CRACKLE.

An electric current shot from the tip of the skewer. It traveled through the true blood, burrowed into the Progenitor's heart, then spread through her blood vessels to every part of her body.

THUMP.

The vampire's body reacted strongly to the familiar shock. Her lips parted slightly, and a moan escaped. That tingling pleasure coursing through her heart—her body had learned it now.

It pulled her reason up from beneath the deep waters of sleep.

At the same time, Finlay began screaming like mad.

"Aaaaaaagh!"

Blood writhed throughout Finlay's body. It looked as though thousands of earthworms were crawling beneath his skin. Blood streamed from his nose, and the tiny vessels in his eyes burst, staining them red.

The blood throughout his body scattered in all directions. While Finlay crawled along the ground in excruciating pain, the vampire's heart beat again.

Her hazy eyes regained their focus. They turned a vivid crimson, as though sunset were falling across them. A little life returned to her doll-like face.

All the churning blood and darkness fell silent, awaiting the Progenitor's return.

Slowly, the vampire began to move.

"I had a dream."

The fight was over.

Ralion abruptly stopped fighting. The enraged Azi tore his body into dozens of pieces, but this time, instead of regenerating, Ralion chose to flow back toward the vampire. Once beside her, he sank down as though drained of strength.

"For a moment, I thought my dream had come true. But it soon slipped through my fingers. I wanted it so, so badly that I sought a way."

"You were doing an awful lot of talking in your sleep. That's what you get for sleeping in a coffin when you have a perfectly good bed."

The true blood lodged throughout the Regressor's body emerged. It drifted gently through the air, then flew toward the vampire.

Having steadied herself, the Regressor approached us through the motionless black knights.

"Was it a delusion? Did I covet the life I had lost, something I should never have dared desire? Have I sinned against God merely by wishing?"

"No. You just made trouble for me. I worked so hard to teach you. Have you considered how miserable it makes me feel to see a trainee do everything I told her not to? You wronged me before you wronged God."

With dark, downcast eyes, the vampire murmured,

"Tell me. What did I do wrong? Dreaming? Hoping for my wish to come true?"

"Well, you did several things wrong, but here's the biggest one."

I raised a finger and pointed at her chest, where her ribs lay fully exposed.

"How can someone who claims to be so modest go around with her chest hanging open? It's embarrassing to look at. Mind your manners."

My answer was utterly different from what the vampire had expected. I knew that for certain; I'd read her mind.

Her eyes widened in surprise, then she gave a small smile.

"Hehe. You have seen it countless times. Why make such a fuss?"

"I don't mind if you only do it in front of me. Then it's part of your charm."

"Ahahaha!"

The vampire laughed aloud. Only after laughing so hard that she seemed on the verge of tears she could not shed did she belatedly cover her mouth.

"Forgive me. I shall restrain myself from now on."

"You'll have to work hard at it. You've already lost an awful lot of points with me. And not just with me—with everyone else, too."

For a moment, the vampire looked around.

The little sun hanging in the air. The scattered blood energy and darkness. The shattered black knights, and the injured, limping Ralion.

The Regressor, struggling toward us with a hand clutched to her chest. Azi, her clothes in disarray. Even the earthfolk arm, discolored pitch-black.

After taking it all in, the Progenitor murmured with a faint smile,

"That is... rather unfortunate."

Then the vampire flicked a finger.

Finlay's interrupted screams resumed. The only reason we hadn't heard him screaming all this time was that the vampire had not permitted him to.

The Progenitor addressed him coldly as he rolled on the ground.

"Times truly must have changed. Now you even define reverence however you please. Well? How did it feel to control me, however briefly?"

"O Progenitor..."

Panting, Finlay lifted his head. His jaw had sunken in where his teeth were missing, his cheek had turned black, and his veins still bulged erratically.

A ghastly sight, he looked up at the restored Progenitor and cried desperately,

"I have indeed committed a sin beyond my ability to atone for, but, O Progenitor! Please hear me! You must go to the surface! We desperately need you! We need the deepest blood, to lead us all together!"

"I shall not go."

"Why? Why not?"

"I had several reasons, and recently gained another."

Having gathered her parasol back together, the vampire looked down at Finlay with red, glowing eyes.

Those eyes sometimes held a fleeting warmth when turned upon her own kind. For a traitor, they held nothing but boundless cold.

"The thrall who wished for it deceived me. Thus, that wish shall not be granted."

Despair deepened across Finlay's already ghastly face. After briefly denying what was happening, he turned the dregs of his emotions into rage and spat them out.

"Why?! O Progenitor! Why won't you help us?!"

Even faced with that irrational fury, the vampire showed no emotional disturbance. With her heart stopped, the Progenitor answered coldly, without the slightest wavering.

