The blood was much more visible to Drazeil’s sharp eyes.
Celestia tried to look into the line of sight Drazeil’s eyes were focused on, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t see a thing.
"Must be a perk of being a vampire," she muttered.
Drazeil moved toward the place where he could see the blood. There was no hesitation in the long line of his body, no visible curiosity—only that cold, controlled purpose that made people step aside before they even realized they were doing it.
The air ahead felt wrong.
Not simply cold, and not simply quiet.
It had the dense, held-breath quality of a place where sothing had happened recently, and the land itself had not yet recovered from it.
The faint sll of iron clung beneath the fog, mixing with wet earth, smoke, and sothing older—sothing bitter and herbal, like crushed roots left to burn until they gave up all they had.
He had taken approximately four steps when they appeared before him.
Villagers.
Not one or two. A full line of them—standing shoulder to shoulder across the fog-covered street with the particular posture of people who had decided, collectively and in advance, that this was worth dying for.
n and won of varying ages and sizes, all carrying the sa expression of terrified determination that existed on the faces of people who were afraid and had decided to be afraid loudly rather than quietly.
So held farming tools. One had a sharpened stick. Another clutched a wooden charm carved into the shape of an eye. A woman in the second row had both hands clenched around a pouch of herbs so tightly her knuckles had gone white.
They were trembling.
But they did not move.
The fog curled around their ankles, around the hems of their clothes, around the space between them, as though the street itself were trying to swallow them—and they were refusing to be taken.
A man at the center—broad-shouldered, weathered, the unofficial spokesperson of the human barrier—raised one hand.
"Please," he said.
The word ca out strained, rough with effort, as though even speaking to Drazeil directly cost him sothing physical.
"Today is the day of the sacred ritual. Nobody is permitted beyond this point. If the ritual is disturbed—"
"Move," Drazeil said.
One word.
Flat. Calm. Carrying approximately zero interest in what ca after "please."
The man swallowed visibly. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.
"The ritual will fail," he continued desperately. "Everything we have done to protect this village—the herbs, the symbols, the offerings—it will all be undone. Please. We are asking you. Do not go further."
Drazeil looked at the line of villagers.
Then at the man.
His expression did not change, but sothing in the air around him seed to tighten—a barely visible shift, like the world itself had gone suddenly still in anticipation of what he might do next.
"Don’t make say what I ordered you to do again," he said.
Nobody moved.
If anything, the line of villagers tightened. People stepped slightly closer together, shoulders pressing, backs straightening, their fear sharpening into resolve.
It was the sort of stubborn bravery that only appeared in ordinary people when they were protecting sothing they loved and had already accepted they might lose.
Drazeil’s gaze drifted across them one by one.
He was assessing.
asuring.
The way a blade asures weakness.
Sothing shifted in his expression.
Not emotion, exactly. More like interest had briefly surfaced, then been buried again beneath irritation.
"Do you plan to risk your lives," he said.
It was not a question. More the tone of soone reading an outco aloud to see how it sounded.
"We shall," the man said, though his voice cracked slightly on the words. "If we have to."
The line held.
A child sowhere behind the front row started to cry but was quickly hushed by a hand over the mouth.
No one in the line looked away. No one dared.
Drazeil’s hand moved toward Souldrinker.
The tal answered him with a faint, hungry whisper.
The villagers flinched as one.
"You really enjoy killing people."
Celestia’s voice said beside him—pleasant, conversational, carrying the tone of soone making a casual observation rather than an intervention.
Drazeil turned his head.
She stood with her fan open in one hand, calm as if this were rely a slightly inconvenient weather condition. Her gaze passed over the villagers with mild curiosity, then returned to him.
"You are probably already planning it," she continued lightly. "ntally selecting which ones to start with. Maybe thinking about removing a heart or two."
"Celestia—"
"Tragic waste of energy though," she said, as if she had not heard him.
"When we could simply—" She lifted her eyes to his, the corners of her mouth curving faintly. "Teleport."
Silence.
Even the fog seed to pause.
Drazeil looked at the line of villagers.
Looked at her.
Looked at the fog-covered street beyond the barrier.
He was silent for one long beat.
Then another.
The villagers did not know what to make of this. A few of them looked horrified. One looked offended on behalf of his ancestors. The man at the center still held his ground, though sweat had begun to bead at his temple.
Celestia’s fan shifted slightly in her fingers.
Drazeil exhaled through his nose.
He found this mildly irritating.
She was right.
"Hold on," he said flatly.
Before the villagers could understand what was happening, he closed the distance between himself and Celestia in one step, took her arm with the unbothered efficiency of soone picking up sothing he needed, and teleported.
The air folded.
The world disappeared.
For one brief instant, there was the sensation of falling through cold glass, of the ground leaving the body without permission, of being suspended in a place where direction had no aning.
Celestia’s grip tightened on her fan.
The mist tore apart around them like fabric split by invisible hands.
Then they were gone.
The human barrier stood frozen in the street, staring at the empty space where they had been a mont before.
One villager slowly lowered the stick in his hand.
Another crossed himself.
A child whispered, "Did they just—"
"No," said the old woman beside him in a trembling voice. "Don’t ask."
Then they all looked at each other with the terrible realization that the thing they had tried to stop had not, in fact, been stopped at all.
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