The first memory surfaced three days after Cain's return.
Adrian was in the middle of a healing session—helping a young vampire with an incomplete transformation—when his vision suddenly blurred. The Shanghai clinic dissolved, replaced by a landscape that predated human civilization.
He saw a world of primordial forests and megafauna, where early humans huddled in caves and something massive stalked the darkness. Something that radiated hunger, that fed on life force itself, that consumed gods and spirits as easily as humans ate fruit.
The entity had no fixed form—it was shadow and teeth and endless hunger. It moved through the world like a cancer, devouring everything supernatural it encountered. Gods fled before it. Spirits hid in places beyond reach. And early humans, barely conscious of the supernatural world, survived simply because they were beneath its notice.
Until one human caught its attention.
Seth—Adrian's first incarnation—had been different from other humans. His soul burned brighter, called to supernatural forces, bridged the gap between mortal and immortal. The entity had sensed this, had targeted him specifically.
And Cain, newly cursed with vampirism, had saved him. Had given Seth his blood, transforming him into the first turned vampire, making him no longer pure human and thus less appealing to the entity's hunger.
The memory dissolved, and Adrian crashed back into the present, gasping.
"Adrian?" The young vampire he'd been healing looked concerned. "Are you okay?"
"I... yes. Sorry. Memory flash." Adrian stood on shaky legs. "We're done for today. Your transformation is complete. Go home, rest, let your body adjust."
The vampire left, still worried, and Adrian immediately called Kieran.
"I remembered," Adrian said without preamble. "I remembered the entity. What it is. Why it wants me specifically."
Kieran arrived within minutes, along with Cain, who'd been staying in a penthouse suite Marcus had arranged. They gathered in Adrian's private office, warding it against eavesdropping.
"Tell us everything," Cain said gently.
Adrian described the memory—the ancient world, the entity's hunger, the way it had targeted his first incarnation.
"The entity feeds on supernatural life force," Cain confirmed. "But it's selective. It prefers beings that bridge multiple states of existence—creatures that are neither fully one thing nor another. Vampires, who are dead but animate. Werewolves, who are human and beast. Demons, who exist between dimensions. And you, Adrian, whose soul has lived in both human and supernatural states multiple times."
"So I'm like... supernatural caviar to this thing?" Adrian asked weakly.
"More like the main course," Cain said grimly. "Your soul is ancient, powerful, and has accumulated supernatural energy across ten lifetimes. The entity will be drawn to you more than any other being currently alive. Which is why we need to unlock all your memories before it fully emerges. You need to remember how we fought it last time."
"Did we win? Last time?"
"We drove it back to sleep. We couldn't kill it—it's too fundamental, too ancient. But we found a way to make the world inhospitable to it, to drain it of the energy it needed to remain active. It took a coalition of every supernatural being that existed at the time, led by you and me."
"No pressure," Adrian muttered.
Over the following weeks, Cain worked with Adrian to unlock his ancient memories. It was a grueling process—meditation, blood rituals, psychic exercises that left Adrian exhausted and disoriented.
But slowly, the memories returned.
He remembered Seth's life in detail now—the early days of vampire existence, learning to control bloodlust, watching Cain struggle with his curse and the guilt of his brother's murder. He remembered other vampires being created, a small community of cursed beings trying to survive in a world that feared and hunted them.
And he remembered the entity's attacks.
It had come for them systematically, hunting the strongest supernatural beings first. Gods had fallen, their divine essence consumed, their powers absorbed into the entity's endless hunger. Spirits had been torn from their realms and devoured. Early vampires had been particularly vulnerable—their nature as undead beings made them irresistible to the entity.
"We lost seventeen of the first vampires to it," Adrian said during one session, tears streaming down his face as Seth's memories merged with his own. "I watched them die. Watched the entity consume them, leaving nothing but emptiness where they'd been. It was... it was genocide."
Kieran held him through the grief of memories that weren't quite his but felt like his own. The blood bond between them pulsed with comfort and shared pain.
"How did you stop it?" Kieran asked gently.
"We didn't stop it. We starved it." Adrian wiped his eyes. "The entity needed supernatural energy to remain active. So we created dead zones—places where no supernatural being would go, where no magic could exist. We scattered, hiding in small groups, making ourselves harder to find. And we had help from something unexpected."
"What?"
"Humans. Early humans were developing their first civilizations, their first organized religions. They created barriers—not physical ones, but spiritual. Sacred spaces, blessed ground, places where supernatural beings were weakened. The entity couldn't cross those barriers easily. So we used human civilization as a shield, hiding among them, using their holy places as sanctuaries."
"That's why vampires are traditionally weakened by religious symbols," Cain added. "It's not that God rejects us—it's that we evolved to exist in spaces that the entity couldn't easily reach. We adapted to human sacred spaces as protection."
"But human civilization has changed," Kieran observed. "Modern humans are less religious, less connected to spiritual spaces. Those barriers are weakening."
"Exactly. Which is why the entity is waking now." Cain's expression was grim. "The protections that kept it sleeping are fading. Within months, maybe weeks, it will emerge fully. And this time, it will be stronger—it's had ten thousand years to dream of consuming supernatural energy."
"How do we fight something that consumed gods?" Adrian asked.
"The same way we did last time—together. Every supernatural species, working in concert, sacrificing individual power for collective survival." Cain stood, pacing. "But it's harder now. Supernatural communities are fragmented, distrustful of each other. Vampires alone have dozens of factions. Getting everyone to work together will be nearly impossible."
"Unless they have a reason to cooperate," Kieran said thoughtfully. "A common enemy. A threat so existential that old prejudices and rivalries become meaningless."
"The entity's emergence will provide that," Cain agreed. "But by then, it might be too late. We need to start building alliances now, before the crisis forces cooperation."