Chapter 599: You are impossible
The palace closed like a jaw.
The main doors were locked first. Then the internal passages. After that, the service routes, side corridors, cellars, servants’ staircases, and upper galleries. Red runes lit one by one on the walls of the Palace of Black Blood, forming a containment network so ancient that the stone itself seemed to wake in a bad mood.
Royal guards moved without shouting. Violet did not need to repeat orders. A gesture was enough to shift patrols, isolate corridors, and replace servants in strategic positions. No one ran. No one panicked. In a way, that made everything worse. A palace in chaos was loud. A vampiric palace on a hunt was silent.
Kael walked beside Liza, with Sylphie, Irelia, and Amelia a few steps behind. Umbra was not exactly walking. She slid between the shadows of the columns, appearing and disappearing as the crimson light from the stained-glass windows touched the floor. Sometimes, only her eyes were visible in the dark. Other times, she appeared whole, tilted her head, and followed a different direction without asking anyone for permission.
Liza noticed that attentively.
"Does she always do that?"
Kael looked at an empty shadow where Umbra had been a second before.
"Yes."
"Convenient."
"Until she appears in your room without warning."
Sylphie answered with a slightly sharp calm:
"She does that."
Kael looked at her.
"Sylphie."
"I am only providing context."
Amelia, even while walking, opened the notebook.
"Emotional or operational context?"
"Both," Irelia said.
Kael sighed.
Liza did not seem to fully understand the dynamic, but seemed wise enough not to ask. At that moment, there were more urgent problems than jealousy involving an entity of shadows.
Umbra reappeared before them at the end of a corridor.
"Three."
Everyone stopped.
Violet, who was walking ahead with two guards, immediately turned.
"Three what?"
"Shadows that do not belong to the right bodies."
Kael grew serious.
"Where?"
Umbra raised a hand and pointed toward the side corridor.
"One in the servants’ wing. One near the cellar. One following Cassian’s delegation."
Liza narrowed her eyes.
"Cassian brought one?"
"No." Umbra tilted her head. "The shadow is following someone from the delegation, but it was not born with him. It was placed."
Amelia spoke quietly:
"Then Cassian may truly be bait."
Irelia nodded.
"Or an unwilling messenger for a greater source."
Liza looked at Violet.
"Divide the guard. No one touches the delegation without my order. I want Cassian watched, not provoked."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Violet made two quick gestures. The guards left in opposite directions.
Kael looked at Umbra.
"The closest?"
"Servants’ wing."
"Then let us go."
Liza started walking, but Kael raised a hand.
"First. If the person does not know they are being used, no one kills first and asks later."
Liza looked at him.
Her answer came cold, but without offense.
"I do not execute tools for having been held by the wrong hands."
"Good."
"But if the tool chooses to keep cutting after it knows, I break it."
Kael nodded.
"Fair."
Sylphie observed Liza for an extra second. The playful jealousy that had appeared earlier seemed distant now. There was something about that queen she was beginning to respect, even against her own will. Liza was cold, yes. Dangerous, certainly. But she did not seem cruel for pleasure. That made everything more complicated.
They continued to the servants’ wing.
The sector was very different from the noble areas of the palace. Fewer stained-glass windows, fewer carpets, fewer statues. More narrow doors, simple stairs, the smell of food, washed cloth, and candle wax. Even there, everything was impeccable, but there was real life. Servants standing in the corridors lowered their heads when Liza passed, some tense, others clearly frightened by the blocking runes lit throughout the palace.
Umbra stopped before a young maid holding an empty tray.
The girl looked barely over eighteen, perhaps younger, with brown hair tucked under a black cap and very pale red eyes. She trembled so much that the tray vibrated between her fingers. When she realized the queen had stopped before her, she went pale.
"Y-Your Majesty."
Liza did not answer immediately.
Umbra approached the maid and looked at the floor.
The girl’s shadow was wrong.
At first glance, it seemed normal. A dark outline cast by the lantern light. But then Kael noticed the delay. When the maid trembled, the shadow trembled half a second later. When she breathed, the shadow did not breathe with her. And beneath the human outline, there was something too thin, too long, like a thread attached to her heel and disappearing through a crack in the wall.
