I

The Descent

Down in the dark where the Vault doors keep,

Things lie waiting, things don’t sleep.

Round and round, the children fear,

If it should open, the end draws near.

Step lightly, child, when the night is deep,

For the Dead Legion slumbers where shadows creep.

Don’t close your eyes, don’t breathe, don’t snore—

For if the Vault opens . . . out they’ll pour.

Present day, nearly six hundred years after the sacking of Castle Dracula

A man’s eyes flickered open.

The coppery taste of blood in his mouth. The world around him was nothing more than a blur of spinning shadows. His cheek was pressed to cold metal, his body was sprawled on the floor, and something tugged tightly at the collar of his shirt.

Where was he?

How had he gotten here?

Then a colder realization slid into place: He didn’t even know who he was.

The thought hit like a spike of ice. His heartbeat thudded harder in his chest, his breath catching. All he could pull from the fog were sensations—screams, pain—and then a single word echoing up from the dark.

Kane.

The name fit. It sat in his mind with the dull certainty of a fact remembered, even if everything around it was missing.

In the pit of his stomach, he felt as if he were sinking.

No—not sinking. Descending.

Descending where?

He tried to stand, but his legs felt like jelly. Tried to crawl, but something held him in place: a small but iron-strong fist knotted in the back of his shirt.

He turned his head to see who held him and recoiled.

Mechanical eyes stared back at him, burning through the shadows with a menacing orange glow bright enough to light the cramped space. The figure was short and slim, with a distinctly feminine silhouette. The rest of her was hidden beneath a black hood and dark clothing. The glowing lenses tracked his movements with precise, predatory focus.

Kane’s tongue didn’t work any better than the rest of his body. He choked out garbled sounds, trying to speak to the stranger, but nothing coherent came. He pushed himself onto one knee, forcing his eyes to focus on their surroundings.

A box of black glass, dropping fast.

An elevator.

The walls were made of glossy, dark material that reflected the orange glow around them. Beside the door, a holographic interface displayed a descending timer, ticking down the seconds until arrival.

When the timer hit zero, a loud Ding! cut through the air, and the downward motion stopped abruptly, throwing him forward. The doors slid open and light flooded in.

His companion yanked him upright with a strength far beyond what her size implied. He swayed in a drunken stupor before she shoved him forward, out of the elevator.

The sudden shift from near-total darkness to blinding light hit him like a physical blow. His pupils shrank to pinpricks. Noise crashed over him—voices, footsteps, distant machinery—so loud he winced. He stumbled to the ground, briefly catching his own reflection in the polished black floor: Bloodshot eyes. Pale skin. Bald head. Rough dark stubble along his jaw.

The hooded woman followed him out, once again pulling him to his feet. He was taller than she was—likely heavier, too—yet there was no question who was in control. Her grip on his shredded shirt, little more than rags at this point, was steady and unyielding as she steered him forward.

Kane shuffled along with a hunched back, unable to stand straight. His limbs trembling with each step, it felt as if every fiber of his body had been cut apart and stitched back together, muscles pulling tight along invisible seams that flared with pain whenever he moved.

The woman guided him through a crush of bodies pouring out from the other elevators along the vast wall behind them. Most of them had strange red irises—but none had eyes like hers.

He tried to speak again, but the dry rasp in his throat strangled the words. He still couldn’t see her face, only the cold orange glow beneath the hood. She said nothing, moving with a single-minded purpose.

The ceiling above them was something else entirely. A beautiful night sky with a field of stars glittered overhead. Every so often, a faint grid of lines flickered across it, revealing the projection beneath, but otherwise, it was a near-perfect replica of the real thing.

Bodies pressed in from all sides, bumping his shoulders, herding them toward a massive gate ahead. Claustrophobia crawled up Kane’s spine. Warm breath, the brush of arms and clothing—he felt penned in, with no idea where he was.

