My Blood Legacy: Bloodlines

In the deepest place of a structure that no longer appeared on any map, where ancient corridors had been swallowed by dampness and silence had remained untouched for centuries, there was a single coffin.

The black stone covering it was buried beneath a thick layer of dust, thin roots had grown between its sides, and part of the inscriptions carved into the lid had nearly disappeared with time.

Even so, on that night, something that should have remained asleep for another ten years began to awaken.

First came one pulse.

Then another.

And another.

The runes scattered across the coffin lit up in a deep wine-red color.

They did not glow like ordinary magic.

They looked like living blood flowing through grooves carved into the stone, reigniting symbol after symbol after two thousand years.

The pressure inside the chamber slowly increased, lifting dust from the floor and causing small cracks to spread through the walls.

Then one of the runes exploded.

Another followed immediately.

Then dozens.

Until the entire sealing system began breaking apart in sequence.

The coffin lid was hurled into the wall with tremendous force.

The impact shook the underground chamber and shattered part of the ancient stone.

From the darkness inside, an extremely pale hand appeared first, long and delicate fingers gripping the edge of the sarcophagus.

Then emerged a woman who looked as though the world itself had forgotten her.

She slowly rose, still unstable after a sleep that had crossed entire eras, and let her bare feet touch the dust-covered floor.

"Haaah..."

Air entered her lungs with difficulty.

It had been a very long time since she had felt fresh air.

One hand rose to her throat.

"How many years has it been since I drank blood?"

Her voice was hoarse, but it still carried a natural arrogance, as though even in such a miserable condition the world should be expected to wait for her.

A small cough escaped immediately afterward, irritating her enough to make her eyes narrow.

She raised her face.

"Hey, you little ants. Come here."

Six presences appeared almost immediately.

The vampires guarding that chamber belonged to the upper class of vampire society, warriors capable of holding important positions in any great family.

Even so, not one of them dared remain standing after entering that woman’s presence.

All six knelt at the same time, heads lowered and arms kept close to their bodies without looking directly into her eyes.

"Princess."

She looked at them without expression.

None received permission to stand.

In fact, they were practically forcing themselves to keep breathing.

"Blood."

The captain of the small squad immediately opened a pouch attached to his waist, pulled out a transparent container filled with red liquid, and carefully tossed it toward her.

The woman caught it in midair and spent several seconds staring at it with suspicion.

It was a bag.

Filled with blood.

And there was a small straw attached to it.

She raised the container.

"When did you start using these things?"

The captain raised his face slightly, though he remained kneeling.

"About six hundred years ago, Princess. Our technology advanced considerably during your sleep. We can now store blood for long periods and transport it without significant loss of quality. It can also be legally traded within the territory."

She looked at the bag again.

Then at the straw.

She brought it to her lips with the curiosity of someone examining an extremely strange invention and sucked in a small amount.

Her eyes opened slightly wider.

She drank again.

"This is convenient."

The captain remained motionless.

The woman rotated the bag between her fingers, studying it as if it were a revolutionary discovery.

"I don’t need to search for someone. I don’t need to bite anyone. I don’t need to listen to anyone screaming while I drink."

She took another sip.

"Promote whoever invented this."

The captain hesitated.

"Princess... the person responsible was promoted many years ago."

She stopped drinking.

"Ah."

A few more seconds of silence passed.

The tip of one fang pressed against her own tongue.

"I can’t even give her the credit personally. Stupid damn father."

None of the six vampires commented.

She stepped away from the coffin while continuing to drink, but her footing faltered for a moment.

The reflection of something on the ground caught her attention.

A small puddle of water had collected between the stones, probably the result of centuries of infiltration.

The woman stopped in front of it.

Looked down.

And remained silent.

The figure reflected in that surface was very different from the one she probably remembered.

Her hair, once long and shining, had become dull and almost entirely gray.

A few strands still carried a faint silver sheen, but they looked dead, lacking volume and brittle at the ends.

Her skin had completely lost its healthy tone, becoming so pale that it looked as though it belonged to a corpse freshly removed from a tomb.

Deep shadows marked her eyes, her face was far too thin, and her posture remained slightly hunched from the effects of prolonged sleep.

She tilted her head.

Looked from another angle.

Worse.

The tip of her fang pressed against her tongue again.

"What the fuck."

The captain noticed the change in her expression.