"I do not exist to help you. Nor did you help me."

"Everyone is waiting for you! You created us, created this blood—you're our very root! You must lead us! To victory! To glory!"

"All I gave you was an extension of life. Victory? Glory? I do not recall promising you such things."

Finlay's face went blank.

What one gained by becoming a vampire was a reprieve from death.

In place of a stopped heart, they received the Progenitor's power and moved their blood through blood manipulation. That was why vampires could walk the earth despite having all died once.

As their numbers grew, they hid among humans and operated in the shadows, coming to be known as nobles of the night. One great vampire had even become the ruler of a principality.

But the Progenitor had never promised any of that.

"We revered you! So why aren't we being rewarded?!"

But reason did not always follow logic, and the more extreme the situation, the more extreme one's thoughts became.

Finlay hurled out words without any logic behind them, as though demanding that she let herself be struck by stones he'd thrown at random.

Of course, none of it worked in the slightest on the Progenitor, who had lived for twelve hundred years.

"You are noisy."

Finlay's voice cut off abruptly. His mouth gaped wide, but not a sound escaped.

"Even your breathing irritates me."

His breathing stopped.

"And the fact that you move your wretched body with my power."

His blood, kept circulating through blood manipulation, stopped as well.

For a moment, with every activity sustaining his life suspended, Finlay merely rolled his eyes wildly. Terror arrived a little late only because he had yet to grasp the situation.

Only then did he confront his own death with a clearer perspective.

'No. I can't. If I die like this. My blood lord, my kin, the vampire race...'

"Your rampaging without knowing your place. All of it."

SNAP.

The vampire snapped her fingers, and blood began swirling in his shoulder.

The blood spun furiously inside his vessels, growing ever fiercer and sharper, until it began grinding through flesh and expanding.

Then, abruptly, Finlay's right arm burst apart.

Denied even the right to scream, Finlay could only bulge his eyes and writhe in agony.

'Ghh, guuugh. Wh-why? Why does it hurt so much? I'm a noble of the night!'

But the pain was not over yet.

He still had one arm and two legs left.

SNAP.

The blood pooled in his left arm ground through his insides like a saw blade. Screaming in his mind, Finlay tried to twist his body. But he was not permitted even to move, so his body merely trembled.

SNAP.

This time, it was his left leg. Blood vessels snapped strand by strand and thrashed out of control. Flailing like whips, they tore through his body. Beads of blood seeped through his skin.

'It huuuurts! Gah, haaagh! It hurts, it hurts!'

SNAP.

His right leg was last. This time, droplets of blood sharpened into needles and tore through his insides. The pain of needles traveling through his blood vessels all but obliterated Finlay's mind.

At last, when all his limbs had fallen away, a half-stupefied Finlay repeated just one thought.

'I... wasn't wrong... Someone had to do it...'

A final death rattle to protect his mind. A single lifeline he clung to, trying to preserve his dignity at the very end.

Even watching Finlay squirm like a worm, the vampire felt not a trace of pity. She merely went about her task impassively.

"And even the fact that you live. It irritates me beyond measure."

As the vampire moved to kill Finlay outright, I stepped in to stop her.

"One moment, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka."

I felt a peculiar urge.

You know that slightly cruel streak of mischief children have?

How would an ant react if separated from its marching line?

How hard would you have to shake a spider descending on a thin thread before it fell?

How much harder would you have to pull a worn, fraying rope before its strands snapped?

"Hello, Finlay."

Sorry, Finlay.

You might be on your way out, but you ought to be honest with yourself first.

"I gave you a chance, too. Everyone here had a choice to make. And you went and made the stupidest one."

'... I did it... for my kin...'

"But you know, don't you? You had a chance to turn back along the way. And you were clearly aware of it. Even if you had reached the surface with Tyrkanzyaka and returned to the Principality of Mist... a lowly Yealing daring to control the Progenitor was a grave crime that could never be forgiven."

'... I know. My life... I don't... begrudge—'

"The excuse that you did it for your kin. A very nice one. But why don't we be just a little more honest?"

The last lifeline he barely clung to, even at death's door.

But knowing what it truly was, I couldn't bear to leave it untouched.

"When you tried to deceive and control the Progenitor, you know... you didn't spare a single thought for the safety of that blood lord you revered and loyally served, or the kin you supposedly wanted to make great even at the cost of your life. Did you?"

'... What?'

Finally looking at me, are you?

I smiled and addressed the vampire with exaggerated theatricality.

"Trainee Tyrkanzyaka! Finlay has committed the grave crime of daring to covet the Progenitor's power! A horrifying act of insubordination, the first and last of its kind in vampire history! How, then, shall Finlay be punished for this grave crime?"

