OoC: Originally, this was supposed to be a full-length fic, much more in-depth, but when Golden Sun Realm's fanfiction section hosted a horror-themed one-shot tourney, I couldn't help but use this idea. And so, now that the tournament has passed, here's my entry!

A Nightly Visitation

Felix awoke, to a tapping on his window.

Now this in itself was a strange occurrence, happening as it was in the dead of the night. Not a living creature stirred all throughout Vale – it was as quiet as the grave, a black pall of rest that hung over the eyes of ever inhabitant, bidding them to sleep.

All inhabitants, that is, except for Felix. Who was awake, and did not yet know why. He almost felt as though he must be dreaming, for he felt a curious heaviness in his limbs and a shortness of his breath as his gaze was slowly, inevitably, pulled to the window.

Karst was there.

Not once did he wonder how this was possible, that a dead girl could gaze with red eyes full of warmth through his second-floor window – no, Felix was much too enraptured in seeing her again for that. She looked much the same as she always had, the same daring, devil-may-care girl he met in Prox – and to his relief, it seemed as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. If her hair seemed a little danker, a little stringy and unkempt, if her face was a little paler than normal, he didn't allow himself to notice.

Let me in, she mouthed.

A man in a dream. Felix rose from his bed, not even pausing to get dressed, and crossed the room to his window, quickly twisting the wooden latch that locked his window – thus sealing his fate. With a curious detachment, as if he couldn't quite believe this was happening, Felix took a step back as the window swung open.

Karst glided into the room, her feet not even touching the sill as she came under the roof of Felix's home. For a moment, Karst and Felix faced each other, no words spoken, two long-separated warriors, friends… lovers. Dusky chocolate stared into bloodred.

If Felix had noticed, along with a thousand other small things, that Karst was eye-level with him – that her feet were hovering above the floor, perhaps that could've saved him. Perhaps.

But alas.

My love, she said, lips unmoving, and Felix's cold heart melted to hear those words. She seemed to glide forward, as if she had wings, and kissed him on the lips. I have come back to you.

I knew you would, Felix said back, and marvelled that they no longer needed words. They understood.

Karst seemed to smile at that, or a grimace that could've been. Did you? Did you really?

Without another word, Felix wrapped his arms around her and lifted her – and again marvelled, that how curiously light she was, as if it was lifting nothing at all.

Suddenly, he couldn't get enough of her, his hands twining through her hair and his lips on her – rough, but not uncaring, the way he knew she loved. He kissed her nose, caressed her back, as he carried her to the bed and laid her gently down, kissing her still.

He opened his eyes on a chance and saw her's looking at him speculatively. He broke off and looked down her, and again she did that queer smile, a twist of the lips.

Would you do anything for me, Felix? A whisper, seductive in its softness.

Yes. No hesitation. A nail in the coffin, sealing his fate.

Would you want to be with me for all time?

Yes. Another nail, thump.

Do you love me, Felix?

By Venus, yes!

Thump.

Then join me in the twilight between living and dying, Karst said, poisonous seduction in her voice.

And reaching up and wrapping both arms around him, a hand on the back of his head, Karst hauled him down with preternatural strength and clasped him to her, brushing back his wild mane of her with her nose and resting her head against his neck for a moment, dwelling in the smell of him and the seductive pumping of blood through his veins.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Then Karstine Baelfyer bared her fangs and sank her teeth into her lover's throat and felt the blessed, blessed blood fill her mouth and swallowed, swallowed, swallowed, and her world was a reddish haze and everything was blood, the sweet coppery taste, and always, the beat of his heart, growing steadily weaker…

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Jenna looked up as Felix sat down to the dinner table, her pretty face twisting into an expression of sisterly concern. She had grown into a lovely girl of twenty, and was widely considered the most beautiful girl in Vale.

"Felix, what's wrong? Are you sick?" she asked, twisting her fork around a mass of spaghetti.

He managed a wry grin – but for some reason, it struck Jenna as fake. "After seeing you and yesterday, can you blame me?"

