Trait: Warding Bane — Applied]
Sanguinastra answered with a single hum. The chains frayed mid-flight, links falling dead in showers of sparks. Her eyes widened. Noctis moved in, not with haste but with inevitability, his silence louder than her cries.
One claw through her chest. He drank as she screamed her hymn into his throat.
Her light flared once, then bent inward, sucked dry into crimson glow. She collapsed to ash in his grip.
The hymn fractured.
The chamber answered with violence. Coffins detonated in sequence, releasing saints in floods of brilliance. The air turned into a battlefield of sound and light—hymns weaponized into pressure that slammed him against the stone, sanctified resonance clawing at his armor, trying to unmake him from within.
His armor cracked, silver runes burning across the plates. Flesh blistered, smoking as faith tried to scourge corruption.
He did not retreat.
[Skill: Chalice of Apostasy — Activated]
The spectral chalice rose in his palm, hungry as its master. Golden hymn-fire bent toward it, siphoned in streams that bled into liquid crimson. Light turned to blood, faith became essence. The saints staggered, their psalms faltering as if someone had punched holes through their lungs.
Noctis pressed forward.
The first rank came at him—six saints in unified chorus, their steps in rhythm, their voices overlapping into a wall of resonance. Their halos linked above them, forming a shield of woven light.
[Doctrine: Spear — Rotational Bore]
The guan dao screamed forward in his orbit, drilling into their barrier. The Omen Eye revealed the seam. His thrust struck it, unmaking the harmony at its weakest knot. The barrier collapsed, and his dual Bloodfang Reapers followed.
[Doctrine: Sword — Crescent Cut]
[Doctrine: Sword — Silent Sever]
One sweeping arc, one surgical slice. Two saints fell together, halos breaking apart into shards that rained like glass.
The others rallied.
[Skill: Exsanguinate II — Activated]
He clenched his fist, and blood detonated inside their bodies. Sanctity screamed from their mouths, turned against them, ripped out in a crimson spray that painted the air. They collapsed into silence, their hymns devoured mid-note.
Still more rose.
An elder saint, his beard white as flame, broke free from his coffin with a roar. His voice was thunder, his hymn a blade. He swung his chain-bound arms, and the chamber shuddered, slabs of scripture tearing from the walls to strike like falling meteors.
Noctis lifted Sanguinastra.
[Relic Skill: Sovereign Cleave — Activated]
One arc. The falling scripture shattered, its light bursting apart into blood mist. The elder's eyes widened, but before he could retreat, Noctis was already there. Claw to throat. Fang to vein.
The Grid howled.
Faith-fire surged into him, twisting around crimson essence. Chains of light coiled around his arms, trying to bind him, but his blood consumed them, turning scripture into runes that seared red across his skin. The saint's memories broke into him—councils of judgment, wars waged against vampires, betrayal disguised as virtue.
He swallowed them whole.
Saint after saint fell. Some fought with shields of light, others with spears of fire, others with hymns that warped the very air. He broke them all. Warding Bane cut their chains. Chalice of Apostasy drank their hymns. His Reapers carved their halos into dust.
Sixteen saints in total. Sixteen voices silenced.
The chamber stank of burnt sanctity and blood. Noctis stood among shattered coffins, his veins boiling with inverted faith, his Grid burning with new nodes.
[New Skills Unlocked — 16 total]
Radiant Veil
Judicator's Lance
Choir Echo
Saint's Bulwark
Anointed Strike
Hymn of Severance
Seraph's Step
Halo of Reprisal
Scripture Chains
Lumen Pulse
Martyr's Resilience
Saintly Reproach
Canonflare
Absolution Field
Ascendant Guard
Eucharist Blade: Saint's Form
Chains of crimson wrapped around his arms, runes of faith inverted into vampiric script, glowing faintly as the new skills wove into his doctrines. Sword, Spear, and Shield were reinforced, augmented by the stolen power of saints. Even Predator and Assassin doctrines pulsed as their counters twisted into his arsenal.
The silence that followed was absolute. The hymns were gone.
Noctis exhaled once. Steam curled from his lips. He turned and walked deeper, leaving behind a chamber of saints who had sung for centuries, now nothing more than echoes in his blood.