The silence didn't last.
A faint scraping echoed through the corridor ahead—wet, uneven, deliberate. Michael's body tensed. He moved with quiet caution, every step light but ready. His breath misted slightly in the cold air. The smell of rot lingered.
Something was coming.
He felt it before he saw it.
Crimson Sense is active, Crimson whispered. "Focus. Let the blood show you the truth."
Michael did.
It wasn't sight or sound. It was something deeper—an internal pull. Like pressure behind his eyes, tension in his muscles. A ripple in his blood.
Then it stepped into view. A rotting husk of a creature, dragging its foot, head tilted unnaturally.
Enemy Detected – Rotwalker (Zombie) – Level 1
"Great," Michael muttered. "Guess it's time."
The zombie groaned and charged.
Michael braced, fists clenched. He ducked under its first swing and countered with a punch to the ribs. Nothing. The zombie barely reacted. He threw another strike, then a kick—bone hit flesh with no effect.
Then pain exploded in his side.
The zombie had slammed into him with the weight of a corpse that didn't care about breaking its own body. Michael hit the wall hard and slid down with a grunt.
"We need to find a weapon," he hissed, coughing.
Michael… Crimson's voice rumbled with a strange resonance. "We are the weapon."
The words hit harder than the zombie had. They didn't ignite panic. They rooted him.
He stood slowly, blood dripping from his lip. The pain barely registered—he'd lived worse for longer. His hospital years had taught him how to breathe through agony.
You endured a decade of decay, Crimson said. "This is nothing."
Michael exhaled, dropped into a low stance, and let instinct guide him.
When the zombie came again, he didn't dodge—he moved with it. He slammed a knee into its gut, grabbed its arm, and let a thin line of blood coil down his wrist.
Crimson Dominion.
The blood hardened just enough—enough to drive his fist through the thing's skull like a lance. A spray of dark fluid hit the stone.
The zombie crumpled.
Michael stood over the twitching body, chest heaving.
Blood Echo, Crimson whispered. "Now, take what remains."
Michael closed his eyes and let his fingers touch the blood.
A ripple.
A scream.
Not his.
Chains. A circle carved into the earth, symbols scrawled in blood. Vampires. Noble ones—robed, chanting.
The body twitching on the floor… once human.
The memory snapped away.
Michael recoiled.
"What the hell was that?" he asked, voice ragged.
A fragment. An echo. Their blood remembers, Crimson said. "And this is only the beginning."
Michael looked down and watched his side wound close slowly, then accelerate as the blood was pulled inward.
He touched his ribs, startled by the sudden warmth and tightening skin.
Blood Resonance: 100%Enemy Defeated – Rotwalker Lv. 1Blood Rank Ascended – Rank I UnlockedCrimson Vault – Unlocked
The first drop, Crimson said. "And now… the Vault opens."
Something stirred inside him—smooth, deep, like remembering how to breathe. He felt a presence take shape within his blood, not foreign… just long asleep.
The Crimson Vault is yours, Crimson continued. "Your blood is the realm. Store what you claim. Learn from what you keep."
Michael reached toward the corpse. A single red tendril licked out from his palm, wrapping the zombie. It vanished into him in a single breath.
He felt it settle. Heavy, but not burdensome. A hollow echo.
"What now?" he whispered.
Now, Crimson replied, "we begin."
Michael barely had time to process the Vault's awakening before the sound returned—scraping, dragging, snarling. The corridor trembled with the groans of the undead.
One had been enough of a challenge.
Now there were more.
Five, maybe six.
Enemies Detected – Rotwalker x6 – Levels 1–2
They moved without purpose, driven by something primal. Some were little more than skeletons with wet skin. Others looked recent, their flesh still torn from fresh wounds. All of them wrong. All of them full of blood.
Michael's fists clenched.
His breathing steadied. He wasn't afraid. Not anymore.
The closest zombie lunged. He side-stepped and delivered a sharp jab to its jaw. The thing's head snapped back—then kept coming. Michael twisted, low, and drove a blood-hardened elbow into its sternum. Bone cracked. It staggered.
He ducked beneath a second zombie's claw swipe and slammed a kick into its knee. It didn't fall. Instead, it grabbed him—its hands cold, dead, unfeeling.
