"Here she cos…" Ludwig said, his voice steady, yet the quiet weight beneath it betrayed the readiness of a soone who had lived through this mont too many tis before. His legs shifted subtly, bracing his stance, the leather of his boots creaking against the mossy stone. Oathcarver lifted into position, the tal humming faintly as it caught the scattered light of the fire spells still burning in the chamber. A deep breath uselessly filled his undead lungs, laced with the sll of scorched bark, blood, and sothing older, rot perhaps, or the scent of magic turned sour.
In the next instant, the vampire was no longer across from him. She was upon him. One mont a silhouette cloaked in stillness, the next a blur too fast for the eye to follow. Like lightning striking from clear skies, her presence crashed into Ludwig with terrifying force. She wasn't snarling. She wasn't screaming. Her face was empty, devoid of recognition, her eyes twin coals of hunger and instinct. Her fangs parted, long and eager, her clawed hands open and raised, slicing toward him not with cruelty but pure predatory reaction.
Ludwig tried to intercept her. His arms moved on reflex, Oathcarver's blade rising to et her strike. But the weapon barely made contact before it was swatted aside, flung wide like a twig caught in a landslide. Her follow-up ca instantly. A sharp, brutal kick struck him square in the chest with the force of a boulder hurled by a god. He didn't have ti to curse. The impact launched him backward, a ragdoll flung from the battlefield.
He collided with the far cavern wall in a sickening blend of speed and resistance. Hardened bark cracked beneath him, sharp thorns sliced through leather and flesh alike, and sowhere inside his body, bones folded where they weren't ant to. Dull and numbing pain spread instantly, like cold water poured over an open wound.
A flicker of text shimred in his vision.
[-12,477]
Your ribs have broken!
Your spine is ruptured!
Your chest has caved in!
He couldn't even move his legs. His vision pulsed at the edges. The pain was annoying, but quite familiar, numbing, far away but there, to remind him though he was undead, he wasn't truly dead.
"For fuck's sake, this always ends up like this," he muttered under his breath, voice strained and rasping not from lack of breath, but due to the bones of his ribs having pierced right through his innards and decayed lungs
He forced one arm to shift slightly. Having been here several tis before, he was thankful to have had one of the Bastos Wine potions earlier. Already, he could feel it working, his ribs knitting with a crackle, his spine realigning piece by piece with a pop.
She was already there.
No ti.
Her shadow fell over him, jaws wide, fangs gleaming.
She was going for his throat.
But she didn't know. She never did. This was the mont it always happened. The tragedy played again and again.
Ludwig wasn't alive.
And she couldn't sll it.
Not until it was too late.
So what happened, he had learned, when a vampire drank from sothing that wasn't truly living? When the blood she craved turned out to be corrupted, undead, wrong in ways no language could explain?
The answer was simple.
They both died.
For a normal vampire, that was a death sentence, for a True Vampire, it shouldn't affect them much, but she was too weak to survive it.
Every ti. She drained him dry, and in turn, her broken body, weakened and fraying, couldn't resist the rot inside his blood. The feedback killed them both. Over and over. And every ti it happened, it felt like being caught in a loop, a record scratched into eternity.
So what
Not this ti.
Ludwig's eyes snapped wide as he twisted his head just as her fangs ca down. Her bite landed on nothing, teeth slicing the air beside his neck.
"CELINE!" he barked, louder than before, louder than the echoes of pain in his bones.
And for a single breath, a mont so brief it nearly went unnoticed, sothing changed.
She froze.
Her eyes didn't soften. They didn't even widen. But sowhere, deep in the haunted hollows of her expression, sothing flickered. A spark. A hesitation. Like a light seen through fog, briefly rembered.
"You don't want to take a bite from a dead man," Ludwig said. His hand rose slowly to his lantern, fingers pale against the steel, and he slapped it.
There was a shift then. A ripple in the air, subtle but absolute. The illusion fell away. The magic that had cloaked him in the semblance of warmth and breath dissolved like mist under the sun. His skin, once passably human, slackened. The tone went gray, then paler. Veins dulled. The color of his lips faded to the hue of stone. The sli that wrapped him peeled back like torn cloth, revealing his true form beneath.
Rotten. Corroded. Silent.
Celine didn't gasp. She didn't scream. But her body reacted without thought. She staggered backward, her feet dragging through the mud and stone. Not because of conscious revulsion. But because so deep-rooted part of her, a primal instinct forged long before language, understood.
This was no longer food.
This was sothing else.
Sothing unclean.
She spun around, searching for life, for anything to feed the hunger rising in her. But the cavern was barren of prey. Nothing remained in reach. No pulse to call to her. No blood to claim.
Ludwig watched, breathless and silent. His chest still ached. His fingers still trembled. But his body was healing now. The Bastos Wine surged through his veins, stitching sinew and marrow with each passing second. He pushed himself upright, wincing as his spine cracked back into place, and allowed himself a slow, careful breath.
"Oh, that worked," he muttered, his voice low, more to himself than anyone else. "I should have done it before."
This was different.
This hadn't happened before.
The loop had changed.
And that terrified him more than anything else. After all, once again, he is in uncharted grounds.
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