The Five Evolution

『"Give the blade what it wants."』

The ancient vampire’s eyes were unlike anything Amara had seen before. His pupils were pure crimson, glowing with their own internal light, and the sclera surrounding them were void black.

For some reason, those eyes were fixed directly on her and Ethan with the kind of focus a predator reserves for prey.

Horrific eyes that matched the red silk tie he wore, which was paired with an immaculately tailored white suit that screamed aristocracy.

"What an unexpected gift," the vampire said with a refined European accent. "I’ve tasted Awakener blood before, you know. Quite exquisite... the way power flavors the hemoglobin, mm-mm... adds notes you simply cannot find in ordinary humans.

"But one of the Five?" He took a single elegant step forward, and Amara felt her weapon’s warnings in her mind. "That’s a delicacy I’ve only dreamed of for decades."

Somehow, this vampire new what Ethan and she were. And the aura it gave off was enough to send beads of sweat dropping from Amara’s forehead.

"Elder vampire," Maya’s voice came through the comm with urgency. "Bishop-class threat level. All units, fall back immediately! This is beyond your—"

The vampire moved before Maya could finish. Faster than Amara’s eyes could track. One moment he stood several feet away. The next he was in front of her, claws reaching for her throat.

Ethan’s shield intercepted it, and the impact generated let off a shockwave that split the very factory in two. Before he knew it, a second strike followed and he was sent flying backwards.

His shield shattered as the force launched him completely through one wall, then another, then a third, leaving human-shaped holes in them.

"Ethan!" Amara screamed.

"I know too well not to hold back by even an inch against the Shield." It moved again, and this time Yelena intercepted it, her blades meeting the vampire’s claws in a shower of sparks.

"Now you..." The vampire grinned at Yelena. "...you I can dance with."

"What the hell was that!?" Hiro’s voice came in through their comms but they were all a bit too preoccupied to talk.

"Run!" Yelena commanded without taking her eyes off the vampire. "This is no place for Dream Walker!"

But Amara’s legs wouldn’t move. It couldn’t move. Not when Yelena was buying them time with her own life, standing between them and certain death.

Angel’s Bane burned in her grip, the weapon pushing against her consciousness with desperate hunger that transcended words.

All she could hear, all she could feel, was a single imperative pounding through her mind like a heartbeat:

Cut. Cut. CUT.

The vampire and Yelena began to move in earnest. They became blurs of motion almost too fast for human perception.

Impacts cracked pavement wherever they touched down, sending concrete chunks flying. Sparks flew with every clash of blade against claw, illuminating the darkness in sparks and flashes.

Cut. Cut. CUT.

"Excellent!" the vampire said as the side of his palm clashed with her blade.

"We have to help her," Amara said, watching the fight with growing horror.

"We can’t," Meredith said grimly, already manifesting stone walls between them and the combat, earth rising up in layered defensive barriers.

"That thing is centuries old, maybe more." She started moving. "It’s faster than us, stronger than us, and it doesn’t tire, doesn’t feel pain the way we do. Yelena can maybe hold it for a few minutes. We use that time to—"

The vampire appeared beside them suddenly, slipping through Meredith’s defenses by becoming shadow itself and reforming himself on the other side of it.

Across the yard, visible through a gap in the crumbling walls, Yelena was pulling herself from rubble as blood streamed down her face from a gash across her forehead.

Meredith tried to react, getting halfway through a defensive stance before the vampire struck twice with surgical precision.

The first blow shattered her stone guard and the second drove her back, leaving just Amara with the vampire.

He quickly reached for her throat, but she parried it, or at least tried to with her blade.

Unfortunately, her blade was unable to go through his tough skin as his right hand slapped it away.

In that same moment, his other hand wrapped around Amara’s throat and lifted her off the ground with ease.

Her legs kicked helplessly, finding only air while her hands grabbed onto his cold arm that refused to budge.

Cut. Cut. CUT.

"There you are," he whispered, leaning close enough that she could smell that same familiar scent of what she believed was blood on his breath. "Let’s see what makes you so special." His fangs descended toward her neck.

With perfect timing, Meredith was back on her feet with both of her fists darkened as a yellow-brown energy surrounded her arms.

And without wasting any second, she charged forward and drove her fist into the vampire’s face, sending the monster skidding backward across the broken pavement.

However, he kept hold of Amara, dragging her with him and using her weight to arrest his momentum and slow himself down.

Meredith didn’t stop. She yanked an enormous sledgehammer from the ground itself, the earth flowing upward and solidifying into a weapon. Then she leaped, bringing it down in an overhead strike.

Cut. Cut. CUT.

Suddenly, hundreds of bats erupted from the vampire’s own shadow, swarming around Meredith’s head, impeding her vision, and disorienting her for just a crucial second.

In that crucial second, the vampire positioned Amara directly in the hammer’s path, using her as a human shield as his expression twisted into something that might have been a smile.

By the time Meredith realized what had happened, she was already committed to the strike. She pulled back desperately, muscles straining, trying to stop herself—

This desperate attempt to halt her strike created an opening for him. And Meredith realized too late, just how vulnerable she was in that moment.

With his other arm, he generated a sword made of solidified blood and stabbed through her, the blade emerging from her back in a spray of red.

"Typical," the elder vampire said with contempt as he twisted the blade and watched the sledgehammer fall from her grip.

Meredith gasped, blood bubbling from her lips. Her eyes met Amara’s for one terrible moment. Then her knees buckled and she collapsed, the blood sword dissolving as the vampire released it.

Her body hit the ground and bood began pooling immediately, too much blood, spreading across broken pavement in a dark stain.

"No," Amara whispered. "No, no, no—"

"Nooo!" The whisper became a scream as she struggled against his tight grip on her throat. She had been too slow, too weak, and now Meredith was bleeding out on the ground because of her.

"Meredith down!" Maya’s voice came through the comms with panic. "All units converge on—"

"Negative!" Yelena’s voice was strained as she slowly pushed herself up. "Stay back! Elder vampire will slaughter you all! Distance fighters only!"

The voice in Amara’s head grew louder and something in her mind snapped.

CUT. CUT. CUT!

Her once vibrant blue eyes went completely dim as Angel’s Bane was summoned and brought down in the span of the same moment.

One instant she was in his grip, throat constricted, vision darkening. The next she stood ten feet away, gasping for air as Angel’s Bane dripped with blood.

The vampire’s severed arm lay on the ground beside her feet, still twitching as blood pooled beneath it.

He shrieked in an inhuman sound of rage and shock, stumbling backward and staring at his severed limb with what might have been disbelief. "H-How... what did you—"

Amara didn’t answer. In fact, she couldn’t answer. Because she didn’t fully understand what she’d just done either.

For a fraction of a second, all she saw were lines everywhere. The world was divided into blocks, or rather, into rows and columns. Segmented into things that could be cut.

She’d brought her sword down and it felt like she wasn’t just cleaving through his arm but through space itself, through the very fabric of reality.

Her Ascendant Sigil blazed with a new orange light as the second bar permanently imprinted itself beside the first with a burning, searing sound.

Casting aside his shock, the vampire lunged at her again, already regenerating its severed arm as it began to regrow with horrifying speed, flesh knitting together, bones extending and taking shape.