The gate was heavily guarded. Soldiers in faceless, polished black armor stood along the entrance, heavy plates reinforcing their suits, narrow red slits glowing where their eyes should have been.

As they drew nearer, Kane could see an insignia: three jagged red stripes slashed across their shoulders and chests. In their hands, they cradled strange rifles, shot through with spidery webs of red lightning. The weapons were the rough length and shape of assault rifles, but the center was a bright cylinder pulsing with crimson liquid that flowed down the barrel in waves, radiating energy.

“Welcome!” an artificial female voice boomed overhead. “You are entering Customs Checkpoint One of Purgatory. To ensure speedy reentry, all citizens should have identification chips and markings ready for presentation to security personnel. Please note that all goods are subject to search, and no surface creatures, including humans, are allowed beyond this point.” The voice paused for a beat before continuing, just as bright and cheery: “If you have Converts or Thralls, please leave them in the designated areas so that they may begin processing. House Sabre thanks you for your cooperation and welcomes you home from your trips and travels.”

Off to the far left, Kane saw two fenced, caged-off sections. One was labeled converts; the other, thralls. The words hung in the air in bright-red holographic letters. The Thrall cage was full of people—men, women, even a few children—most of them shaking with fear. Thick metal collars ringed their necks, crackling with arcs of red electricity that snapped against their skin. Their screams bled through the noise.

Kane’s companion didn’t even glance at them; she cut straight through the crowd toward the gate, moving people aside with one hand and dragging him along with the other. At the checkpoint, she flashed a marking on her wrist: a silver skull of ink beneath the sleeve. The guards barely looked at it before waving her through.

“H-h-help,” he rasped, but no one so much as turned their head.

Beyond the gate, the true city unfolded, all steel, black glass, and circuitry. No dirt. No stone. No plants. Just sprawling industrial architecture and technology rising toward the ceiling.

Giant towers climbed to the artificial sky, their edges webbed in scarlet lights. The same starfield illusion hung overhead, but there, the space between the ground and ceiling stretched several kilometers. Flying vehicles zipped through the gulf, a dense lattice of traffic weaving silently in the air.

Holographic ads and videos played across the buildings, with animated sigils, looping logos, and smiling faces selling things he couldn’t name. Thousands of the red-eyed people moved along the black glass streets, another river of motion in the neon-lit dark.

What is this place?

He had to be dreaming. That was the only explanation that didn’t feel completely insane.

“Whe-re . . . a-a-am I?” he mumbled, the words mangled yet again by his failing tongue.

The hooded stranger ignored him.

His mind felt numb. His body responded only to the insistent pull of her grip. Everything burned and with each step, he felt closer to collapse. Twice his knees buckled; twice the woman yanked him upright before he could hit the ground.

They didn’t go far, just enough to reach a tower of dark metal with a double door edged in red light. More armored soldiers stood guard outside. Above the doors, glowing in regal purple letters, were the words department of vampire registration.

Pain hit him like an explosion. Blinding. Agonizing.

Kane dropped to all fours, his shirt finally tearing free from the woman’s grip to expose a bare chest mottled with bruises and deep scars. Faint lines of red light traced across his skin in thin, irregular seams, like stitching holding parts of his skin together.

His mouth flooded with blood as something stabbed through his gums from beneath, forcing several teeth to rip free. They clattered to the floor in a growing puddle of thick black blood.

The pain kept building—head, bones, nerves. A raw, flaying heat from the inside out.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. His limbs seized and he collapsed, convulsing on the ground.

Darkness swallowed him . . .

---

When Kane woke, he was lying on the floor of a dim corridor, numbing cold seeping up through the smooth black surface into his cheek. His head throbbed. There was a dull, steady ache behind his eyes, and a metallic tang of old blood coated his tongue.

A hand appeared in front of his face.

He took it.

A pale man hauled him to his feet. His eyes were red like the others he had seen, but his expression was open and friendly. He had chubby cheeks, a perpetual half grin, and curly blond hair. He wore an orange jacket with gold hammer emblems on the shoulders and black pants, the symbols worked into the fabric like a badge of pride.

