Chapter Text
The Silence didn't just exist—it SCREAMED.
It was a deafening, metallic ring.
The echoing sound trapped in the suffocating blackness.
It was the sound of millennia, and it was his first conscious experience.
Inside the crypt, the body began its terrifying reawakening. First, a tiny, involuntary twitch in the fingers, then a violent, full-body shudder that rattled his bones against the unyielding stone. Finally, the eyelids snapped open. Two sky-blue orbs, sharp, raw, and alight with the sudden, agonizing clarity of life, fixed on the stone ceiling above. His mind clawed its way back through a fog thicker than grave dust.
It wasn't until the realization hit—truly, undeniably awake after what felt like decades—that the panic set in, a visceral punch to his non-beating heart. He tried to move, but the space was a cruel, narrow vise, his limbs pinned and useless. A profound, bone-deep weakness crippled him, the same agonizing feebleness that had shackled him the day he was turned. His stomach howled with emptiness, a hollow drumbeat of starvation, and his throat scorched with a searing, desperate need that transcended pain.
Get out. He had to get out.
His hands, trembling with a primal, desperate urgency, scrabbled against the cold, heavy stone slab that sealed his confinement. With a guttural grunt and a final, explosive surge of ancient strength—a strength he prayed was still there—he heaved. The slab shot upward, scraping agonizingly against the rock sides before crashing down onto the crypt floor. The thunderous CLATTER shattered the silence, echoing like a cannon shot, and announcing his brutal return.
He slowly rose, pushing himself upright until his back straightened against the oppressive ceiling. The air that greeted him was stale and cold, thick with the smell of wet decay and dry neglect, a monument to a forgotten history. The main crypt, once a grand, torch-lit chamber, was now a desolate shell. It was choked by a thick, beige shroud of dust, and draped in unsettling, gossamer tapestries of cobwebs.
Scott didn't hesitate. He slid from the broken confinement of the coffin, the splintered wood scratching against his clothes, and immediately accessed the hidden compartment beneath. His hands, moving with practiced efficiency that belied his current weakness, retrieved the precious contents: a handful of distilled blood wine bottles, which he secured first; a small pouch containing basic tools; and a new set of clothes, magically preserved and smelling faintly of lavender. He shed the grave-soiled garments, hastily tucking them into the hidden compartment, and swiftly dressed. His fingers meticulously adjusted the cravat, tying the knot until it perfectly concealed the vulnerable hollow of his throat—a necessary, formal gesture of protection.
A new gravity settled over him. Satisfied with the familiar, formal cut of his coat, even without the benefit of a mirror, he became silent and predatory, moving toward the crypt exit. He needed eyes on his castle, needed to survey the world outside this tomb. But the true terror was the silence inside his mind: Why was he severed? Why could he not feel the pulse of his family bonds, the metaphysical tether that should have drawn him home?
Scott moved through the crypt's corridors, observing the violent assault of time on the stone. The walls weren't just cracked; they were splitting, forced apart by the relentless, invasive coils of tree roots that had aggressively punched through the bedrock. Water, cold and glittering like tiny, unwelcome tears, wept through fissures in the floor, turning the stone path slick and treacherous.
He rounded the corner of the final hall. Ahead, a soft, pale light spilled down the stairwell at the far end, a beacon that betrayed the world outside: daylight. Scott let out a shallow breath, the air rasping in his dry throat. Good. The sun's full, potent power wouldn't completely burn him, given his present, debilitating weakness. It was a grim, temporary comfort.
He began the slow ascent. Raising a hand instinctively, he shielded his eyes, which felt like raw wounds struggling to adjust to the foreign brightness. But as he slowly lowered his guard, the sight that met him was far worse than any blinding glare.
His ancestral home, the very heart of his family's domain, was an image of utter desolation. The castle was reduced to rubble, the protective walls barely recognizable mounds of shattered rock. The meticulous garden was now a wild, untamed jungle, the flimsy remains of the fences struggling weakly against the explosive foliage. A cold, profound ache settled over his non-beating heart. The destruction wasn't just physical—it was a gaping, inexcusable wound in his soul.