Michael growled and summoned a blade of blood—not quite formed, not quite solid—from his forearm. With a roar, he dragged it across the zombie's face. It screamed and fell.
Another came from behind.
Crimson warned him a heartbeat before.
He spun and grabbed it by the skull, slamming it into the wall hard enough to leave a crater.
Blood Resonance: 3%
He blinked.
"Only three?" he said.
You've grown. These no longer serve your growth like before, Crimson replied. "Your blood has tasted strength. It craves more."
The next zombie fell with a punch to the throat and a burst of blood through its heart. Another with a spine-shattering sweep kick followed by a downward elbow reinforced by crimson spikes.
Blood Resonance: 2%Blood Resonance: 1%
Michael wiped blood from his knuckles, heart steady.
The last zombie turned and tried to run. It didn't get far. Michael sent a sliver of blood darting from his wrist—fast and precise. It struck the base of the neck, dropped the creature instantly.
Silence returned.
He stood there, surrounded by bodies. Crimson Vault pulsed in his chest.
Store them? Crimson asked.
Michael nodded. One by one, tendrils of blood flowed from his hands, curling around the corpses and pulling them inward. Each vanished into him without a sound. He felt their echoes join the first—quiet and distant. Not painful. Just present.
Why keep them? he asked under his breath.
Because even the discarded have use, Crimson answered. "Their blood is spent, but their essence remains. Their instincts. Their form. Their decay."
The Vault doesn't just hold, Crimson continued. "It learns. It breaks them down, piece by piece… until what they were becomes something we can use."
Michael paused, feeling the weight—not physical, but presence—settling deeper into his veins.
He was becoming more than himself.
He was becoming what he consumed.
He sat for a moment.
His healing had accelerated during the fight. Bruises gone. Scratches sealed. The more he fought, the more alive he felt. Not just strong—but whole.
He paused in the corridor, his back against the stone wall, letting the stillness settle in.
The blood within him didn't rest. It moved. Whispered. Not with words, but sensation. Memory. Desire. Every corpse absorbed wasn't just lost to death—it had become part of him.
He thought back to his old body. Frail. Hooked up to machines. Dying with every breath.
Now?
He could feel the heat of power curling in his chest. A tension in his fingertips. A hunger he hadn't known he possessed.
What am I becoming? he whispered.
What you were always meant to be, Crimson replied softly. "Blood is not a curse. Not to us. It is memory. Growth. Legacy."
Michael closed his eyes.
I don't want to lose myself.
You won't, Crimson answered. "Because you're not being replaced. You're evolving."
Into what?
That... depends on you.
He opened his eyes slowly. Something deep inside him had shifted, but not in a way that frightened him. It was as if a part of him—buried for decades—had finally been unearthed.
Strength didn't come from rage or instinct alone.
It came from choosing to live.
We aren't here just to survive, are we?
No, Crimson replied. "We're here to rise."
You're changing, Crimson said. "This is only the beginning."
Michael looked into the darkness ahead.
"I saw nobles," he said. "And a human… they turned him."
Not by accident, Crimson said. "By design."
Michael's jaw tightened.
"Someone made this place. Filled it with these… things."
And there is more.
Michael nodded once, slowly.
"Let's find it."
He rose again, walking past the blood-stained floor, deeper into the stone corridor. The air grew colder, the light thinner.
But Michael's blood ran warm.
And now… it ran strong.
He took another step forward—
And froze.
His breath caught.
It wasn't the stench of rot or the groan of the undead this time.
It was silence.
Heavy. Intentional.
Something was watching him.
Not a zombie. Not a mindless beast. This presence was precise. Measured. It moved like a shadow, and Michael barely sensed it through Crimson Sense. Just a flicker—faint, but fast.
Crimson… what was that?
Not one of them, the voice replied. "Something… else."
Dangerous?
Yes.
Michael scanned the darkness, his senses sharp.
Whatever it was… it moved like a predator. A ghost in the dungeon. It wasn't gone—just patient.
He didn't smile.
But his blood pulsed faster.
"I'll be ready."
And he walked forward, deeper into the dark.
This time, something followed.