Bloodline of the mongrel vampires

Chapter 13 The choice that devour

The Choice that devours

Marcus stood in the Mongrel Witch’s chamber — stone walls bleeding damp shadows, bones strung like prayers above the threshold. The air was so thick with old spells that every breath tasted of iron and ash.

She watched him from her throne of rotting roots and silk, her hollow eyes glittering with something unspoken. Somewhere deep beneath her voice, he always felt it — that hunger she hid behind sharp words. He’d spent centuries avoiding this place, this woman. But tonight, the shadows had left him no choice.

“Speak it plain,” Marcus rasped, forcing his voice to hold. “You said I’d have to choose who dies first. Why?”

The Mongrel Witch tilted her head. A single brittle lock of hair fell across her shoulder, snagged with feathers and bone beads.

“Because your path forks in two,” she said, each word threading into him like a needle through old wounds.

“Your path forks in two bloodwalker,”

“One road demands you spill the blood you hold closest — a sacrifice, to save a world that would burn you alive if it could. The blood you love… to save those who will never love you back.”

Her voice slipped colder, brittle as frost creeping over old bones.

“And the other road?”

She leaned in, eyes hollow yet glittering with cruel truth.

“The other lets you guard that blood — cradle it close, protect it like a wolf guarding its last cub. But in doing so, you doom the rest. You spill the world to keep what your heart cannot bear to lose.”

A humorless laugh cracked from her throat, like dry twigs snapping underfoot.

“Do you understand, Bloodwalker? There is no mercy in this choice. No clever blade to cut you free. Either you kill what you love… or you watch the world drown in its hunger while you stand there — helpless — holding the knife that should have ended it.”

The wind coiled through the chamber, rustling her tattered silks like ghosts brushing past stone.

“This is the curse of your blood. Of hers. Of the child’s. Love will chain you tighter than any iron ever could — and when the time comes, you’ll have to decide who truly deserves saving. And which grave you’ll dig with your own trembling hands.”

The chamber trembled — a breathless hush, like the walls themselves were listening. Marcus’s fists clenched at his sides, the hunger beneath his skin coiling tighter than ever.

“You see too much,” he growled.

“And you see too little,” she shot back, her voice snapping like dry twigs. She leaned forward, her fingers tapping the armrest — bone clicking bone. “Do you know why you avoid me, Bloodwalker?”

Marcus’s silence was answer enough.

“Because I speak what you dare not,” the Witch hissed. “You’ve always felt the storm coming — you just can’t bear to name it.”

The runes behind her flickered — faint, sickly light crawling across the stone.

The Witch hissed a binding charm under her breath, the words coiling through the air like smoke — slipping under his skin, behind his eyes.

And then it struck him — cold, sharp, sudden. A vision.

And then it struck him — cold, sharp, sudden. A vision.

He blinked — and the chamber fell away.

He stood in a clearing where the world seemed made of light. The forest was gone — replaced by rolling meadows kissed by dawn. Wildflowers bloomed in impossible colors. Rivers ran clear as glass, their banks rich with life. In the distance, a village rose — new houses, children laughing, crops swelling under a gentle sun.

He saw Valeria there — but not the Valeria he knew. This one was human again, hair braided with wildflowers, hands stained with garden soil instead of blood. She laughed — the sound unbroken by sorrow — as she lifted the child, who giggled and squirmed, eyes shining with innocent wonder. No fangs. No monster’s hunger. Just a mother and child, mortal and whole.

Nikolas was there too — his features softer, unscarred by the endless battles he’d fought. Miranda stood by a well, lips murmuring spells to bless the water — no darkness twisting her magic, no shadow lurking behind her eyes.

Everything was clean. Forgiven. Perfect.

And he was not among them.

Instead, he hovered at the edge of this peace — unseen, unneeded. The wind carried no trace of him. No grave marked his name. His sacrifice — the ones he’d loved — were the seeds of this gentle garden.

A voice spoke, warm as honey and twice as cruel:

"See what waits when you loosen your grip?

The world heals when you are gone from its wounds.”

He tried to step closer, to touch Valeria’s face, to call the child’s name — but his hand passed through them like smoke.

Behind him, the wind shifted — cool and clean. No blood in the soil, no ruin in the sky.

But as he turned, a single flower at his feet withered — its petals turning black, crumbling into ash that stained his boots. He looked back — the vision remained flawless.

tremor ripped through the false peace — the meadow cracking like porcelain under a hammer. Light bled out from the fissures.