The vampire answered as though wondering why I was asking something so obvious.

"Extermination of his bloodline."

'... Bloodline... extermination?'

Those two words etched themselves clearly into his clouded mind.

Bloodline extermination. A horrifying, brutal punishment, laden with the malice of wiping out an entire bloodline, tearing it out by the roots.

A punishment that existed only in name in the principality, never actually carried out—and the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka spoke of it so casually.

"A mere thrall presumptuously tried to control me. A thrall's crime against blood higher in the line must be paid for by that thrall's blood lord."

But there was something Finlay didn't know.

Twelve hundred years ago? No, even just a few hundred years ago, bloodline extermination had been a very common punishment.

'Wait. No. Surely not.'

It seemed he had finally realized what he'd done.

This was why generation gaps were frightening.

To let him hear the specifics, I asked the vampire,

"Then what happens to this Count Erte?"

"Is he not Finlay's blood lord?"

The vampire had a heart that did not beat. Twelve hundred years ago, in that age of chaos and darkness, she had been born. Once as a human, and once as a vampire.

The Progenitor pitied the fate of those she had created. She pitied those who could not face the sun and were scorned by humans.

But pity did not lessen guilt. Nor did it reduce punishment.

"Then he, too, must disappear. Valdamir will be disappointed."

A chilling declaration.

Feeling the coldness steeped in it, Finlay trembled.

'No. Don't.'

Finlay's eyes widened as he shouted. With his mouth shut, it was only in his mind, of course.

'Even the Progenitor can't kill an Ein however she pleases! He's a distinguished servant of the Crimson Duke! I—I acted entirely on my own! My blood lord...!'

Denial.

'How can the Progenitor, who never even showed her face, do whatever she pleases with a distinguished servant of the principality?!'

Anger.

'Please! I acted alone. My kin have done nothing wrong!'

Begging.

But those desperate thoughts reached only me.

I crouched beside him and spoke.

"Finlay. You knew the answer. When you concocted your lies, you comforted yourself by saying it was all for your blood lord and your kin."

Caring for others was all very well, but there was one problem.

People often used it to justify themselves, yet neglected those supposedly precious others surprisingly often.

In other words, claiming to act for his blood lord was merely a psychological tool. Like a saw or a hammer.

"Then why didn't you consider what would happen to your blood lord and your kin if you were caught? Did it never occur to you? Was the future so horrifying that you refused to think about it? Or did it simply not matter that much?"

It hadn't mattered that much. Because what Finlay truly felt was:

"Because I'm such a fucking awesome vampire that I can control the Progenitor. Because, for a little while, I became a god. You wouldn't even have thought of your kin."

His body trembled. Terror filled Finlay's eyes. His limbs were all gone, but his mind, still unable to accept that fact, reached a hand toward me. In his imagination, a desperately trembling hand stretched out, grasped mine, and begged.

'No! N-no! No, you can't!'

"Goodbye, Finlay. Your love, your reverence, your loyalty—they were the sort of feelings you could forget for a moment. Well, it can't be helped. People have a wonderful ability to erase things that aren't terribly important from their minds."

'Ah. I...'

"Still, you accomplished something no one else ever has. A mere thrall, controlling the Progenitor. You'll certainly live on in history. Though your bloodline won't."

'Was I simply blinded?'

"Send him on his way, Tyrkanzyaka."

And Finlay's thoughts stopped.

As the vampire withdrew the last of her power, his extension of life reached its expiration date today.

I closed Finlay's eyes. It meant little; his body soon crumbled like dust.

Still, I offered a small gesture of mourning to a soul that had barely managed to be honest at the very end.

Silence settled. The imitation sun's light faded in the air, and dusk began to fall.

With that unexpected funeral over, I rose. The vampire, who had waited quietly until I moved, spoke to me.

"I shall take my time punishing Finlay's bloodline. I cannot go to the surface immediately, after all."

Punishment?

What did I care about that?

It wasn't as though I particularly wanted to kill off Finlay's entire bloodline. I had simply wanted him to recognize his true feelings.

If anything...

"Um, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. Did you happen to know?"

I was against things like guilt by association.

"Collective punishment was abolished recently."

"What?"

"These days, people almost never punish someone's family for their crimes. Though they might have to repay debts under joint liability."

The vampire was utterly astonished. She encountered new technologies all the time, but changes in morality were not so easy for her to accept.

Faced with this fresh piece of knowledge, she asked, wide-eyed,

"Then how do you punish crimes? How do you hold anyone accountable if they escape by cutting off their own tail, as Finlay has?"

A sincere question, asked with sparkling eyes.

Answering each point would probably mean another several days of explanations, so I gave a perfunctory reply.

"I'm not the one who abolished it."