For an instant, it was almost peaceful.
The Vortex was beautiful, a never-ending tunnel of otherworldly power. Falling down it felt like swimming, all his senses were pleasantly muffled creating a very soothing sensation as he watched the walls of this cloudy schism pass him by like wisps of fog in the moonlight.
Then the first glyph peeled away from his skin – the speck of black entirely incongruous against the mystical surroundings – and turn to dust. One by one they faded, leaving only a whisper of familiar presences behind. The scent of freesia that Aylin had favoured, a brush of Freya's lips as the wards on his right hand shivered into dust and the sound of Charlotte's laughter echoing around him when the final glyph imploded under the pressure of the Vortex.
Agony consumed him instantly.
He was torn apart, molecule-by-molecule before being brutally fused back together with an unholy fire. It was pain beyond anything he'd endured before – and that was saying a lot. But it was worth it. It had to be. Kaname held onto that thought with all his might, letting it buffer him against the primordial power that lashed through the very essence of his being. He would survive this. He could and damn well would take far worse than this for a second chance.
What had their sacrifice been for if that doomed world couldn't be undone? What had all the sacrifices before theirs had been for? No. That future would be erased and undone.
And he alone would remember it.
Kaname would pay his debts. He gritted his fangs and endured. It wasn't just the pain. It was cold. Such minor concerns rarely bothered it him – it normally had to be Artic for him to even notice – but this was something else. There were no stars here – this was the absolute cold of space, the void, it was freezing enough to turn his soul to ice.
As he'd told Zero – there was a price to be paid for this power.
He was within Time. Time didn't exist for him right now. The excruciating torment of his body disintegrating by the forces of the universe happened all at once and speck by speck – at the same time. Equally it hadn't happened yet but had already happened. He was a consciousness with no physical shell to protect his mind from the ravages of Time and yet he was still being torn apart and so glacial that it burned only just beginning the careening excursion, backwards through the leylines of the earth.
Morbidly Kaname acknowledged that torture would be laughable after this. Then he wondered if he'd already lost his mind since he was ruminating on the equivalence of pain.
The thought terrified him. His mind would be his only weapon against that horrid future. The memories of what went wrong were too important to lose; otherwise he'd never know what he should have done instead.
Kaname forced his consciousness to latch onto the purpose of this desperate plan and holding it there with will power alone. It didn't fix anything; he was so far beyond torture right now that an absence of pain would probably kill him with shock. But the memories of better times, before the war, before Rido, before Shizuka and even before the Academy soothed his ravaged mind enough to let him endure just a bit more.
Simple, innocent times of a second childhood, soon to be a third, when for once he had someone else to protect him for a change. No war, no death, no loss. When he could have a chance to just breathe.
Bliss.
He was floating, his soul bathed in golden light as he sensed his journey and torment come to an end. Kaname had no idea if he'd succeeded in his quest. Instead he was completely overwhelmed with the sensations of his battered consciousness settling into an actual physical form – it felt like an eternity had passed in the Vortex. His new but old body was so very strange and fleshy…
There was no pain. None. He gloried in that hedonistic indulgence.
But he was Thirsty, oh so thirsty.
Blood had been getting scarcer and scarcer as the war progressed into the tenth decade. Billions of humans had been eradicated, and those few hundred million that survived the bitter attrition of the first decade, slowly became poisoned to equal the state of the land.
Kaname had turned several soldiers to keep them in the fight, the extra strength of vampirism was a boon and afterwards he'd had all of them as safe sources of blood. Vampire blood was stronger and much more filling for Kaname, but there was a reason their prey was usually human.
Humans were just scrumptious. There was a certain vitality – reminiscent of sunlight – that the vampire craved and required.
Of course, they tasted a lot worse when they were starving, depressed and fighting off various diseases and chemical pollutants.
Kaname hadn't had a choice but to round up the humans from their scattered hold outs, ranging from a survivalist family's secret bug out base to a military outpost to lone stragglers, and organise them into something useful. Sparing precious resources to keep the human race from extinction so that when – if – it ever ended, the vampires wouldn't starve.
Needless to say – it had been an age since Kaname had had healthy, nutritious, thick, red, delicious, salty, sugary, spicy, tangy, sharp, flavourful blood.
Blood…even thinking the word sent a pang of utter craving through him. Blood. Blood. Blood, Blood, Blood. Bloodbloodbloodblood.