Jenna gave him a laugh for that, and a light punch in the shoulder – but the expression of worry never left her face. "It's not my fault you chose that moment to walk into my room, big brother. I'm serious though, are you okay? You look pale. Did you sleep well?" she asked, helping herself to a piece of garlic bread.

"Yeah, like a baby," was his response, and he managed a weak smile for her.

Satisfied with that, but still worried, the talk grudgingly turned to other matters, such as Mia's impending visit from Imil.

But, Felix was telling the truth, as far as he knew.

He had no collection of anything out of the ordinary happening last night – he thought he had sleep straight through, and couldn't even recall any dreams.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

At every breakfast table after that, Jenna noticed that Felix seemed more and more pale each time, and weaker. He looked to have lost weight, and laughter came less easily to him. Concern building within her, Jenna nonetheless kept her thoughts to herself, labelling them unfounded worries, just a fancy. Ever since Felix had 'came back from the dead', she always secretly worried about him for little to no reason, and this was just another case.

Unfortunately, it wasn't.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

My lover, Karst said, sinking her teeth into Felix's throat with a moan of ecstasy, one mirrored by the Venus Adept in her arms. He would not last much longer.

She could feel him weakening.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

One day, Felix didn't come down for breakfast. Jenna, figuring her was just finally getting some decent rest, finished her meal without him, and then headed out to the bathhouse to wash and dress for the day. She went up to her room and spent ten minutes in front of her mirror, applying some basic make-up and dragging a comb through her hair. She had a date today, after all.

She left the room, glanced down the hall, and noticed Felix still hadn't woke – his door was still closed. Thinking to play a prank on him – maybe it would do him some good, after the horribly apathetic mood he was in lately – went down to the well and filled a bucket with ice cold water, practically laughing already when imagining the look on his face.

She silently pushed open the door to his room, and tiptoed in. She immediately noticed the air was musty, dense, and there was a scent in the air she couldn't quite place. The covers were rumpled, as if Felix had had a restless night, and she quickly stifled a giggle as she saw him there, laying outside the covers – hair perfectly combed back, a serene expression on his face, and his arms folded over his chest.

She should've known then. Felix never combed his hair.

Hoisting the bucket, water sloshing, Jenna dumped the bucket over her older brother. Her expectant smile quickly died when he didn't respond – the water simply pouring over him and soaking his sheets.

Anxiety now washing over her expression, Jenna leaned over him. "Felix?" she asked, worried now. No response, and she opened his eyelid.

His eye was completed reddened, filled to the brim with blood.

Biting back a scream, Jenna put a hand over his mouth and another to his throat, feeling for breath or a pulse. She felt no comforting warmth of breath, and no beat of his pulse. There was none.

She did scream then, and all those around her home heard that desperate cry of loss and grief.

And still, the water soaked through the sheets to drip on the floor in repetitive, uncaring time.

Felix's funeral was hastily assembled. He was buried at the crest of the waterfall, and a statue was commissioned to mark his grave – the grave of a hero, one of the saviours of Weyard, one of the greatest warriors of their time, a solemn, taciturn man who knew what to do, how to lead, and exactly what was required of him. A giant of a man, Kushinada and Susa of Izumo called him, both tear-streaked as they spoke at his funeral. A man bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, Hamma of Contigo said gravely, Ivan standing shell-shocked at her side.

A friend. A rival. A companion. A man the world will not soon forget, Isaac spoke, Mia at his side standing resolutely, and Jenna crying into his other, Garet looping a reassuring arm around her while fighting his own tears.

And then, no eye was dry as his coffin was lowered into the whole, and his friends, companions, and fellow heroes each took up a shovel and began to fill in the hole, the dirt making a hollow sound as it hit the wood.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Jenna lay awake for many nights after that, tears running down her face as she lay in a bed in a house that seemed far too empty without Felix in the next room over. She would lay awake for long hours, cursing herself for not acting, for not prying more closely into finding out what was wrong. She'd curse herself for that until the end of her days, she swore, for her own stupidity.

However, that wasn't a very long time.