“Thanks,” Kane managed. The word came out slurred but, for the first time, understandable. His hands still shook, but the pain had dulled slightly.

They stood at the back of a long line that stretched down the corridor. More red-eyed people waited ahead, murmuring quietly among themselves. The walls and floor were the same black glass he’d seen in the city, reflecting faint halos of light from slim panels set into the ceiling. Somewhere overhead, vents hummed softly. Somehow, he’d ended up inside one of the structures. His mysterious companion was no doubt the answer. She must have brought him here while he was unconscious.

“Where am I?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. Tiny flecks of dried blood smeared across his fingers. He stared at them, his stomach tightening.

The man chuckled. “You really are fresh, aren’t you?” His half grin widened. “Damn, never watched someone go through the change before. Odd that the Sabre would allow a Convert through processing so quickly. You look like your fangs just dropped a couple of seconds ago.”

Kane blinked. “Fangs?”

He noticed, for the first time, the sharp, elongated canines in the man’s smile. Slowly, Kane raised a trembling hand to his own mouth. His fingertips brushed long, animal-like canines where his teeth should have been, smooth enamel scraping against his skin.

He froze.

“Anyways, since nobody seems to have told you, this is the Underworld . . . the vampire world, that is. My name’s Sam. What about you?”

Kane blinked, having barely registered any of what the man had just been saying. “What about me?” He couldn’t stop staring at his own hands. They wouldn’t stop shaking.

“What’s your name, of course.”

Silence stretched for a moment. “Kane . . . I think . . .” He hesitated. “I . . . I can’t remember for sure.” Pain flared behind his eyes like the start of the worst migraine. He tried to remember something. Anything.

A flash: Mechanical orange eyes in the dark. The hooded face of his companion from before, lit only by that predatory glow.

Then a voice—mechanical, cold.

“They’ll kill you!” it hissed, echoing in his skull. “Come with me.”

The memory shuddered, warped by images of a red-eyed machine and screams.

“You are no Templar.”

“Sorry, mate,” Sam said, patting his shoulder and dragging Kane back to reality. “I’ve heard the change can be very traumatic. That’s why everyone goes through it in processing. Lots of experts . . . and drugs for pain.”

Kane forced himself to focus. “You said this was the vampire world . . . What’s a Templar?”

Sam wrung his hands, expression tightening. “The Templar are the enemies of every vampire in this world. They are the fanatical foot soldiers of the Church. At one point, they nearly hunted us to total extinction.” He shook his head, eyes narrowing slightly. “If you’re worried about them coming after you, don’t. Those zealots can’t reach us here.”

Kane tried to chase the fractured memories and suddenly felt a dagger of pain stab into his chest, sharp and deep, just beneath his ribs. He gasped and stumbled.

Sam’s curiosity vanished, replaced by concern. He caught Kane under the arm and helped him slide down the wall until he was sitting, knees drawn to his bare chest. The ragged pants he wore were soaked with sweat.

“You don’t look so good, mate. The change looks even more horrible than I’ve been led to believe.” Sam grimaced. “Speaking of which, I know this probably isn’t the best time, but how did you skip processing? I mean, nobody can do that. It’s highly illegal to bring in unprocessed humans.”

“I . . . don’t . . . know,” Kane said through chattering teeth. He thought he’d made that clear. “I don’t know how I got here . . . or even who I am.” His heart was pounding, his breath coming shallow and fast.

Sam scratched at the stubble on his chin, eyes narrowing. “It’s alright. Just breathe, mate. Slow breaths.” He spoke gently, coaxing him. “Maybe if we get your mind off things . . . I imagine you’re just all sorts of confused right now.”

“You could say that,” Kane muttered through clenched teeth. “What exactly are we doing here, anyway?”

“Waiting to see the Hemochrons.”

“The what?”