Desiccated eyes cracked open, blinking required extreme effort – his eyes were unbearably dry. It was dark. Cramped. Silent.
He took his first breath, collapsed lungs heaving with the strain. With that breath he smelt musty decay. Ah. He was in a tomb. His tomb, to be precise, he'd recognise the sensation anywhere – even as mentally raw and wretched as he was from the … trip.
Yes, trip was a nice euphemism; he'd stick with that.
Kaname's brain was sluggish, thoughts slow and disjointed unused to requiring grey matter and neurons and electrical pulses to function after so long without a body.
Tomb… there was something he was forgetting. Something important. Then it hit him like a train, he would have gasped if his mummified lungs could have performed the motion without choking him on a mouthful of his own disintegrated flesh. He knew the where, what and why, it was the when that shocked him.
He was before Rido had resurrected him. Even in his wildest hopes he hadn't dreamed that he'd managed to survive long enough to reach this point in time. He was well over his hope of one hundred years.
This was incredible.
Kaname wanted to cackle with glee as he listened to his heart beat strongly in his rotten chest. The Blood Debt he'd owed Rido for resurrecting him had been a major thorn in his side. To be brutally honest, it had crippled his ability to do anything against Rido. He hadn't been able to attack the vampire personally no matter how easy it would have been. Kaname couldn't have dealt the detestable man a pinprick had Rido been lying unconscious at his feet! Oh but the memory of his helplessness made him burn with impotent fury and embarrassment. The Blood Debt hadn't just affected Kaname physically – no, that much he could have worked around. The Debt spread to include mental effects. If Kaname knew that killing this vampire or not taking over that business would hurt Rido's interests – Kaname had been bound from doing it.
How pathetic.
It was their curse, Kaname knew. Purebloods could have so much strength, they could be gods amongst men, but it was balanced with moments of extreme vulnerability. The mental blocks had been what necessitated Zero. A Hunter whose nature meant Kaname couldn't sabotage himself by influencing Zero, a hunter who he could manipulate into killing a Kuran.
But now…
Rido had absolutely nothing to resurrect this time. Kaname was already awake. Kaname smiled, lips cracking, there would be no 'master' anymore.
He could finally kill the bastard himself.
He was free! His eyes closed again in relief; the unexpected emotions were tiring his already exhausted stores of energy. Just a quick rest, for one minute, only a minute.
Light blinded him, as his sanctuary was wrenched open, his mind derailed completely with the overwhelming flood of sensory input. His new body was extremely sensitive. It didn't help that as a pureblood he felt so much more in the first place. A candle could have been the sun for all the sense of it he could make.
Blood. Blood was in the air. Memory, plans, even thoughts faded in the wake of such overpowering instinct. He hadn't had untainted blood in decades, Kaname neither knew or cared that it was his descendent being sacrificed for his 'resurrection' – though when the blood lust faded, his consciousness would be soothed by knowing that the babe was already dead by Rido's hand before the blood got to him.
His throat was blazing from the thirst. He couldn't have resisted the foulest Level E's blood at that moment - his need was beyond feral. Everything he was demanded he drink and drink deeply. He wanted every drop of moisture he could force out. It was worse than being stranded in the Sahara desert for months alone in the scorching heat and having the last drop of water in the world offered to him on a silver platter.
Resistance was unfathomable.
Blood lust bloomed like a haze over his mind, it took every last dredge of willpower he still had to remain still and not rise up and leap at that blood, tear his fangs into that flesh and consume it right down to the soul - instead he had to wait patiently, somehow dredging up the energy to muffle the sound of his own heartbeat, lying completely still until enough of that oh so sinful life seeped into his ancient heart for it to 'start' beating. He twitched his chest, faking rebirth, a few drops before the blood would run out. He needed more, rives of blood more.
Unfortunately Kaname knew exactly how much blood an infant could hold. He wouldn't be getting any more.
It wasn't enough for him to just sit up and climb out of his crypt, fully restored – but it was enough to provide living flesh, just not much of it.
Kaname would need to use that blood carefully to restart his body how he wanted to.
At least he had the presence of mind to guide the process, unlike before. He'd be de-aged into a baby, he'd already anticipated that, but without the Blood Debt and with the blood of a Kuran he'd have enough energy, even with his previous controlled starvation and arduous trip, to protect his mind completely from the side effects of de-aging and resurrection.