Scott took a slow, unnecessary breath, the familiar, human ritual helping to steady his profound shock. His mind, cold and efficient, began to plot the course of survival and revenge. Rebuild. That was paramount. Form a new Coven and Brood. Essential for power. Find his family. A deep, non-negotiable need. But above all, there was the hunger. The gnawing, agonizing need for sustenance took immediate priority.
He navigated the wreckage of his home with focused, careful steps, pausing only briefly. Amidst the shattered stone and decay, he spotted a strange, glowing beacon, an anomalous piece of technology or magic. It pulsed with a muted, unfamiliar white light. He logged the detail but kept moving; its mystery could wait.
Leaving the ruins, he crossed the rickety, half-destroyed stone bridge that miraculously still spanned the gorge. Once on the other side, the hunt began. He plunged deep into the overgrown woods, his heightened senses immediately locking onto prey. He found a cow, heavy with milk, and a pair of rooting pigs. The kill was swift, silent, and absolute. He drank deeply, the thick, hot vital fluid flooding his system, extinguishing the agonizing burn in his throat and washing the feebleness from his veins.
As he meticulously wiped the last smear of blood from his coat with a square of silk, he felt a powerful, heady thrum of energy pulsing beneath his skin. He was still only tier 1 in power, but the crippling weakness was gone, replaced by vibrant strength and clarity of purpose. He needed to stay sated, but also blend in. Taking a deep, calculating inhale, he caught a new scent on the wind, sharp and distinct: Humans. Close by.
Scott walked slowly, tracking the pungent, musky scent of humanity that hung on the crisp, midday air. As he moved, his mind ceaselessly processed the magnitude of the devastation. "Six hundred years, maybe more, since I last woke," he mused. "The castle is dust. Logic suggests the town should be too. So why are there humans nearby?" The evolving scent trail, now sharp and undeniable, led him steadily toward what he remembered as Oakhurst.
After a tense ten minutes, he reached the forest edge and surveyed the plains. The quaint, sprawling town of his memory was gone. In its place stood a crude, rickety, aged wooden palisade, its timbers splintered and gray, encircling perhaps half or two-thirds of the land the old town had occupied. "Did the population shrink so drastically that they had to contract like this? Or were they simply afraid?" he wondered, the inexplicable change unsettling his historical assumptions.
He approached the rough enclosure and slipped through a clearly defined entryway. But instead of a functioning settlement, he was met by ghosts. Inside the walls lay a vast, burned-out ruin—structures easily a century or two old, reduced to rough, soot-stained outlines of former homes and shops. The air tasted of ash and abandonment.
The only relatively intact feature was the town center, dominated by a broken stone tower with a crumbling spiral staircase twisting precariously at its core. And there, nestled beside the shattered steps, was the twin of the curiosity he'd seen at his castle: a strange, softly glowing beacon, humming with a near-silent, irritating electrical whine in the debris. The current human activity he smelled was happening somewhere beyond this ancient destruction, but this ruin was the answer to his questions. Something catastrophic had happened here.
The strange beacon would have to wait. His immediate curiosity was reserved for the humans he smelled nearby. Adopting the theatrical air of a snobbish noble tourist, Scott deliberately began to wander the ruined palisade, his expression a carefully managed look of incredulous disdain for the desolation.
As he closed the distance, the sharp sound of arguing voices cut through the stillness. Peeking past the skeletal, charred remains of a building, he observed the group: a fierce ginger woman, her posture rigid with annoyance; a practical-looking brunette man in what appeared to be modern doctor's attire (the fabric looked too soft, too utilitarian for his taste); and a haughty blonde man who radiated the irritating, self-important arrogance of a spoiled noble son. Curious. A collection of types, Scott noted.
He approached slowly, ensuring his grand, anachronistic entrance was noted. The ginger woman paused mid-argument, her gaze snapping directly to him. "You're also new, aren't you?" she challenged, her voice edged with suspicion and exhaustion.