“The Hemochrons,” Sam repeated slowly. “They’re blood-scientists who represent the Great Houses.” He gestured loosely to the line of people. “Every vampire coming of age—or new vampire, in your case—has to be sorted into a House for citizenship. Each one plays a specific role in our society.

“For example, my family comes from House Provak. Provaks are the lifeblood of our world. We handle the labor, the commerce, the entertainment.” His chest puffed slightly with pride, pointing to the gold hammer on his jacket. “As the saying goes, ‘If the Veisik can think it, the Provak can build it . . . and find a way to profit from it.’” He smiled and shrugged at the last part. “But just because I was born to a Provak family doesn’t necessarily make me one of them. The Hemochrons will sample my blood and decide which House I fit best with.”

“Based on what?” Kane forced out, fighting to hold himself together.

“Only the Hemochrons know that. Supposedly, they can read every detail of a person’s genetic code from a single drop of blood.” His voice dropped. “It’s likely nothing special. Most people stay in the same House as their parents or their Sire. Speaking of which, which House was your Sire from? You know, the vampire who turned you.”

Kane didn’t even understand what a Sire really was, let alone which House his belonged to. “I don’t know.” The words tasted like broken glass. He was getting sick of saying them.

“Strange,” Sam murmured.

“What’s strange?” Other than everything.

“Well, to sire a vampire is a pretty personal thing. It involves giving a human your blood, essentially bonding them to you. Given our society’s general . . . shall we say, distaste for humanity . . . when a vampire chooses to do that, they typically care a lot about the human in question. It’s incredibly rare for a Sire to abandon their Convert—especially this early.”

The pain was getting so bad that Kane could barely hear Sam. “So how many Houses are there?” he asked, more for distraction than curiosity.

“Four.” Sam lifted a hand, counting them off. “House Provak—the House I’m from. House Sabre—they handle the military and policing. I’m sure you noticed the soldiers behind us.” He nodded toward the armored men down the hall. “They’re Sabre. They might look intimidating, but most are decent enough off duty. Unless they’re Praetorian bastards, of course. Those guys are just hired thugs for the Archons, typically too cowardly for real military service. Then there’s House Veisik. The nerds of our society.” Sam smirked at his own joke. “Scientists, researchers, doctors, engineers. That type of thing. They’re pretty much solely responsible for our technological edge over humanity.” His face darkened as he raised his last finger. “Last—and most certainly least—is House Draconi.” Bitterness crept into his tone. “Ruthless, murderous scum. They rule the Underworld using bioengineered terrors called Death Heads. They’ll kill anyone who gets in their way. Even each other.”

Kane could practically feel the hatred vibrating in his voice.

“Don’t worry,” Sam added. “It’s unlikely you’ll go into that House. They never take anyone who wasn’t born into it. They’re obsessed with blood purity. I imagine most of them are inbred trash.” He snorted. “I once had a friend killed by one of those bastards. Know why? He had a purple stain on his clothes. Just a stain. How crazy is that? They made it illegal for anyone outside their favor to wear their fucking color!”

Well, that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about, Kane thought distantly.

Only then did he realize how quiet the corridor had become. The line had thinned drastically. He could finally see the end of it. A small elevator waited at the far side, its doors sliding open for the next in line.

He leaned over and vomited black blood onto the floor. It splattered across the dark glass in thick, oily streaks.

“Glad I’m not you, mate. That does not look fun,” Sam said with a grimace, watching Kane spit out flecks of blood. He glanced at the elevator. The last person ahead of them had just stepped inside and was now beckoning to him.

Sam bolted for it. “No worries, mate. You got this!” he called, backing into the lift as the doors began to close. “Chances are you’ll go into my House. Most people do. House Provak is larger than all the other Houses combin—”

The doors shut, cutting him off.

Kane was alone. Well, almost alone.

“Move to the door, Convert.”

