The air was thick with the remnants of battle—smoke curled lazily over the cracked earth, and the remnants of demons lay scattered across the wreckage of the university grounds. The once vibrant campus was now nothing more than a battlefield, scarred and broken. Jayden, his body battered and bloodied, lay unconscious in a shadowed alley far from the fray. His chest rose and fell, shallow breaths escaping his cracked lips as his mind swam in a fog of pain and darkness. His claws, once gleaming with the blood of his enemies, were now dulled by exhaustion and suffering.
And then, through the haze, a presence stirred.
A shadow crept over him, sharp and commanding. The sound of high heels clicking on the cracked pavement echoed like a death knell. The air seemed to thrum with an energy Jayden couldn't quite comprehend. His body, though weak and broken, instinctively knew something was near—something powerful.
Countess Divina.
She stood above him, her eyes glowing with a cruel, unsettling hunger. Her presence alone was enough to send a shiver down the spine of even the most powerful of beings. She was everything that Jayden wasn't—regal, terrifying, and utterly in control. Her long, raven-black hair cascaded down her back in waves, and her blood-red dress clung to her voluptuous frame like a second skin. Her bust was... immense, but it was her eyes—eyes filled with malice—that held Jayden's attention.
Her gaze flicked over his prone form, the corners of her mouth curving upward into a smirk that oozed disdain.
"So, this is the whelp who made such a spectacle of himself..." Her voice was like silk, but underneath it lay the weight of centuries, of power far beyond his own comprehension. She knelt beside him, her long fingers brushing the bloodstained ground where his body had fallen.
Jayden didn't respond. He couldn't. His body was too broken, too battered. He was nothing but a husk, drained of life, suspended between death and the faintest thread of consciousness.
But Divina saw something that none of the others had—the same thing she saw in the blood of his enemies: potential. It was in his blood, in the way his veins pulsed with a force unlike anything she had felt in over a thousand years.
"Your blood," she murmured, her voice tinged with a predatory excitement, "it reeks of something I haven't tasted in an age. The RQ... fascinating." Her eyes gleamed with a hunger Jayden couldn't understand. His blood—this strange, potent substance—was pulling at her, making her thirst like she hadn't in centuries. It was a hunger that rattled her very bones, a craving so deep it almost unnerved her.
With a flick of her wrist, she summoned a vial from the folds of her crimson cloak—a small, delicate thing, shaped from the finest glass. It hovered in the air before her, held by unseen hands. The vial pulsed with a soft, eerie glow, waiting for the precious blood to fill it.
For a moment, it was all she could think about—the sweet, intoxicating taste of Jayden's blood. But even as her fangs lengthened and her heart hammered with the overwhelming need, her sharp, calculating mind took over.
"Not yet." She smirked, the hunger in her eyes never fading. "You're not dead yet."
With a grunt of effort, Divina grasped Jayden's shoulders and, with inhuman strength, hoisted him effortlessly into her arms. His limp form barely registered to her; she had lifted mountains before, and this boy, broken as he was, posed no real challenge. Her eyes lingered on his still face, observing his delicate features. There was something... tragic about him. Something that intrigued her more than she cared to admit.
"Pathetic," she murmured under her breath. "But potential."
The vampire's eyes narrowed as she regarded the mask that Jayden wore—a symbol of his defiance, of his identity hidden from the world. She felt a strange connection to the mask, as though it were a shield he wasn't ready to let go of. She knew that such things had weight, especially when one was as broken as he was.
She sighed. "You're lucky, whelp."
With that, she began to walk away, her steps as graceful as they were deliberate. The soft rustling of her long cloak filled the silence as she vanished into the shadows, carrying Jayden with her. She could feel the tug of his blood with every step, but she would resist—for now.
Her destination? The world of vampires. A place where even the strongest could be broken, remade, or turned to dust in the blink of an eye.
And Jayden—he would either grow, or he would perish in the process. It was simple. His survival, his strength, was the only thing that would redeem him in her eyes.
But there was something more—something in the way he fought. Despite his weakness, despite the fact that he was nothing but a newborn vampire, he had shown courage. Brutal, reckless courage that even she couldn't dismiss.
Countess Divina's lips curled into a cruel smile as she walked into the depths of the night, Jayden's body still in her arms.
The vampire world awaited. And with it, the real battle for Jayden's soul.