Scott deliberately turned and glanced behind his shoulder, feigning confusion as if she addressed a ghost. Then, with a slow, affected "Oh," he turned back, a practiced realization dawning on his face. "Well, I was merely passing through this… area," he said, drawing out the last word with distaste. "But yes, I suppose I am new to this place. You live here? I'd be genuinely surprised."
"No one is from here," the doctor stated flatly, his voice carrying the heavy weight of weary experience. The woman repeated the phrase, her expression locking his with an intensity that held both warning and challenge.
Scott spent a calculated few minutes in conversation, extracting names with ease: the blonde noble was Martyn Woodhurst, the doctor was simply Legundo, and the ginger woman was Cleo. The conversation had momentarily circled the curious beacons before the humans’ own distractions—the utterly mundane chaos of their predicament—took over.
He shifted the focus. Catching sight of movement across the wide ruin, he casually gestured toward the distant group. "Do we know who any of those people are? The ones moving about over there?"
Cleo’s posture instantly hardened. "Lunatics. Absolute lunatics," she declared, adamantly shaking her head. "I wouldn't go near them."
"Are they... wrong 'uns?" Martyn asked, his tone morbidly fascinated.
"They are very... well," Cleo huffed, struggling for the right word. "One of them is actively looking for Bigfoot."
Just then, the topic shift was interrupted. A man with dark, raven hair and a tailored coat—almost a butler's livery, Scott noted—detached from the other group and approached them. Scott, seizing the moment, offered a slight, predatory smile to the newcomer. "Are you, perchance, the one with the Bigfoot fixation?"
The man hesitated. "Uh, no. I think that's one of the others."
"This is the Butler," Cleo interjected, using the title as a shorthand that Scott found almost insulting. The man introduced himself as Abolish, and the conversation, predictably, fractured and changed course once more, shifting to the immediate, desperate concerns of survival.
The conversation soon drew two more curious figures: a young man with striking purple eyes and light brown hair, and a practical-looking young woman with matching brown eyes and hair. Scott, enjoying his established role as the mocking outsider, immediately focused on the man. "Well, perhaps you are the one with the Bigfoot obsession?" he inquired, his expression perfectly layered with sophisticated amusement.
"I don't think so," Cleo replied, struggling to stifle a genuine chuckle.
The purple-eyed man stepped forward, seriousness overriding politeness. "Don't listen to the 'Bigfoot gal,' okay? She's downplaying the seriousness of the situation right now."
Scott widened his eyes, pushing the joke further. "Wait, are we debating whether they're searching for people who have large feet, or if the individuals themselves possess unusually large feet? I'm genuinely confused." The question hung in the air; nobody, in the chaos of their shared circumstances, was certain of the exact bizarre truth.
To break the pause, the young man finally initiated proper introductions. The newcomers were Avid (the purple-eyed man) and Drift (the brown-haired woman). In a gesture that was either oddly generous or profoundly naive, Avid then produced and happily gifted bunches of garlic to everyone. Scott, maintaining his facade, handled the pungent bulbs with deliberate, cautious nonchalance, quickly storing the anti-vampiric herb in his coat's inventory where it couldn't touch his skin. Foolish child, he thought, masking his cold rage.
The subject then shifted to survival—specifically, food finds. Cleo’s eyes lit up with professional pride. "Actually, this is my specialty," she announced, stepping into the center of the group. "I'm a farmer. If you supply the seeds, I will establish a productive farm for all of us." This proposal cut through the chaos with immediate, practical value. One by one, the group eagerly stepped forward, emptying their pockets and inventories of every seed packet and viable vegetable they had found, passing the resources over to the newly appointed farmer.
"I confess, manual labor is not among my few, practiced talents," Scott drawled with a theatrical sigh of relief. "That sounds absolutely excellent."
The group shifted focus and headed inside the broken tower. Avid declared his intention to "inspect and consecrate the beacon," or so he announced to the room. To Scott's ancient, suspicious ears, the word choice sounded oddly self-important and vaguely inappropriate—like a child playing priest. Choosing to avoid the ritual and the confined space, Scott politely excused himself and slowly drifted toward the periphery—a group of people he hadn't yet been introduced to.
