Chloe's body crumpled like a marionette with severed strings, glassy eyes reflecting Scarlett's elongated fangs glistening crimson. Vitality flooded the vampire's pallid cheeks with unholy bloom—a perverse mockery of life blooming through death.
The mage's final shudder stilled into waxen stillness, once-lustrous curls now framing a bloodless face frozen in eternal dread. Kael observed dispassionately how her earlier schemes—vengeance fueled by stolen relics—had evaporated faster than morning frost. Death's immediacy rendered grudges absurd.
No triumph stirred in him despite their feud's abrupt closure. This pyrrhic reprieve only underscored their collective fragility. Scarlett's bored gaze already swept across survivors, weighing her next sip.
Daniel's jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. Sebastian's fingers twitched toward absent weaponry, panic leaching color from his face. Only Yuri maintained glacial composure, though his darting pupils betrayed calculations racing behind stone-carved features.
"Decades since I've savored such ambrosia," Scarlett crooned, tracing a taloned fingertip along her blood-smeared lips. Her sigh carried the indolence of a diner reviewing dessert options. "Though appetizers merely whet the appetite..."
The countess's stare pinned Yuri mid-step. Frost prickled his spine as predatory focus narrowed on him—a wolf singling out stray lambs.
"Most illustrious Countess," Yuri's voice emerged smoother than his trembling hands deserved, executing a shallow bow even as he sidestepped. "Surely my bitter blood would offend your refined palate. That one—" he jabbed a finger toward Kael, "—burns with untapped power. A vintage worth your fangs."
Deference dripped like poisoned honey. Old rivalries mattered little when survival required fresh sacrifices.
Yuri's desperate deflection drew a silvery laugh from Scarlett. "How delightfully predictable," the vampire crooned, fangs glinting as her amusement curdled into contempt. "Mortals still squabble like rats while the hawk circles. Pathetic."
Her mercurial focus snapped to Kael. The mage's throat tightened under that smoldering gaze—a rabbit feeling the shadow of talons. Every instinct screamed that evasion was futile. Even Evelyn's formidable presence paled beside this primordial threat.
"Countess, if you'd—" Kael's attempted diplomacy died as Scarlett's hand slashed air like a guillotine blade.
"Silence!" The command cracked with eldritch force. "Since you insects crave shared glory, feast together you shall." Gray wings blurred as she lunged, death incarnate closing the gap between heartbeats.
Kael's fingers already danced through teleportation sigils, his lips moving in silent incantation. Yuri spat a destabilization hex, its sickly green tendrils snaking toward their predator. Both spells unfurled with desperate precision—and both proved laughably sluggish against vampiric velocity.
Steel shrieked through the clearing.
Amelia's blade cleaved the tension like divine judgment. The unassuming warrior became a stormfront—nine concentric auras of combat qi erupting around her. Each layered barrier pulsed with escalating fury, condensing into a howling vortex that slammed toward Scarlett.
Sebastian gaped. *Nine layers.* His own six-tiered bursts had earned academy accolades. This plain-faced girl's technique dwarfed his prowess, her qi resonating with primal harmonics that shook the frost from nearby pines.
"Shatter!" Amelia's cry split the air as the spiraling maelstrom engulfed the vampire.
Amelia's *Combat Surge*—a warrior's foundational technique—thrummed with lethal perfection. Each layered qi barrier amplified its predecessor, the ninth stratum condensing into a tectonic hammerblow that slammed Scarlett backward. Stone cracked beneath the vampire's heels as she skidded, her mocking smile undimmed by the crater forming at her feet.
The attack's concussive roar bought precious milliseconds. Kael's teleportation sigil flared, his form blurring to the clearing's edge. Yuri abandoned his half-formed hex, darting sideways with acrobatic precision. Neither escape attempt fooled Scarlett.
"Flee? From *me*?" Her chuckle crystallized the air. Delicate fingers curled—a lover's beckoning gesture warping into gravitational tyranny. A vortex howled to life, uprooting frost and debris as it seized all three targets.
Kael's stabilizing wards shattered like glass. Amelia's qi barriers crumpled under the inexorable pull. Even Yuri's evasion arts proved useless as the trio hurtled toward Scarlett's outstretched hand.
The countess's grip closed on Kael's shoulder, nails biting through fabric to score flesh. "Let's taste your distinction, little mage," she murmured, leaning in with theatrical slowness. Her breath carried bergamot and iron—an aristocrat's last courtesy before the feast.
Amelia strained against invisible bonds, combat qi flaring uselessly. Yuri's curses dissolved into choked gasps as the vortex tightened its coils. Above them, Scarlett's fangs gleamed like honed stilettos, poised above Kael's exposed throat.