My Blood Legacy: Bloodlines

The shadow climbing the walls did not remain still. It crossed the ceiling, covered the shattered tanks, and filled the cracks in the floor like a thick liquid searching for room to spread. Within seconds, the red crystals stopped illuminating the circular chamber, and Victor lost a clear view of the walls, platforms, and corpses scattered around them. He could still see in the dark, but the shapes refused to remain stable. Distances seemed to change whenever he moved his eyes, the dead bodies shifted positions between one blink and the next, and Ghideon remained in front of them without appearing to truly occupy that place.

Nera gripped the scythe with both hands and positioned herself near Victor, covering his left side while observing the movement around them. Blood from the wound in her shoulder ran down her arm and reached her fingers, making the shaft slippery, but she merely adjusted her grip and kept the weapon raised. The smile remained on her face, although it was now smaller and more attentive. She had also realized that her senses were being manipulated and had no intention of attacking a false image merely because Ghideon wanted her to.

"He is altering the entire room," Nera commented, keeping her eyes on a figure standing between two destroyed tanks. "I can see him, but I cannot feel the floor matching his position."

"Do not trust your sight," Rowena warned inside Victor’s mind. "The shadow is distorting sound, scent, and depth. He does not need to disappear if he can make you believe he is several meters away."

Victor covered his feet with a thin layer of Black Ice. He did not spread the technique throughout the environment, using it only to feel the true pressure beneath his soles and detect any physical change in the floor. Black Lightning remained accumulated in the muscles of his legs and shoulders, ready to respond to a sudden attack, while a small white flame appeared in his left hand to test the shadows’ behavior.

Ghideon remained standing before them.

"For fifteen hundred years, I was hunted by vampires who mistook superior senses for understanding," he said, while his voice came from several different places. "Some could hear heartbeats from kilometers away. Others could see blood flowing beneath the skin. All of them made the same mistake when they believed the body they observed had to be the real one."

Victor threw the white flame.

White Fire passed through the figure before them and struck an empty tank, melting the glass and burning the shadow gathered behind it. Ghideon’s image deformed without resistance. Victor turned at the same instant, raised his right arm, and blocked a blade that appeared near the back of his neck. The impact tore through part of the Black Ice protection and opened a deep cut in his forearm, but he managed to seize the real attacker’s wrist before the weapon reached his throat.

Ghideon did not try to break free.

He closed the distance.

The Specialist’s forehead struck Victor’s face with enough force to break his nose and force him backward. Before Victor fully recovered his balance, Ghideon transformed the trapped arm into shadow, passed through his fingers, and solidified it again inside his defense. The palm struck his abdomen with a short movement, but the pressure traveled through his body and exploded from his back, hurling Victor into one of the shattered tanks.

The remaining glass broke apart on impact. Victor fell among the fragments, feeling pain spread through his ribs, but his expanded perception was already tracking Ghideon. Nera had advanced before the enemy could pursue him. Her scythe traveled in a diagonal arc, forcing Ghideon to tilt his torso, but the main strike came from the opposite end. She released one hand, shortened her grip, and drove the lower tip of the shaft toward his ribs.

Ghideon avoided it by only a few centimeters.

Nera used the movement to spin around him and pull the curved blade toward his legs. Ghideon jumped, but she raised the scythe along with her body, turning the low strike into an upward slash that crossed his abdomen and reached his shoulder.

No blood came out.

The body she struck lost consistency and stretched like a strip of smoke, wrapping around the blade and shaft of the weapon. The shadow began climbing Nera’s arms, tightening around her wrists and trying to prevent her from releasing the scythe.

"Drop the weapon," Victor shouted as he rose among the wreckage.

Nera did exactly the opposite. She pulled harder, turned her body, and allowed her vampiric energy to explode through her arms. The shaft bent slightly under the pressure, but the shadow was torn from the blade before it could reach her shoulders. Ghideon regained his form in front of her and drove a kick directly into her chest.

Nera was hurled backward, but she drove the scythe into the floor while she was still in the air. The shaft served as an anchor, allowing her to rotate around the weapon and change direction before striking the wall. Her body returned at the same speed, and both feet hit Ghideon’s face, forcing him to slide several meters across the floor.

Victor appeared from the right before he could recover his stance. Black Lightning compressed the acceleration into a single step, but he did not waste the attack trying to strike a region that could be turned into shadow. Victor hit the Specialist’s chest with his shoulder and kept his body pressed against him, pushing while Black Ice emerged from his own right side and enclosed both of them in thick plates.

Ghideon tried to pass through the structure.

Victor released White Fire between the plates.

The explosion remained trapped inside the ice and threw them in opposite directions. Victor rolled across the floor, protected by an additional layer created at the instant of impact, while Ghideon broke through the stone chair and crashed into the central platform. The dark coat burned away completely. Part of the skin on his chest was destroyed, revealing dozens of thin scars connected by small symbols carved between his ribs.

Ghideon rose before the flames disappeared. Half his face was burned, his left arm hung at an unnatural angle, and pieces of Black Ice remained lodged inside his chest. He showed no pain. He passed his right hand over the broken limb, transformed the entire area into shadow, reconstructed the bones in the correct position, and restored solidity to the flesh.

Victor wiped away the blood running from his nose.

"Now I understand. You do not transform your entire body. You choose which parts remain real during each attack."

Ghideon examined the reconstructed arm and smiled.

"The body is merely a temporary arrangement of matter. Vampires spend centuries protecting something that could be reorganized whenever necessary."

"You still talk too much for someone who was just kicked in the face."

Nera showed Victor her teeth without taking her eyes off the enemy.

"Later, I am cutting you for continuing to call me a child."

Ghideon opened his right hand, and the shadow spread across the room began pulling the corpses toward him. The bodies did not rise as new clones. They were dismantled. Skin, blood, muscle, and fragments of bone separated into dark strips and crossed the chamber before entering through the exposed scars on the Specialist’s chest.

His body began changing in a controlled manner.

His muscles became denser, his shoulders widened, and black veins appeared beneath his skin. His right arm grew until it took on a partially bestial shape, covered in plates of bone and hardened blood. The hand became a claw large enough to close around Victor’s torso, while the legs remained human to preserve speed and balance.

"He is using parts of the experiments," Rowena warned. "That animal scent came from those bodies. He stored different traits in each one, and now he is choosing what to absorb."

"Can you identify which parts are vulnerable?"

"Not while he is reorganizing everything. Open his body and I will try to separate the scents."

Victor let Black Lightning travel through his shoulders.

"Then I will open him."