If Kaname'd been willing to sacrifice some of his mental power, his memories and developed mental abilities, he'd probably be able to age straight into a five or six year olds form – old enough to defend himself independently, but quite frankly, he'd rather suffer the indignity of being fully aware during babyhood than risk either losing information about the future or potentially not 'growing into' his full abilities and experience until he was old enough to have the power to support it.
Kaname was proud of who he was, losing any part of that, anything of the life he'd lived would be too much like suicide.
His body rapidly regenerated and shrunk with a few mental nudges. It was painful last time, but right now he could barely feel it. Clearly the whole time-travel business had messed with his pain threshold. Not that he was in a state to debate the pros and cons.
Flesh, warm and flawless, spread over his skeletal frame swiftly, skin was always first - to hide the scent of blood, but it was thin though, too thin. That was when he felt his spine shrinking and oh god he hadn't imagined that pain. It was hot, burning heat as his bones shifted, groaning like an ancient oak tree as they shortened and softened, decalcifying swiftly, and reversing two decades of physical growth in minutes.
And Kaname had thought he could feel no more.
Skin rippled, muscle and sinew, arteries and veins from the aorta down to the capillaries, all completely visible beneath his translucent protection as they spun themselves out and attached, his heart never stopped beating, and once the circulatory system completed, it began to pump his precious blood around, fuelling muscle growth, tissue formation and the dreaded organs.
Skin writhed as it wrapped around his new form, twisting and shrinking from wafer thin and over stretched, swamping his new tiny form in a puddle of flesh before moving like some kind of demented monster and layering and layering and layering over a tenth of the mass it had to cover before. It darkened slightly as it settled like a congealed lump, pale flesh finally resembling something vampiric. But not one drop of blood had left his body, which was why his skin was formed like that. Even almost entirely drained of energy, his body could produce that wafer-thin layer to prevent blood spilling.
His body – which Kaname really couldn't quite process as his yet, with his mind still reeling from time travel and relief and pain and bloodlust and mmm blood – finally stilled with only a twitch here or there as skin realigned or an organ was attached to the internal pipes or cartilage sinking into place.
"Fascinating."
Kaname was dimly aware of another presence in the room, with glowing red eyes that had not left his painful metamorphosis. He could care less despite how he resented anyone seeing him weak, unconsciousness was calling with its siren song, and he had no strength left to stop falling into its depths.
Rido watched greedily as his ancestor, the so-called Godslayer, was reduced to a mere baby. The process was incredible – just seven minutes, and a monster became a mouthful.
He could still taste the delicious blood on his tongue from his now deceased nephew.
Pity there wasn't more, but one sip had had to do. He didn't want the original Kuran to be too weak to complete the transformation, and clearly it had been just enough.
The new baby was asleep. And oh so tempting, but no, he had to resist, Rido reminded himself firmly. He had plans for his little toy. The Ancestor… he shivered in insane glee – the Ancestor with a Blood Debt to him – oh he couldn't wait. Once he'd had time to grow a little, Rido could have as much of his blood as he wanted… but first, to establish the Blood Debt, with little Kuran dead there was no Debt to the infant but if he gave just a little now it would be enough to form the link.
A complete life had to be sacrificed for a resurrection - The spark of life and a certain amount of blood. His nephew had been one sip short since he'd had a little snack. A few drops of his own blood now meant the Debt would be his to collect – neatly ensuring he didn't have to use too much of his own blood in the stronghold of his brother and sister and fatally weakening himself when they were probably already aware of his presence.
Swiftly, Rido rolled the sleeve of his designer jacket up and bit down with his own fangs, heedless of the blood that soaked into the five-figure material. He held his wrist out, letting the blood flow and drip onto Kaname's lips, gently encouraging the throat muscles to swallow since Kaname wasn't awake to do it himself – though Rido happily doubted he remembered how to anymore, and wasn't that a lovely thought – so powerful and so weak, Kaname would be an excellent treat in a few years.
He let the blood trickle for several moments. Kaname would only need a mouthful but Rido wanted Kaname's mind and body to be in no doubt of whom the Debt was held to. The baby would be desperately weak for a long while; his every scrap of energy fuelling the transformation, his blood would fill the gap left behind and create an instinctive recognition of the Debt. Rido had never cared to study the Old Ways but he vaguely remembered that it had something to do with the Balance of Life and other such whimsical nonsense. Whatever. It was useful.