Sylphie became serious.
"She does not know."
The maid widened her eyes.
"Did I do something wrong?"
Liza looked at her.
"Your name."
"M-Miren, Your Majesty."
"Function."
"Wine service in the east wing and cleaning the smaller corridors."
Amelia came a little closer.
"Did you serve wine in the Crimson Hall today?"
Miren shook her head too quickly.
"No, lady. I only took glasses to the antechamber before the audience. Then I was dismissed."
Irelia exchanged a look with Amelia.
"The delegation’s antechamber."
Miren began to cry in silence.
"I did nothing. I swear by blood, I did nothing."
Kael took a step forward.
"I know."
The girl looked at him, not understanding.
Kael pointed to the tray.
"Put it on the floor."
She obeyed with trembling hands.
"Now stay still."
Umbra knelt beside the shadow.
Miren held her breath.
The shadow did not.
Kael saw Liza’s gaze harden.
Umbra touched the tip of the dark thread attached to the maid’s outline. In the same instant, the entire shadow twisted.
Miren screamed.
Sylphie moved before any guard. She held the girl by the shoulders, and a soft green light wrapped around her body, not like aggressive magic, but like roots surrounding unstable earth.
"Breathe," Sylphie said. "Do not fight it. It is not yours."
"It hurts," Miren cried.
Umbra spoke without taking her eyes off the thread:
"Because it attached itself to her memory."
Kael crouched beside Umbra.
"Can you remove it?"
"I can."
"Without killing her?"
Umbra looked at him.
"You always impose the difficult part."
"It is my charm."
She almost smiled.
Then she plunged her fingers into the maid’s shadow.
The entire corridor went dark for an instant.
It was not a lack of light. It was as if every nearby shadow had leaned in to watch. Kael’s, Liza’s, the guards’, the doors’, and even the small objects’ shadows in the corridor. All of them stretched toward Umbra while she pulled something that did not want to come out.
Miren screamed again.
Sylphie closed her eyes, and small green leaves appeared in the air around the maid, sustaining her consciousness. Liza watched everything without blinking, but Kael noticed the tension in her hand. She wanted to act. Wanted to cut that thing, destroy that thing, punish that thing. But she knew one wrong movement could kill her own servant.
Umbra pulled.
A black and red thread came out of Miren’s shadow.
It was thin as hair, but seemed alive. It twisted in the air like a worm made of night and old blood. At the tip, there was a small pulsing seal, almost invisible, formed by lines Kael recognized immediately.
The mark of the ancient records.
Amelia lost color.
"It is the same pattern."
Irelia breathed slowly.
"Then this is not ordinary espionage."
The thread tried to return to Miren’s shadow.
Kael grabbed it with his hand wrapped in scarlet mana.
The thing burned against his fingers.
Not physically.
Inside.
As if a memory that was not his tried to cross through his skin. For a fraction of a second, Kael saw ancient corridors, cups of blood, hands signing pacts, vampire children being presented to portraits of ancestors, voices whispering that obedience was natural, that hunger was truth, that blood was destiny.
He squeezed harder.
The scarlet mana burned.
The thread writhed.
Umbra looked at him.
"Do not destroy it yet."
Kael held the pressure.
"Why?"
"Because it points home."
Liza took a step.
"Can you follow it?"
Umbra smiled.
"I can."
The thread, caught between Kael’s and Umbra’s fingers, stretched toward the wall. It did not cross stone like something physical. It attached itself to the shadows of cracks, to memories of footsteps, to places where light did not reach completely.
Miren fell to her knees as soon as the bond was fully torn away.
Sylphie caught her before she hit the floor.
"She needs rest."
Liza looked at Violet, who had just arrived in the corridor.
"Take her to the medical wing. Full protection. No one interrogates Miren without my presence, Kael’s, or Lady Sylphie’s."
Violet nodded.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Miren, still crying, raised her face.
"I did not know..."
Liza looked at her.
"I know."
The girl seemed to collapse with relief before being supported by two guards and taken away.
