The air tasted of ancient dust and fear.
Supreme Bloodline Emperor Alistair stood at the apex of the Obsidian Keep, his gaze—two points of burning cinnabar—fixed on the vast, crumbling battlefield below. He did not need to be physically present to command the war, but after ten millennia, solitude often proved more exhausting than combat.
The fortress, a twisted helix of black stone and bone, was under siege. Not by petty kings or mortal armies, but by the old, sluggish powers of this Fantasy System: a colossal Bane Dragon whose scales glittered with solidified shadow, and a hundred-strong cohort of Dread Liches, each a master of rune-casting and ethereal fire.
Alistair sighed, a barely perceptible ripple of air that carried the weight of ages. "Pathetic," he murmured, the word tasting like ash.
He watched as the dragon, Mistfang, unleashed a breath weapon—a roaring torrent of negative energy that shattered the Keep's outer wards, vaporizing hundreds of lesser Blood Thralls in an instant. The spectacle was grand, the power immense, yet to Alistair, it was no more complex than a child's tantrum.
Ten thousand years ago, this level of destruction was the peak of power. The height of the world's magic. A Nascent Soul cultivator could level a continent with a casual strike, yet these creatures lumber on, bound by the shallow rules of their system.
He wore armor forged from crystallized dark energy—black, crimson-veined plates that seemed to absorb the light around them. His long coat, woven from shadow silk, draped over him, utterly motionless despite the wind roaring across the ramparts. He was a flawless portrait of an ancient, terrifying lord, a figure designed to instill total, breathless awe.
A Dread Lich, emboldened by the dragon's success, floated toward the central tower, its empty eye sockets glowing with malice. It began carving an intricate Seal of Binding into the air, a series of complex, millennia-old magical geometries designed to lock Alistair's life force within his body.
Alistair didn't move a muscle. He simply extended a single, manicured hand, palm upward.
In the space between the Lich's incantation and its completion, the Lich's skeletal fingers, its jaw, its ribcage, and finally the polished bone of its skull, all turned to fine, crimson powder. Not the powder of disintegration, but the powder of perfectly calcified, desanguinated bone. The residual life energy and malice that animated the creature—its magical mana—was instantly ripped free of the matter, coalescing into a shimmering, blood-red bead that floated above Alistair's palm.
It was not "Vampire Magic." It was Bloodline Cultivation.
He closed his hand, crushing the bead into oblivion. The energy was absorbed, a microscopic increase to the immeasurable Blood Qi reservoir churning in his Sanguine Core.
The other Liches recoiled. The Bane Dragon halted its charge. For the first time, ancient intelligence registered fear. They realized this was not a battle against an opponent; it was a demonstration by a god who had merely allowed them to live long enough to understand their doom.
Alistair's consciousness drifted back, as it often did when forced to engage with the remnants of the Old World. His mind, refined over countless epochs of meditation, cultivation, and consumption, could easily handle the present while simultaneously reliving the moment that defined him.
The year was 10,000 P.E. (Pre-Emperor). He was merely Kael, a traveling healer and alchemist, skilled with mundane herbs and simple restorative elixirs. He wasn't powerful; he was pragmatic. He sought rare ingredients in the uncharted peaks of the Veridian Range, a place where elemental energies pulsed violently, making it too dangerous for most mortal excursions.
He had been tracking the scent of the Glacier Bloom, a flower that supposedly grew only where fire met ice, a medicinal miracle to cure the deadly Gray Blight. Instead, he found it.
It grew nestled in the crack of a fissure, where the volcanic heat met the glacial melt. It was no larger than his thumb, yet it pulsed with a light that seemed to devour all other color. Its petals were the deepest, richest maroon he had ever seen, catching the meager light and reflecting it not as white, but as a pure, throbbing red. It was the color of life, the color of death, and the color of an impending sunrise all at once.
The information from his ancient scrolls screamed a warning: If an herb is too beautiful, its consumption is a covenant with oblivion.
But the energy radiating off the herb—it was not simple mana or prana. It was a force that vibrated with the very essence of creation and destruction. It promised absolute power, a transcendence Kael, the humble alchemist, had never dared to dream of. He knew it was the mythical, uncataloged Sanguine Immortal Flower, an entity rumored to be the remnant of a dying star's core.
Desperation, fueled by a decade of watching his world struggle against simple diseases, overruled caution. He plucked the flower. It felt warm, almost liquid, in his hand.
He consumed it whole.
The pain was not a feeling, but a state of being.
It was as if every molecule in his body was simultaneously reversed and amplified. His bones felt like they were being melted and re-forged with liquid diamond. His blood boiled, then flash-froze, then became an aggressive, sentient entity tearing through his veins, demanding immediate escape.
He screamed, but his vocal cords were the first things to mutate, hardening into impossibly resonant tissue, and the sound was not a scream but a thunderclap of pure sonic trauma that echoed through the mountain range for days.
The agony lasted for seven continuous days and nights.
By the end of it, Kael was dead. But in his place stood the first of the new race, a creature of pure, potent Blood Qi. His veins were not veins, but meridians—though he didn't have the vocabulary for it yet—now perfectly structured to circulate the hyper-potent energy the flower had created. His heart, now the nascent Sanguine Core, beat not with the rhythm of life, but with the steady, measured cadence of cosmic entropy.
He was starving, but not for food. He was starving for the vibrant life force within other beings. He reached out to a nearby marmot, and without conscious effort, a subtle red mist left the creature and entered his body. The marmot instantly withered, becoming a dried husk.
In that moment, he realized what he was. He was a perfect predator, a being who survived by consuming the very essence of life. The other inhabitants of this world—the elves, the dwarves, the simple mages—would later name this affliction, this monstrous transformation: Vampire.
He lived in isolation for centuries, mastering his new-found abilities. His speed was incredible, his strength was legendary, and his command over blood—the fluid of life—was absolute. He could turn blood to steel, walk through walls of fire, and command armies of the undead. He believed he had reached the zenith of power in the world. He was an immortal anomaly, the Supreme Vampire Lord.
Present Day. The Obsidian Keep.
The Supreme Vampire Lord Alistair stood over the remnants of the battle, basking in the silence. The Liches had fled, the dragon was a trophy. He was the apex predator, the immortal ruler of all he surveyed. If only he knew how temporary that apex would prove to be.