He blinked — and found himself standing on the blackened crown of a dying world. Mountains split and bled rivers of fire that choked the sky with ash. Cities lay half-swallowed by the earth, their towers twisted like bone spears jutting into a red, storm-wracked horizon. The sun was gone — replaced by a gaping wound that pulsed in the sky, seeping shadows like ink spilled in water.

He looked down and saw the forest where they once hid — now nothing but charred husks. In the midst of the ruin: Valeria, draped in torn silks slick with old blood. She was beautiful — terrible — eyes like molten coals, fangs dripping as she tore open what was left of a man’s throat. Her hands were claws; her shadow crawled across the corpses like a living thing. Her lips pulled back in a smile that was not hers — a smile that belonged to the hunger.

Near her feet: the child. No longer wrapped in innocence but clothed in shadows that danced like flame. Her eyes glowed with an ancient light that flickered and swirled with Marcus’s own reflection — the bond between them burned into her bones. Every heartbeat that echoed through her tiny ribs was another nail in the world’s coffin.

And then he saw it — the truth: Rivers of blood snaked out from her bare feet, splitting the dead soil. Where they touched, life withered — forests turned to graveyards, oceans curdled into sludge. She raised her gaze to Marcus, and behind her eyes he saw it — the old power, unbound by his interference.

And in that terrible hush, the child lifted her small hand — and the world obeyed.

Every creature froze: wolves with jaws mid-snarl dropped their muzzles to the ash; winged horrors folded their tattered wings; the trees bent low until their crowns scraped the scorched earth.

Even Valeria — fangs dripping, hands clawed and wet with blood — fell to one knee before her daughter, head bowed as if the last shred of her soul still knew its queen.

The ruin held its breath. Only the child remained standing — tiny, sovereign, crowned in shadows.

The hooded figure emerged behind the child — its face hidden, its voice a graveyard in the wind: "You held the balance — now you break it with your love. The old blood feeds the old hunger. And your bond feeds her. This is mercy. This is ruin."

Lightning clawed the rotting sky. Nikolas’s broken body lay impaled on a splintered tree. Miranda’s spirit drifted above, her mouth stitched shut by vines, her spells unraveling as poison rain fell from her hair.

Valeria turned to him — and for a heartbeat he saw her human face, her tears. Then the beast returned — but even the beast stayed kneeling at the child’s feet.

The child lifted a small hand again. Roots erupted from the earth, wrapping around Marcus’s feet — binding him as they fed from the same bloodline that connected him to her. They pulsed with his heartbeat — every drop of love he’d given her now a chain around the world’s throat.

"When the old blood calls," the figure rasped, its empty face splitting into a grin made of rotting teeth and crow feathers, "will you answer with your own?"

Thunder cracked. The earth split. The vision fractured — splintered like bone under a blade — and the ruin swallowed him whole.

Marcus gasped awake — lungs clawing for air that tasted like ashes.

The vision lingered behind his eyes:

Valeria lost.

The child unchained.

The world a grave he dug with his own hands — all because he refused to let them go.

And yet — the hunger in his chest said he’d do it anyway.

Because some loves are worth the ruin they bring.

He looked around — but the world that met him was not the one he’d left behind. A dark room swallowed him whole, its walls warped with flickering shadows that slithered like snakes over stone.

Voices drifted through the gloom — half-whispers, half-memories, their echoes scraping across the inside of his skull. He could hear Valeria’s laugh twisted into a sob; the child’s heartbeat, thunderous and wrong; the Witch’s hiss, taunting him with truths he wished he’d never heard.

The shadows pulsed closer, pressing against his chest like a second skin. Every breath tasted of burnt flowers and old blood. A trickle of cold sweat slid down his spine as he forced his eyes to stay open — but the room only seemed to close in tighter, darker, alive with the ghosts of the ruin he’d seen.

His fists curled. The voices swelled to a deafening chorus, mocking him — “Will you bleed? Will you bleed?”

He closed his eyes, tighter than before, teeth grinding against the panic that clawed at his ribs. He held them shut until the darkness behind his lids was calmer than the nightmare pressing against his skin.

And when he opened them again — the world shifted like water through broken hands — and he was back in the Witch’s chamber, chest heaving, sweat cutting cold tracks down his spine. The Mongrel Witch sat unmoved, but he saw the truth glint behind her hollow eyes: she knew.

“You saw,” she breathed, her voice almost tender — but the kind of tenderness that slides in right before the knife. “Tell me, Marcus. When the moment comes… will you bleed for her? Or make her bleed for you?”

He said nothing. The runes overhead pulsed once, as if mocking him, then went dark.

Outside, a wind rose — carrying the scent of distant pine and something fouler, older. A reminder that some storms don’t come. They wake.

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