One of the soldiers who’d been standing guard behind them now towered over him. In full armor, he had to be close to two meters tall. He was a block of black plates and glowing red slits. An eerie weapon pulsed in his hands, casting a dull-red wash over the glossy black of his chest and arms.

Kane could see his own reflection in the polished metal, his eyes reflecting back at him.

Crimson irises, just like the others.

His fingers drifted to his teeth again, brushing the sharp points of his new canines. For the first time, the truth settled into place with cold clarity: he wasn’t human.

There was no space to dwell on it.

He tried to stand, but his legs trembled and buckled. The elevator doors reopened with a soft chime. The soldier’s annoyance became palpable even through the helmet as the man glanced between Kane and the waiting lift.

“Crawl,” he ordered in a harsh mechanical voice, the word flattened and distorted by a vocoder. His weapon was angled down for emphasis.

Kane didn’t know what the rifle could do, but when the soldier’s armored boot tapped his side, the touch alone felt like it shattered half his ribs. His body was too raw, too tender to take the impact. And so, he crawled.

Every movement felt like dragging himself across broken glass. His hands and knees tore open and bled with each meter. Dark streaks marked his path as he clawed his way forward, a broken body dragging itself along the floor. Exhausted, with his skin torn like a zombie, he collapsed inside the elevator, the doors sliding shut silently behind him.

Seconds ticked past and for a moment, it was blissful just not to move. Then the doors opened again, snatching away his reprieve.

Another soldier waited outside, this one in a sharp black uniform instead of armor, the same red three-striped insignia pinned to his collar. A compact sidearm hugged his hip.

The man said nothing, just hoisted Kane over his shoulder with practiced ease and carried him into a large chamber with a single chair in the center. At the far end rose an elevated platform with four stone seats behind a massive table, like a courtroom bench looming over an execution chair.

The soldier dropped Kane into the central seat. Its metal surface was cold against his skin. Restraints had been built into the armrests and legs, bolted to the floor so the occupier couldn’t move. The man secured him, then took Kane’s one free arm and placed it into a strange metal box on a raised pedestal beside it. Dozens of glowing red lines traced the device’s surface. It clamped down onto Kane’s wrist, trapping his hand in place. A needle stabbed into his radial artery, sharp and deep, and a steady warmth began to flow from his arm into the machine.

The box beeped. A violet light flashed once across its top.

Four figures in hooded robes filed out onto the raised platform and took their seats.

The one in the center wore orange. He was an older man with a long gray beard and sunken red eyes with deep lines creasing his face, giving him the look of someone who’d spent centuries staring at ledgers and reports. To the man’s left sat a bald man in a red robe, clean-shaven but with a face scored by scars, his mouth fixed in a permanent scowl. To his right, a blue-robed man adjusted large black glasses on the bridge of his nose, a thin mustache tracing his upper lip.

At the far end, apart from the others, sat the fourth figure—a woman in a purple robe and hood. Her face was completely hidden behind a heavy crystal mask shaped like a plain, expressionless vampire face. Circles of black glass sat over each eye. A purple bat adorned each cheek, the sigil standing out sharply against the pale crystal.

None of them spoke at first as holographic screens blossomed across the tabletop before them, panes of light displaying streams of data from the device clamped to Kane’s wrist. Fingers moved, scrolling and tapping through layers of information. The only sounds were the faint hum of the system and the occasional rustle of cloth as they shifted in their seats.

They whispered among themselves before, finally, the man in orange folded his hands and spoke, his voice dry and old. “You are a Convert, are you not?”

“I’m . . .” The room seemed to tilt slightly around Kane. “I’m not sure what that is.” His words were thick, his gums swollen and bleeding around his new teeth.

“It means you were not born a vampire,” the man said impatiently, steepling his fingers as he stared down at him. “Who was your Sire? The vampire who turned you,” he added when Kane’s blank expression lingered.

“I don’t know.” Kane tried to drag up a clear image of the woman from the elevator, but everything from that time was hazy and warped. “The person who brought me here . . . she never said a word. All I remember are her eyes. They had a glow that lit up the room.”

