The night the kingdom fell began with silence.
Not the peaceful kind, but the heavy, suffocating silence before a storm tears the world apart. Prince Azerion Nightflare felt it in his bones as he staggered through the burning halls of the palace, smoke searing his lungs and the scent of blood everywhere. The marble floors he had walked for centuries ran red beneath his boots.
His father's throne room was gone.
His clan was gone.
And she… she was the one who did it.
Lunara.
The hidden daughter.
The king's shame.
The sister whose existence Azerion only learned moments before she placed a blade to the king's heart.
"M-My prince— this way!" Marek, his loyal ghoul, half-dragged him through a shattered archway. The creature's strength was fueled by devotion, not blood, and his ash-grey skin was streaked with soot and wounds.
Behind them, the roars grew louder — a hundred vampires, loyal to Lunara, tearing through what remained of the palace.
Azerion clenched his jaw. "She killed him… she really killed him…"
He could still hear Lunara's voice ringing across the throne hall, echoing with fury that had been buried for decades.
"You hid me. You denied me. This throne is mine by blood and suffering!"
The king never fought back. He only whispered her name before she slashed his throat.
Azerion's vision blurred. Rage burned inside him, but his body was failing — poisoned by Lunara's corrupted magic, weakening with every breath.
"Prince— the courtyard!" Marek hissed. "We can escape through the—"
A crash cut him off.
The walls exploded inward, dust and debris flying everywhere.
Dozens of vampires dropped from above, eyes glowing crimson, fangs bared. Lunara's army. Her assassins. Her loyal monsters.
Azerion and Marek were surrounded in an instant.
"Prince Azerion." A tall vampire commander stepped forward, smirking. "Your sister sends her regards. She says to bring your head—"
Azerion's fist trembled. "She is no sister of mine."
Marek moved in front of him, ready to die buying the prince time.
But there would be no time.
No escape.
No mercy.
The circle tightened.
Azerion looked at his blood-covered hands.
He knew what he had to do.
Something forbidden.
Something only he and his father were ever permitted to learn.
The Blood Veil.
His father's final secret technique — a spell never spoken aloud, never written, bound by royal blood. A spell that even Lunara's spies couldn't uncover.
Marek's eyes widened. "My prince… you can't. That magic—"
"I have no choice."
The vampires lunged.
Azerion sliced open his palm with his fang and slammed his blood into the ground.
The world trembled.
It began as a pulse.
A heartbeat of crimson mana expanding outward.
Then—
FWOOM.
A violent eruption of red light exploded from Azerion's body, so bright the night turned white. A blinding storm of blood aura spiraled into a vortex, swallowing him and Marek whole.
The enemy vampires cried out.
"What— what is that magic?!"
"A barrier? A teleportation spell?!"
"No one has magic like this!"
They shielded their faces, blinded, deafened, the air whipping around them like a hurricane.
A final roar of blood-eater magic cracked through the forest—
—and Azerion vanished.
The blood storm collapsed, leaving only scorch marks in the earth.
The vampires stared at the empty space in confusion.
Fear.
Uncertainty.
"He's gone?" someone whispered.
"No…" the commander snarled, trembling. "He didn't run. He… disappeared."
"But how? What sorcery was that?"
No one had an answer.
Far away—
in a world neither Lunara nor her army had ever known—
Prince Azerion Nightflare opened his eyes to blinding neon lights, rumbling engines, honking horns, and the cold asphalt of a city street.
And the modern world stared back at him.-
***
Cold.
That was the first sensation Prince Azerion felt.
Not the familiar darkness of the vampire realms… but something thinner, weaker, almost lifeless.
His eyes snapped open.
A silver sky hung overhead — not moonlight, not magic, but a strange artificial glow from towering metal structures that stabbed into the heavens. Lights blinked on every side like a thousand miniature suns, and an endless stream of metal beasts roared past on a black road.
This was not the world he knew.
Azerion pushed himself up, his body trembling. His blood reserves were low — dangerously low — and his powers were barely flickering. The Blood Veil had drained more energy than he expected.
"Master… you're awake."
Marek, his ghoul, crouched beside him. His grey skin shimmered faintly under the streetlights, and his yellow eyes darted around nervously.
"Where are we?" Azerion rasped.
Marek swallowed. "I… I don't know. There is no scent of vampires. No trace of mana in the air. Everything smells… dead."
Azerion glanced around again.
Strange glowing boards displayed images that moved like illusions. Humans walked in every direction, speaking into tiny glowing rectangles. Metal giants with wheels screamed by in rapid succession.
Nothing here felt supernatural.
Nothing here felt magical.
Nothing here felt like home.
"Master," Marek whispered, "I fear the spell threw us into another realm."
Azerion clenched his jaw. "The Blood Veil is a teleportation shroud. It should have taken us to a pocket sanctuary… not this."
He rose to his feet, but stumbled. Marek caught him.
"You're weak," the ghoul said. "We need blood, master. Immediately."
Azerion's fangs throbbed painfully. His throat burned like a furnace. The edges of his vision blurred.
Yes — he needed blood.
But he also needed answers.