Elias

Chapter 2 Elias

I am Elias.

I had a dream—

Or maybe it was a memory.

In it, I was the most feared vampire alive. A creature of terror. A shadow whispered about in the dark. My name made even demons pause.

I had crawled from the depths of the underworld with a hunger I hadn’t known in centuries. A hunger for power. For blood. For her.

A divine being.

A soul so pure, so bright it could have lit up the halls of hell.

And I wanted her.

But trickery had been at play.

I was outsmarted.

Anika—gods, even her name cuts through me—sacrificed herself not to destroy me, but to save me.

She didn’t kill me.

She fed me.

Humanity.

I crumbled beneath the weight of it, becoming nothing more than dust in the wind. I should have stayed dead.

There wasn’t much left—only ash.

But ash is still something.

And under layers of dirt, stone, and centuries-old soil, I awoke. My hands twitched first, then my lungs seized, and I clawed my way back to the surface like a rabid animal.

When I finally broke through to land—mud-caked, broken—I took my first breath not as a monster, but as something else.

And I wept.

Tears, real ones, ran down my cheeks. The last time I’d cried, blood had spilled in place of water. But now—

Now it was different.

The moment air touched my lungs, I felt it all.

The screams.

The deaths.

The centuries of cruelty.

Every soul I’d devoured.

Guilt is a bitter medicine. It doesn’t kill you—it makes you live with it.

⸻

“And how does that make you feel?”

Dr. Mary’s voice is soft, clinical. A perfectly measured dose of fake empathy.

I sit across from her, my eyes tracing the city skyline outside her window. The city doesn’t sleep, not even at night. Cars hum below, lights flicker in glass towers, and people—fragile, beautiful people—carry on as if monsters like me don’t exist.

“It makes me feel angry,” I say, jaw tight.

She nods, pen hovering. “Well, I think we’re getting somewhere.” Her smile is polished. “But we’re out of time. Same day next week, Mr. Lane?”

“Sure,” I mutter, grabbing my coat. “I’ll see you then.”

⸻

After my resurrection, I returned to the underworld one final time.

Not to reclaim a throne or a reputation—those were long gone. I went to sell what was left of my estate.

The buyer was a witch, ancient and well-connected. In exchange for my property, she granted me a life above—among the living.

It was… complicated.

I no longer belonged below. My scent had changed. I smelled human. My soul, once blackened and hollow, now pulsed with echoes of light.

And the underworld knew it.

The beasts knew it.

I was no longer welcome.

But I didn’t belong up here either.

Not really.

The witch helped me find others—vampires like me. Those who had turned their backs on the underworld, who longed to walk among humans, even if only by moonlight.

We’re a rare breed.

Souls stitched back into bodies that never should have had one.

It’s not easy.

We can’t walk in sunlight.

We can’t eat normal food.

We still require blood—but now, taking it feels like sin.

In the first weeks, I fed on anything I could find—roadkill, fresh corpses, even rats. I was feral, lost, starving.

But I refused to take a human life.

I tried once.

A woman, young, alone, walking home in the dark. I followed her—old instincts roaring back to life.

But as I closed the distance, I saw her cry.

Not out of fear—just sorrow.

And something inside me cracked.

I turned and fled, nauseated, disgusted with myself.

That was the moment I knew: I couldn’t be what I was.

But I wasn’t human either.

⸻

I walk the night now.

Among the living, yet apart from them.

The others—my kind—they’ve created a hidden network. We meet sometimes, trading blood packs, sharing whispers.

Some live in shadows.

Some pretend to be human.

We all wear masks.

Dr. Mary thinks I’m a troubled man named Elias Lane.

She doesn’t know that her client once razed villages.

She doesn’t know I once drank the blood of royalty.

She doesn’t know I once stood in the underworld, feared by the damned themselves.

And she never will.

Because now I am something new.

Something that shouldn’t exist.

A vampire with a soul.

And I’m learning—slowly, painfully—how to live with that.