"Princess, your condition is natural after such a prolonged sealing. After a few weeks of feeding—"

She raised her eyes.

That was all.

The six vampires stopped breathing.

Lines of blood appeared inside their bodies before any of them could react.

Their veins bulged beneath the skin, their hearts accelerated, and in the next instant all of their blood began abandoning their bodies at once.

There were no large cuts.

No bites.

The liquid simply passed through pores, eyes, mouths, and tiny cracks in the skin, gathering in the air into red streams that flowed directly toward the woman.

The first vampire fell.

Then the second.

All six bodies began shriveling rapidly, skin clinging to bone, muscles collapsing, eyes sinking into their sockets.

Within seconds, those upper-class warriors had become dry husks scattered across the floor, completely empty inside.

Not a single drop was wasted.

The blood revolved around the woman like a silent storm before entering her body.

The change happened immediately.

Her spine straightened.

The dead hair began falling away.

Beneath it, new strands emerged like liquid silk, long and extraordinarily glossy, taking on a color somewhere between silver and pure white, with subtle violet and wine-red reflections hidden in the lower layers.

Her hair grew far below her back, light enough to follow every movement as though floating underwater.

Her gray skin regained life.

The pallor remained, but now it was clean and noble, like porcelain, without any trace of the corpse-like appearance from before.

The dark circles vanished.

The lines of exhaustion disappeared.

Her face regained delicate and elegant proportions.

A small beauty mark near one eye became visible again as her skin finished restoring itself.

Then came the eyes.

One became an intense red, like the inside of a gemstone lit by fire.

The other carried a deeper shade, closer to violet and wine, with an unusual glow hidden at the center of the iris.

They were not eyes that matched perfectly.

And perhaps that was exactly what made them so difficult to ignore.

Her silhouette also recovered everything the centuries had drained away.

Her waist became narrow again, her body regained proportional curves, and her presence, weakened by the sealing until now, began filling the chamber.

It was not pressure being deliberately released.

It was simply the consequence of an existence far too ancient returning to occupy space in the world.

She looked at the puddle again.

This time, she was satisfied.

She ran her fingers through her newly restored hair, turned her face slightly to admire her profile, and allowed a small smile to appear.

"More beautiful than in my ten thousand years of life."

She did not seem to be joking.

Behind her, the six bodies remained scattered across the floor like skins abandoned by snakes after shedding.

The woman turned toward the destroyed coffin.

Her smile faded slightly.

Being satisfied with her appearance had solved only one problem.

The other was far more important.

She walked toward the remains of the runes, crouched down, and ran two fingers across one of the shattered inscriptions.

There was still enough residual energy to confirm what she already suspected.

The sealing should not have ended.

"Interesting."

She closed her eyes for several seconds, mentally reconstructing the structure of the runes and comparing their current state with what she remembered from when she had voluntarily entered that sleep.

"I should have remained asleep for another ten years."

Her gaze moved across the coffin.

"So why did I wake up?"

She looked back at the corpses of the guards, as though only then remembering that she could have asked them before killing them.

A pause.

"Ah."

She scratched her cheek.

"Should’ve asked first."

The regret lasted less than two seconds.

"Anyway, I can feel a lot of vampires in this world, but why is one of them different?"

She asked herself the question before shrugging.

"Well, if he’s strong, it should be easy enough to find him."

The woman walked toward the chamber’s only exit.

Her steps remained calm, but the entire castle had already begun reacting to the presence returning to the world.

Forgotten barriers reignited.

Dormant runes came back to life.

Creatures living on the upper levels began fleeing without even understanding why.

The vampire world had changed during her sleep.

Empires had risen.

Families had disappeared.

New bloodlines had emerged.

Technology had turned blood into merchandise stored inside little bags with straws, and she still knew absolutely nothing about any of it.

But she would find out.

Because after two thousand years of silence, the Princess of All Vampires had awakened.

A Genesis-Class Vampire had opened her eyes once again.

Her name was Anette Alucard Tapes.

Alucard, the reverse of her own father’s name.

And Tapes, her mother’s.

Even her own name existed as an affront to the one who created her, just as her existence itself seemed to be an affront to the nature of the blood flowing through her veins.

"Ah, I hope that sick old bastard is in his final moments of life. I hate him."

Anette said it before disappearing beneath the moonlight.