Rido was wrenched from his musings as the small punctures healed over. Two furious purebloods were approaching rapidly, one considerably weakened – that would be Juuri, vulnerable from childbirth, but the other was perfectly healthy, and as wrathful as any god with about as much control as one. The building trembled slightly with their approach. Mummy and Daddy were angry.
Time to go.
Running at the highest speed he could force his body to, Rido fled, laughter echoing down the bare stone corridor behind him along with one mangled corpse of a baby, sparkling crystal already beginning to flake from the corpse, body too far gone to heal.
Juuri's horrified scream serenaded him to freedom, outside the oppressing weight of Kuran Manor, over the fields of dust left by the corpses of his distraction and away.
He would be back.
Haruka grimaced as he ran for all he was worth to the Ancestor's Tomb. Blood lay heavy in the air and his heart felt like lead in his chest. He already knew what he would find.
They turned the corner, side by side and in perfect step, just in time to see the last flecks of crystal float away on a non-existent breeze. They were too late. He turned as he sensed Juuri falter at the sight, the horror, shame and boundless grief on her face a reflection of his own. Haruka caught her as she fell, gently lowering her to her knees, where she hovered and cried, screaming with so much grief and pain in her voice that he was surprised the world dared to still stand unchanged as it faded, the echoes trembling down the corridor, given life by her rage and despair.
He knelt by her side as she reached towards where dust sparkled, her hands shaking so badly she couldn't grasp anything, let alone the tiny crystals. Her face was a picture of grief, but her eyes were dry; she was in too much pain to cry.
He knew he was no better himself, shock was settling in as he tried to grasp reality. His heir was dead – after years of preparation he hadn't even survived a night!
Juuri's skin was cold beneath his hand, but he drew her towards him anyway, trying to give the comfort she was seeking, she pressed her face into his neck and bit down without hesitation, he let her, hoping she gained enough strength to want to live after this horrific night.
Rage flooded him, suppressing his grief with fury.
Rido.
There was no word in mortal tongue to satisfy his abhorrence for that… creature.
To just leave his son in the corridor! Thrown onto to the ground, harsh cold stone like filth. No respect. What were vampires coming to?
Even as his thoughts lashed about like a wild beast, as Juuri drank from in, lost in grief enough for him to fear her suicide, his analytical mind began to tick.
Why here? Why now? How did he know Juuri was pregnant? How did he gather so many level E's without tipping of one of his spies?
His gaze flickered down the corridor and fear filled him, potent enough to jerk Juuri from where she was latched onto his neck. He hated this corridor.
"What is it," she murmured, eyes flickering about them, looking for danger, even as her red eyes glowed and burned with unrestrained emotion.
"We're near the Crypts," he replied numbly, trepidation filling him, "What if Rido…"
He didn't need to say anything more.
They both leapt to their feet, stepping lightly around the patch of glittering and fading motes and hurried to the Tomb – not quite racing, what was done was done and there would be no changing it now. Haruka was a bit reluctant to go and check in truth.
The Crypt was bare rippled stone, but of no stone that Haruka knew except that it made him uncomfortable to look at it - occasionally appearing to have silver streaks. It was intricately carved, pictures telling a tale long since lost to history, weaving a tale of battle, it seemed, a city, victory and loss, love and despair. All around it laced characters of a language Haruka didn't understand, or even recognised and knew of no other example of it, unless another Ancient held a similar tomb, protected by other pureblood lines.
Just another example of the chaos their oldest ancestor brought wherever he trod. Haruka scowled. He really didn't need this right now. He had plans.
The tomb itself was open; the lid unbroken despite the strength and force Rido must have used to haul it open instead of puzzling out the locks carved into the flows of the patterns.
And inside, nestled in scraps of fabric that had long since decayed into indistinguishable wisps, lay a baby.
One look at Juuri, and he knew he'd have to raise this… thing as his own. Juuri wanted a child, if taking in this creature stopped her from trying to suicide over little Kaname's death, his firstborn son and heir, he'd just have to swallow his bile and take it.
Give it a few years and she'd be willing to try again for a replacement, and with some persuasion Haruka was sure he could shave that time down to a few months.