“Sounds like you were quite smitten. Good for you,” the man in red said, sarcasm dripping from every word. He had clearly mistaken Kane’s description as a figurative one. “My only question is, how did you make it here without going through processing?”

Kane clutched his elbow to his side, half-convinced his insides might spill out if he didn’t try to hold them in. “I don’t know!” he snapped, teeth clenched against the pain. “What’s it . . . matter? I feel . . . feel like I’m burning alive.”

The red-robed man’s expression hardened. “Yes, I’ve heard the change can be quite painful, which is why you shouldn’t be going through it here!” he shouted, slamming his fist on the table. “Processing exists for a reason. There are protocols. Rules. Laws! All of which you have broken!”

Kane could see how furious the man was, but there was nothing he could give him. All he could do was struggle against the fire in his veins. A small part of him almost wished they would just kill him and end it.

The men muttered among themselves for a while, their voices a low, indistinct growl. The purple-robed woman stayed silent at the far end, her crystal mask never shifting. Her gaze seemed to be solely focused on him, and he soon found himself staring back at her. For a heartbeat, he thought he saw a faint glow behind the black glass eyes.

The men’s whispering swelled into an argument, clearly debating what they should do with him. It went on for a minute before the man in orange finally raised a hand and the others fell quiet. Kane’s eyes shot back to him.

“It seems you have a very”—he searched for the right word—“unique type of blood. Something we have never seen before.” His eyes flicked nervously toward the masked woman. “My associate here”—he gestured to the scarred man in red—“thinks you should be made classless or enslaved, as you are technically here illegally and without a Sire to support you.” His gaze sharpened. “What say you in your defense?”

The pain behind Kane’s eyes had become a wildfire. His ribs ached. His head pounded. His whole body trembled, slick with sweat as his blood seemed to boil.

“Just fucking kill me!” he blurted out, unable to hold it in.

The man’s eyebrows climbed. “You prefer death?”

“Yes,” Kane grimaced, his jaw clenched so hard it hurt. It was like he was being cooked alive from the inside out.

“And you shall have it!” the man in red declared, stabbing a finger at him. “I order—”

He never finished.

The purple-robed woman slammed her fist into the table. The stone cracked beneath the blow, a jagged line racing across the surface as sparks spat from the embedded circuitry.

She rose slowly. Her gloved fists shook with barely contained fury. She was smaller than the others, but her presence rolled across the room like a storm, and when she spoke, her voice came out low and mechanical, filtered by the mask. But there was something else under that metallic edge. Something dangerous.

“You dare try to steal from me,” she whispered.

The hairs on the back of Kane’s neck stood up.

“It seems you have all forgotten your place,” she went on, the distortion in her voice grinding each word into steel. “Be you Hemochrons or not, nobody steals from my House.”

Adrenaline surged through Kane’s veins, briefly masking the pain.

Her gloved hand shot toward him, fingers trembling with rage. “This one is mine.” Each word landed like a blow. “The blood flowing through his veins belongs to me. And I will not give one drop of it to you filthy vermin.”

“But the law dictates that—” the man in red began.

“Your laws mean nothing to me, Sabre!” she snarled, leaning over the table as if she might leap across and strangle him before drawing herself back with visible effort, folding her hands neatly in front of her. “Sabre, Provak, Veisik,” she said, her tone cold and precise. “You are all but slaves to my House, and you would do well to remember it. If any of you ever dare question me again, my Praetorians will mount the heads of you and your worthless families to the fortress walls of Grelock.”

Nobody moved.

Nobody spoke.

She stood there for a moment, letting the threat settle into the silence like a weight. Then her masked face tilted toward Kane. She exhaled softly, head cocking slightly, as if she felt some small measure of pity for him. When she spoke again, her voice changed. It was still mechanical, still edged with steel, but the venom was gone, the tone cooled and controlled.

“You will go to House Draconi.”