On a night where she had finally managed to sink into a restful sleep, Jenna was wakened by a knock on her window.

"… Felix?" she said uncertainly, still in the grip of sleep, her eyes half-filled with sand. "I thought you had died!" she mumbled, as she grudgingly opened the window and sat down on the edge of her bed, rubbing her eyes.

"Wait!" she said, her eyes flying open all the way as she leapt to close the window. That was impossible, Felix couldn't be there, Felix WAS dead, and she couldn't shake the inescapable feeling that she had done something fatally wrong.

It was simply too late by then, and the window she had began to slam shut slammed open as if pushed by an inhuman force as Felix leapt through the window and pushed her back on the bed, knees pinning her legs to the mattress and hands finding her wrists. His eyes were wild and feral, and the last thing Jenna had time to note was that all around him was the stink and cloy of damp earth and rot, and then he had pressed her down and his lips were on her neck and she had a single moment more to try to scream "what are you doing!?" and then she felt a pinprick as his teeth sank into her, and she gave a shuddering gasp, and it seemed red coloured her vision. But clearly still could she see the animal-like creature pinning her to the bed, soil caught in his hair and no trace of humanity in the cruel and hard way her gripped her, and then as her blood began to flow from her, she became keenly aware of her own pulse, ringing in her ears…

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Jenna was found, dead the next morning, when Mia came knocking shyly at the door looking for her old friend. Jenna's mother went up to shake her awake, and found her dead in her bed, a horrified expression on her face and her skin as pale as ivory.

The next few hours found her mother crying inconsolably, her shrieks of grief piercing the air as Mia tried to comfort her, fighting her own tears.

Word spread quickly, and it was decided that the Florentino household must have some sort of plague and was quarantined. Hell for the parents of the two dead heroes – to live in the home, alone with their memories and the smell of their children.

The was another funeral, and more sadness. Jenna was interred beside her brother, and the village kept a wary eye on the household of the deceased. Their friends felt as if their lives were shattered, and went through the motions of life as if every day without their friends was a chore. And always, tears were but a breath away.

It was the itemkeeper, Cara, who swore to Kraden the next day that she thought she saw Felix prowling the shadows behind the inn as she was locking up shop the previous night. She had fled in terror back to her home, feeling always as if something was just nipping at her heels – and she could've sworn she heard a sniffing, too, as if he could smell something on her.

Or, in her.

Kraden nodded and took this news gravely, but did nothing – until the blacksmith said he saw Felix and Jenna, leaping together from rooftop to rooftop from Vale, silhouetted against the stars.

The next day, Kraden called together the remnants of the heroes.

Taking out a black-bound book, Kraden told them all about what he believed to be a myth confirmed. One of the reasons, he said grimly, that legend holds the Proxians were called a cursed race.

"Long ago," he told them, "in ages so far past that what exactly they did was long forgotten, the Proxians commented a grave wrong against the Gods. And in punishment, their god Mars and seductive Luna lay a burden on them, that whenever a Proxian should fall in battle, he or she would be cast ever after in a twilight between life and death as spirits, filled with nothing but an insatiable desire for blood, one that would firstly lead them to their loved ones. Their mind would be trapped, locked in the thrall of the curse, and they would be forced to watch helplessly as the curse played into their memories and bid them hunt the ones they felt passionately about, tapping their minds to speak just as they were.

"And it is said that once bitten, if the victims died of their bites the loved ones would turn into feral vampires, retaining their human bodies but being filled with a dark strength, and a darker lust for blood."

He closed the book with a thud and looked at the horror-stricken faces of the others. "I believe this is what happened to Felix and Jenna," he said quietly. "God knows we've caused Proxians to fall in battle, and Felix was closer than any of us to any of them – he was the link. Whether it was Saturos or Menardi, Karst or Agatio, it matters not. What truly matters is what can we do about it."

"Which is?" Sheba asked, an almost supernatural calm in her voice, but inside, she was practically shaking with sadness and fury. She had lost two of her dearest friends, and she had just assumed that it was the saddest twist of fate that had called her from Lalivero to attend the funerals. To learn it wasn't… she was determined to do something, anything, to right this terrible wrong.

