New Avalon. A city that devours its own heart.
The rain had a taste tonight.Metal. Smoke. Faintly of blood.Ash licked the droplets off his sleeve as he stood on the rooftop, watching the lights flicker below like dying stars.
The city was never quiet—sirens, electric ads, synthetic music throbbed through the veins of New Avalon. The humans below moved like ants in a steel maze, never looking up. Never questioning what watched them from above.
That was fine.Ash preferred it that way.
He didn't belong to this world. He never had.
Red eyes glowed faintly in the dark, mirrored in the glass of a skyscraper across the street. His hair, long and white like winter ash, whipped in the wind. He stood there in a black coat that didn't shine, didn't reflect, didn't seem to move unless he did. A silhouette against the storm.
He was a vampire.The first, maybe. The last, definitely.The old world—the one with blood cults, ancestral lines, and ancient courts—was gone.
Burned. Hunted. Forgotten.
And he? He had survived it all.
He had watched kings fall to greed. Watched bloodlines poison themselves with pride. Watched monsters become myths, then jokes, then nothing at all.
But Ash wasn't a ghost.He was still here. Watching. Waiting.
No vampire society existed anymore. No laws. No leaders. Just scattered remnants—wannabes feeding on club girls, rabid strays turned in alleyways, old ones buried so deep in stasis they'd never wake. Chaos ruled now. The age of silence.
Ash was going to change that.Not by reviving the old order. That had failed.
He would build something new.From nothing.
A kingdom born not of noble blood, but of vision. Discipline. Purpose.Not a coven. Not a council. A nation in the shadows. One that would never fall again.
But first, he needed power.Not just blood.People. Infrastructure. Influence.And time.
He leapt from the rooftop, landing silently in a narrow alley twenty stories below. His boots splashed in a puddle. A rat squealed and vanished behind a trash bin.
The club he entered was unmarked. No bouncer. Just a steel door coded to open only for someone who didn't breathe. Inside, the place pulsed with low synth beats. Red lights. Human sweat. Cheap liquor.
Vampire wannabes mingled in the corners—fanged contacts, fake blood, stupid tattoos. Ash didn't bother sneering. They weren't a threat. They were symptoms. Evidence of a void in the world. Of how badly something real was needed.
At the bar, he ordered nothing. He didn't come to drink.He came to recruit.
From the back, a girl with dark skin and cybernetic eyes approached him cautiously. She had the look—one foot in this world, one out. Smart. Scarred. Desperate. Exactly the kind of soul that could be shaped into something more.
"You're Ash," she said.He didn't answer.
"You're building something, aren't you?" she asked, softer this time. "I've heard whispers. People say you're gathering... others."
He turned slightly, letting her see his eyes. Letting her feel that cold, endless hunger behind them."Not others," he said."Founders."
The girl shivered. But she didn't run.Good.
"You got a name?" he asked.
She hesitated. Then: "Nova."
"Nova," Ash said, rolling it on his tongue like a future title. "You want power, Nova?"She nodded.
"You'll have to bleed for it. Break for it. Kill for it."
"I already have," she said quietly.
He smiled. Not kindly.
"Then welcome. You're the first."
Outside, thunder cracked. The storm was just beginning.
So was his reign.