“Lord Alan!”

“My lord!”

Jon and Van yelled in grief and shock, unsheathing their swords and lunging at the woman who still played with their lord’s head in her hands like a toy.

They didn’t dare take her lightly—she had just ripped off a man’s head with her bare hands—and their swords shone with their Aura as they attacked.

They tried to take her from opposite sides in attempt to block her escape route. Jon faced her from the front with brutal slashes. Van came at the side trying to provide support.

“Pointless,” Fleur laughed, sidestepping the blows as if she were dancing. Jon slashed horizontally, his blue aura roaring with an azure fire that left blades of Aura in its wake. But Fleur flipped into air and disappeared from view.

Suddenly, his chest burst open in a splatter of crimson. A delicate, bloody hand emerged from his chest from behind, clenching a heart that was still beating.

Gritting his teeth, Van ignored the desperate gaze of his impaled comrade. He slashed through the other knight’s body without hesitation. Jon, still wide eyed in confusion and pain, fell to the ground split in two pieces with a sickening thud, organs and blood splattering onto the floor.

But Fleur was gone.

“Looking for me?” a sweet voice whispered in his ear.

Van’s expression paled. He tried to explode his Aura out in a blast. But it was too late.

A pain erupted on his neck. Fleur had slashed a deep cut that also sliced his spinal cord with surgical precision.

Crumbling onto the floor, Van could only lie paralyzed, wide-eyed in horror.

He didn’t understand how she had done it, but even his Aura Circle had been disrupted. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t access his Aura at all.

“I’ll save you as a snack for later.”

Fleur glanced at him with a smile that would have been captivating, were it not for the drops of blood that had splattered on her cheek. Sultry eyes that had once been the color of warm amber were now a cold crimson. Lord Alan’s head had long since been discarded carelessly on the floor near Jon’s corpse, but she still held onto Jon’s heart. Van watched with bulging eyes as Fleur casually lifted the heart to her lips and started to eat.

“You…monster,” Van struggled out. Although he was paralyzed, his vocal cords were still working, albeit not well. “Y-you’re a vampire! But how…? W-why—?” His eyes widened. “The undead…it was you?”

Fleur smiled at him as she licked her fingers.

“Well, yes and no,” Fleur said playfully. “And as for why?” She paused for a bit with her head tilted, before she laughed. “I suppose, it was just on a whim."

Then, she left the furious human to die alone with his garbled shouts and curses.

It was not a lie. It was indeed on a whim that she had decided to get involved. Though of course her motive wasn’t simply the destruction of the city and the mere murder of a human lord.

She went further into the cavern to continue her search. Fortunately, the space wasn’t big, so it was easy to find what she was looking for. There was a desk and bookshelves up against the cavern wall as well as workbenches covered with lab equipment. The workbenches were heavy with dust; it seemed like it had been a few years at least since the last experiments here had been done.

In the middle of the room was a chamber with a magic formation inscribed onto the floor. The lines of the magic circle were filled with a murky black liquid. A pitch black crystal that contained a flame that burned black within it lay on the pedestal at its center.

“Blood,” Fleur sniffed with a slight frown. The magic formation was filled with stale blood, and that of multiple humans. It stunk. “Rotten blood at that. Disgusting.”

She felt something on her neck move, tugging.

Fleur sighed, taking out the silver pendant that was struggling on its chain in a certain direction. “Alright, I get it, I get it. So, where is it?”

She followed in the direction the pendant took her.

It led her towards the workbench with the alchemy equipment. The desk was clean, and the lab equipment were all organized neatly. Everything seemed in its place. Everything was spotless. Too spotless.

“The scent of blood again. These humans really are so cruel to their own.”

Fleur laughed coldly, but it did not reach her eyes.

She followed the scent to where it was the strongest, a metal cabinet that spanned half the wall of the cavern, with doors engraved with runes and locked with chains. She simply ripped apart the chains with her bare hands. The chain fell to the floor in a harsh clatter. The runes on the door started glowing an ominous black as it gathered Ether to resist the intrusion, but Fleur’s crimson Aura began to flood into them, overwhelming whatever Ether it had gathered, taking over the runes.

The doors opened.

Jars. Shelves and shelves of jars, each holding different human organs suspended in a crimson liquid.

The pendant tugged harder, then fell limp as a black smoke drifted out of it, congealing into a dim specter of a little girl, around ten years old.

“That one,” she said, her soft voice trembling as she pointed to one of the jars. The jar held a set of blue eyes that would never be closed. The same color as her own.

It was even labeled in a hasty sprawl: ‘Specimen A2682 - Day 23 of the fourth month of the 3442PCE. Failure. Partial integration of eyes. Kept for future analysis.’

Fleur took the jar out of the shelf and showed it to the girl. “Is this it?”

“Yes! T-thank you,” the girl sobbed. But really it was just an emotional response—as a specter she would never shed true tears anymore. “It’s my brother. I won’t be wrong. Big sister, can you find him?”

“I’ll try. Stay away from me.”

She held the jar and closed her eyes, muttering an incantation. “Avast gavin. Hevia lakni. Kal avas devin ra’el.”

The room darkened as corrupted Ether gathered around them. A strand of trace Ether also drifted out of the jar with the eyes as well, but Fleur caught it before it escaped, trapping it with the fabric of Ether created by the spell. The specter girl was floating outside of the circle anxiously. She could not get closer, otherwise as a specter she would also be involved with the spell.

Soon, more Ether started to gather, congealing around the captured trace. The shape of a boy started to be seen from the condensing Ether. But the form was still hazy, and it seemed as if it would scatter at any moment.

“His name,” Fleur reminded. “Call his name.”

“Hael!” the girl yelled. “Hael, it’s me, your sister! Cali!”

At the name, the Ether suddenly went violent before gathering all at once, condensing into a full specter. The boy—Hael—finally opened his ghostly eyes.

He blinked dully.

“Cali…?” he said uncertainly as his awareness returned. But Cali had already flown towards him. Their spectral figures embraced in a hug.

“Oh Hael, I’m so glad,” Cali sobbed. “I’m so glad. I thought…I thought you’d be lost forever. Oh thank you! Thank you big sister. Thank you thank you thank you!”

“It’s nothing,” Fleur smiled. “Like I said, I didn’t do it for you. It was just on a whim.”

Then she looked at the cabinet of organs with disgust. “Since we’ve found and fixed your brother’s soul now, I should finish what we started. You two can leave.”

“Thank you,” Hael said uncertainly. “Big…big sister” He seemed to have decided to copy Cali’s way of calling her. “I-is there anything we can help with? How can we thank you…?”

“No. Leave now. And save your thanks. Don’t stay nearby, otherwise you may get caught up in this.”

“Thank you, big sister,” Cali smiled tearfully. The little girl’s and her brother’s figures slowly scattered as they left. They surely had plenty to catch up on.

Fleur smiled again as she saw that, but it soon faded as she looked back at the crystal.

“It’s always the aftermath that is annoying,” she shook her head.