Kraden looked straight in the eyes and gave a sad smile, as if anticipating what his news would bring. "We must dig up their graves, drive a stake through their hearts, and cut off their heads. Sprinkle garlic over their bodies and strew seeds around the graves as offerings."

He nodded grimly at their expressions. "Yes, I know. Vale would never allow this – they are far too close-minded and traditional to do something so radical. But it is the only way to grant Felix and Jenna rest," he said, pained, and for a moment his scientific mask of detachment slipped. He was only an old man, and not one that expected to have seen two of his pupils who he considered his children buried before him. It was not right.

It was Isaac who finally spoke up for them all, his eyes hollow. "We'll do it."

They waited until a day where the weather was absolutely terrible – rain poured down in a deluge and into the roaring river. They had had to wait until the weather was obscene enough to let them be unseen, for all the Valeans to be driven inside – to wait until darkness to do this deed was tantamount to suicide, since it was vampires they dealt with.

And so, with faces as grim as the landscape around them, their shovels dug into the damp earth and tossed it to the side. Their fears had been confirmed when they had arrived – the dirt was fairly recently disturbed, and so they wasted no time in reaching them. Mia had began to cry as she dug, and Garet silently put an arm around her and pulled her close, giving her respite while the others worked – the rain mixing with tears of their own.

Kraden stood by, his eyes closed, knowing the horror to come.

Their shovels hit the earth with a wet, soggy sound, and it seemed to them the dull, constant thud of inevitability.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Overhead, lightning flashed.

At last, they unearthed the two coffins – both entirely innocuous hardwood, giving no indication of the possible monsters they contained within.

Garet and Isaac each worked together to haul back the covers, and they all stared in horror at the siblings who they mourned so keenly.

They didn't look dead at all – their skin was flush and vivid with life and their cheeks were ruddy, and their eyes were wide open and staring, red-tinted on the edges. Slivers of ivory peeked over their ruby red lips – their fangs – and they were astonished to see that their hair and nails had grown. A tiny trickle of blood escaped the corner of their mouths.

But despite all this, they were both achingly beautiful – caught and trapped forever in the prime of life, they shone with an otherworldly beauty. They were angels, resplendent in their burial wear – the brown-and-green of Felix's tuxedo, and the soft and gentle sunset of Jenna's gown, which seemed to shift through shades of red even as they watched, as if it was made of fire.

Thus, they beheld the final defence of the vampire – beauty, and love. For in that moment, none of those assembled wanted to do what they had come to do, to snuff out these two beautiful angels. To take from them forever their existence on Weyard, for even in this twisted way, they were alive, in a matter of speaking.

It was Kraden who gave the grim nod. He dropped the bag he was carrying to the ground with an ominous thump, and from within it drew two stakes and several cloves of garlic. He gave a grim nod, as if to no one in particular, and stared grimly into the lifelike faces of Felix and Jenna. He handed the stakes off, one to Isaac, one to Garet.

There were two metallic shiiiings, twin screeches, as Isaac and Garet drew their swords, rainwater instantly coating their blades and running down to drip to the ground, dripping from blades that were shaking, their hands unsteady. But their faces were resolute.

They placed the tip of the blessed stake onto their friend, companion, hero… vampire. Isaac placed his just over the lapel of Felix's tuxedo, and Garet, just over Jenna's breast.

Mia gasped, and turned away, and even Sheba had to avert her eyes, taking Ivan's hand for comfort. "Oh, Ivan," she whispered, and he saw that her tears were beginning to form. "Who's going to tell Piers? He hasn't been back from Lumeria since…" and she choked. Tentatively, Ivan drew her to him, and nodded over her shoulder at Isaac and Garet – who felt they should be the ones to do this, knowing the two from childhood.

With one last look exchanged, they each turned down, treasuring a moment to collect their thoughts before they did this irreversible thing – to reflect on their lives with the person below them, under the stake, on their memories.