Kael watched the scene in silence.
Liza noticed.
"What is it?"
"You did not blame her."
"I said I do not execute tools."
"Queens usually say good things in public and do worse things in the corridors."
Liza held his gaze.
"Then watch my corridors."
Kael smiled faintly.
"I am watching."
Sylphie looked at him.
"Politically?"
"Yes."
"Just confirming."
Umbra pulled the thread.
It stretched farther.
"If you are done flirting with administrative threats, the shadow is escaping."
Kael turned to her.
"We were not flirting."
Sylphie answered at the same time:
"He was not."
Liza raised an eyebrow.
Amelia opened the notebook again.
Kael pointed at her.
"Do not write that down."
"I already did."
Irelia spoke calmly:
"Can we return to the parasitic shadow before the romantic situation becomes a diplomatic incident?"
"Good idea," Kael said.
Umbra began walking, following the thread that only she and Kael seemed to see clearly. Sylphie could feel its presence like a kind of wound in the environment, and Inari, even absent, seemed to echo somewhere in Kael’s consciousness, as if the nine golden tails had left an extra sensitivity in him after the previous night.
The thread led the group down a narrow staircase, then through an ancient corridor outside the main routes. The walls there were less polished. Older. Blood runes, almost erased, marked forgotten stone arches. Liza frowned when she recognized the path.
"This wing was sealed decades ago."
Violet placed a hand on the hilt of her sword.
"It is not listed among the current service routes."
Kael looked at the thread.
"But someone still uses the shadows here."
Umbra stopped before a low door, partially hidden behind an old tapestry. The tapestry showed a vampire king kneeling before a faceless figure, offering a cup full of blood. The fabric was old, almost faded, but the symbol on the cup was still visible.
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"Liza."
She saw it.
And went still.
"That tapestry should not exist."
Amelia approached, observing the embroidery.
"Why?"
Liza answered without taking her eyes off the faceless figure.
"Because every official record says our first king knelt before no one."
Irelia murmured:
"Convenient history."
Kael touched the low door.
The runes reacted to his mana, but did not open.
Liza came closer and cut the tip of her own finger with her nail. A drop of blood fell onto the lock.
Nothing happened.
The queen grew serious.
"It does not recognize my blood."
Violet seemed alarmed.
"That is impossible."
Umbra looked at the door.
"It is not a royal lock."
Sylphie touched the stone beside it and closed her eyes.
"It is older than Liza’s lineage."
Amelia went still.
"Inside the palace?"
Kael looked at the symbol on the tapestry.
"It is not inside the palace."
Everyone looked at him.
Kael continued:
"Maybe the palace was built on top."
The silence was immediate.
The thread in Umbra’s hand trembled, as if something on the other side had heard.
Then the door opened on its own.
Not with a creak.
Not with a crack.
It simply moved inward, revealing a narrow staircase descending into darkness.
The air that rose from below was cold, old, and heavy with dried blood.
Not recent blood.
Blood far too ancient.
Liza remained still for only one second.
Then she took a step forward.
Kael caught her arm.
She looked at him.
"This is my palace."
"And that is exactly why you do not go in first."
Violet moved.
"Your Majesty, he is right."
Liza seemed to hate that.
Kael released her arm and looked at Umbra.
"Shadows?"
Umbra smiled, her dark eyes shining.
"Many."
"Hostile?"
"Hungry."
Sylphie took a deep breath.
"There is something down there."
Irelia pulled a short dagger hidden in her sleeve.
Amelia closed the notebook, which by itself said enough about the gravity of the situation.
Kael looked at the staircase.
Then smiled.
"Now yes."
Sylphie closed her eyes.
"You are impossible."
"I know."
Liza stared at the dark opening beneath her own palace, and for the first time that day, her voice came out lower.
"If this was here the whole time..."
Kael finished for her:
"Then the Order did not infiltrate the Kingdom of Vampires."
The thread in Umbra’s hand crumbled into dark dust.
Down below, something answered with a low sound, almost a breath.
Kael took the first step on the staircase.
"It was born beneath it."