He arrived just in time to witness a moment of cringe-worthy intimacy: a woman was in the midst of recounting her entire tragic backstory. Scott stopped short, his inner thoughts screaming. 'Yikes. Not sure I want to get caught up in whatever raw, emotional drama that is.'
Nevertheless, he joined them, enduring the tail end of the monologue and engaging in a few minutes of detached conversation to acquire the essential information: names. The woman with light brown hair and teary blue eyes was Pearl. The young, pale man with dark brown hair and scholarly attire was Pyro. The young woman with vibrant red hair and golden-yellow eyes framed by thick glasses was Shelby. Then there was the older, distinguished man: Renhardt Dogmourne (who preferred Ren), characterized by his blue eyes, long brown-and-gray ponytail, and matching mustache. Finally, the bearded man whose name was inexplicably Sausage, who introduced himself by his authorial pseudonym: Mr. M.
Just as the introductions concluded, an immediate, powerful shift swept across the entire ruin. An oppressive, ominous feeling surged outward from the center of town. Humans around him began murmuring about a pleasant warmth settling over them, but Scott felt only a terrifying, alien cold aura coiling around his immortal soul. It was a violation.
'What in the hell just happened? What did those incompetent fools DO?' Scott's silent, furious thought echoed the profound magical disturbance he felt.
As confusion settled over the group, questions about the source of the feeling and the beacon began to fly. Scott spoke up with genuine haste, eager to distance himself from the supernatural event. "Yes, they were performing some ritual on it over there, but I don't involve myself with that nonsense," he declared, affecting a dismissive, worldly tone. "None of that spiritual magic stuff is up my alley."
The shared mystery spurred immediate action. Everyone began moving toward the town center, drawn to the tower. However, Pyro and Ren lingered, their curiosity about Scott seemingly outweighing the urge to investigate the phenomenon. After a brief but intense conversation, Ren suggested they make practical use of the remaining daylight: "It would be wise for us to organize and gather essential supplies before the sun sets."
Agreeing, Scott, Ren, and Pyro started toward the exit, only to encounter Martyn joined by two new figures.
The immediate conversation quickly became complex, spiraling from discussions of family names and the town's true designation to the contentious issue of land ownership. Scott's attention fixed on one of the newcomers: a woman with long brown hair, sharp brown eyes, elegantly dressed in a black gown with a distinct red cravat and matching red flower. Her statement cut through the friendly debate with stark authority: the Military claimed ownership over the entire Oakhurst territory.
The Military woman's claim instantly sparked a flurry of questions. Why was she here if the land was claimed? She coolly explained her presence: her purpose was to establish an outpost designed to "overlook the land," a statement that carried an unsettling tone of surveillance and control.
As the conversation took another complex turn, Legundo walked over to join them. Ren, weary of the politics and eager for action, finally took charge. He spurred the larger group toward the forest, emphasizing the need to gather critical supplies before nightfall. Ren led the majority away, the Military woman falling in behind him.
However, Legundo remained, joined by a new, quiet figure: a man with tanned skin, brown hair, and warm brown eyes. He introduced himself as Owen, revealing he had worked these very woods as a lumberjack in his youth, long ago. Deciding to join the supply run, the trio left the ruins.
Owen immediately began conversing with Legundo about the threat of wolves as they started gathering materials. Scott, meanwhile, strategically separated himself. Despite his earlier, sincere aversion to "manual labor," he needed both resources and a credible cover. He pulled his simple stone axe from his inventory.
Choosing a large, thick tree, Scott executed an unusual, highly efficient technique. He didn't chop the base; instead, he carefully began carving hand- and footholds up the massive trunk, climbing like a spider-monkey. Once high enough, he started chopping the tree down from the top. He needed the materials, but more importantly, he needed to blend in—a display of competence and effort was essential to avoid suspicion.