And then, mirrored images of each other, they raised the pommel of the blades and hammered onto the end of the stake – in a single, irreversible motion.

The stakes drove through the fabric, skin, and sinew of Felix and Jenna with brutal force, the sharpened tip of each piercing into and stilling their vampire hearts. Blood foamed up, hissing, around the edges of the stakes, and Isaac and Garet recoiled in horror as they watched their childhood friends suddenly give a violent shudder and then an ear-piercing scream, highly than any normal human could have ever produced, their eyes bulging as they writhed, hands grabbing at the edge of their coffins. They continued to scream in the throes of their second deaths, and almost against their will Isaac and Garet's eyes locked with that of the vampires, as if Felix and Jenna were accusing them of killing them, denying them a second chance at life.

"Now," Kraden cut in sharply. "Grant them rest."

"Forgive us, ye Gods," Isaac said bitterly.

Two glittering, rain-sheened blades swung through drenched, dreary air.

Two glittering, rain-sheened blades, suddenly stained crimson as with their edge cut off the screams, and existences, of two sad, undead vampires.

Two sad, dead, friends.

It went by in a blur, after that, as in a haze of shock, they did as Kraden bade them and sprinkled garlic over them, and seeds around the graves – so that if they should ever rise again, an old folklore dictates that they should be forced to count each one, and by the time they finished, dawn should have risen.

Such measures, however small or frail, if it bought Felix and Jenna rest…

Not that there was much chance of them ever living again.

Finally, crying, the heroes who had been forced to slay their friends, left them aflame and burning, the fire psynergetically protected against the rain.

And in the shadows of the nearby forest, a shade lurked.

And felt a burning anger and grief in her vampiric heart, at having two fledglings stolen so callously from her.

Karst clenched her fist, nails digging into her palm in an ethereal, not-quite-there pain that she had grown accustomed to. There would be revenge, she vowed, for those of her kind so brutally slain.

The days blurred into weeks as the remaining heroes passed through the days, grim from the deaths of their friends, but nonetheless happy that they had granted them peace. They had never found the Proxian vampire ultimately responsible, though, Isaac mused, and he suspected that would come back to haunt them.

The Valeans had little idea of what had taken place that stormy night, and had decried the fires and dug up graves as the work of graverobbers. Jenna and Felix's parents cursed the word, their grief torn open anew. Isaac thought that they would rather not know what had really happened to their children, and so kept quiet.

As for himself, Isaac had taken to early morning walks as a way of clearing his thoughts and finding some peace of mind. He would walk up to the base of Aleph, and from there, watch the sun rise. Sometimes, he would take Mia with him – they had found solace in each other after Felix and Jenna were gone, just as they found solace in all their friends, in turn.

Today, however, Isaac walked alone.

And that was his undoing.

It happened as he was walking under the boughs of Valean trees, seemingly innocuous in their greenery and sighing, leafy boughs waving gently in the pre-morning tension, just waiting for the sun to break over the mountains.

He never had time to scream as the iron grip latched onto his harm and hauled him off the path and into the shadow of the wood, and the other hand clapped over his mouth, keeping him quiet.

Hello, Isaac, Karst said pleasantly. I never did avenge Menardi, you know. And now," she said, raising his hand and licking the straining veins of his wrist. You'll know exactly what she went through. She's a vampire now, too, you know – or at least, I assume. So you'll be able to join her.

Isaac stared up at her, blue eyes frightened, but blazing with anger.

I drew Felix out because I loved him, gave him some time to enjoy his last moments and the time we spent together. For you, there will be no such mercy.

No, for you, it will be long and painful.

She took her hand off Isaac's mouth and gashed his wrist with her nails, creating a rough and ragged cut, and then sank her teeth into the blood that flowed. She let Isaac scream then, savoured the sound, as it spiralled up and up into the trees around them, as she seized his other wrist and gave it the same treatment.

She was going to enjoy this meal.

And as always, as it always was, the precious blood flooded her mouth, her senses, her entire being.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.