In the dimly lit room, three or four vampires dressed in cyan uniforms surrounded the scarlet bed. They spoke in low voices, discussing something with grim expressions filled with deep confusion and tension.
At the head of the bed, Klal stood with her arms crossed, staring at them coldly.
“Have you finished discussing?” she asked. Her icy voice brimmed with displeasure. “You’ve been standing here talking for half an hour already. Haven’t you found the cause yet?”
The vampires’ hushed conversation stopped abruptly. They lowered their heads, not daring to meet Klal’s annoyed gaze, barely breathing.
One of them replied cautiously, “Your Majesty… we’ve tried everything we can. We really don’t know why this is happening…”
Klal’s expression grew even colder.
“You mean to tell me my little one went to sleep after one night with me and now she inexplicably won’t wake up?”
At that moment, in the center of the large scarlet bed, Sylvie lay quietly. A thin blanket covered her body, her eyes tightly closed. Her chest rose and fell so subtly it was barely noticeable. The bedsheets beneath her were rumpled and wrinkled, yet her breathing was extremely faint—almost imperceptibly steady.
Her face was paler than usual, nearly translucent, as if all vitality had been drained away, leaving only a delicate but hollow shell.
She remained completely still, like someone sunk in the deepest sleep, or perhaps a soulless doll.
Ever since last night, after Klal had tormented and used her, Sylvie had fallen into a heavy sleep. The next day, Klal discovered the girl beside her still hadn’t awakened. At first, Klal felt some dissatisfaction and tried to rouse her. But when she touched Sylvie, she realized… the girl’s body was as cold as death.
And she simply would not wake.
By the bedside, the vampires lowered their voices further, their tones laced with anxiety and bewilderment.
“Her vital signs are extremely weak, but… strangely stable. All physiological indicators have dropped to the minimum threshold for survival, yet they’re mysteriously maintaining balance.”
“There are no signs of poisoning, no traces of known magic or curses, and no physical injuries detected.”
“Even mental sensing returns nothing but silence, as if her consciousness has sunk into some… unreachable deep hibernation.”
“Last night, Her Majesty… um… perhaps she was… too intense…”
One vampire hinted carefully, only to be silenced by Klal’s sharp glare.
Normally, she would regain consciousness by morning. This wasn’t just a challenge to Klal’s control—it created a sense of unexpected loss of command. Her toy, after enduring the usual treatment, had failed to wake as always. She hated losing control.
Looking at the girl on the bed who appeared to be sleeping peacefully, Klal felt an indescribable irritation. She strode out of the room without looking back and called out, “Useless.”
“Tiana!”
In a dark corner of the room, Tiana—who had remained silent the entire time—shuddered in fear.
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
She hurried after her.
The two walked one after the other, quickly passing through the winding corridors until they reached a relatively secluded balcony.
The dim light of Eternal Night City filtered through sparse clouds, casting a silver edge on the Queen’s silhouette.
Klal stopped, her back to Tiana, gazing at the city outline shrouded in eternal darkness in the distance. In the blood-red eye on her profiled face swirled displeasure—and perhaps a trace of panic that even she herself hadn’t noticed.
“Report on the task I assigned you,” she said in a low voice.
Tiana paused, thinking the Queen would ask about Sylvie. She hadn’t expected this.
“Sulga passed the message to the intelligence department yesterday. It shouldn’t be long before those humans start flooding in. Today, the various Penned Districts should have already received the news.”
After yesterday’s examination by the Blood Tech division, the human metal syringe could not be opened through normal means. Tiana reported unhurriedly.
“The humans have applied strict encryption to the interior of this syringe. It contains a signal transmission device. If forcibly broken, it will send a mission failure signal to all humans holding similar syringes. The device will also self-destruct, making it impossible to discover what was inside.”
Klal fell silent for a moment. Her blood-red eyes slowly narrowed.
“Impossible to crack?” she asked.
“Currently… yes, Your Majesty. The Blood Tech division tried numerous methods without success. The humans’ technology is far more advanced than we imagined… and…”
“And what?”
“Moreover, the Blood Tech personnel said that among the humans, only one person could develop technology at this level. Her name is…”
Tiana thought for a moment before speaking the name.
“Melissa Sandwala.”
The moment the name entered her mind, Klal’s pupils contracted sharply. Her heart skipped a beat.
“Melissa…” she repeated softly. Her fist clenched unconsciously. “That woman… wasn’t she supposed to have died six years ago?” Her eyes churned with irrepressible hatred.
When she had been an experimental subject under those damned humans, her memories had been mostly erased amid the soul- and body-shattering experiments and torments. She could no longer clearly recall what had happened back then.
But her body and soul screamed constantly, venting the pain and rage from those years.
She couldn’t remember the exact features of that face or which sterile white laboratory it had been, but her body remembered—the pain of every inch of skin that had been sliced open or pierced by electric currents; the aching from bones forcibly catalyzed to grow; the hollow numbness deep in her soul from repeated crushing and tearing.
And the one who had led it all… was the woman named Melissa.
“I’ve already sent people to investigate,” Tiana said hesitantly, her voice as quiet as a mosquito’s buzz.
“Your Majesty… about Miss Sylvie… she…”
“She’s just sleeping,” Klal cut her off sharply, her tone leaving no room for argument.
“She will wake up.”
“But…”
“I said… she’s just sleeping.” Her voice deepened. Seeing this, Tiana wisely closed her mouth.
She noticed the Queen’s hand hanging at her side, fingernails nearly digging into her palm. On the back of that pale hand, faint blue veins stood out.
She had seen the Queen angry, seen her cold and cruel, seen her languid. But rarely had she witnessed this kind of brittle tension—like a fully drawn bowstring, taut not against an external enemy, but against her own frayed nerves.
She didn’t know what Melissa was planning, what the syringe meant, or even whether her lost memories held anything important.
But one thing was crystal clear.
Sylvie was hers.
In life and in death.
And even if she were to die, it would only be after Klal had grown tired of her and ended her personally.
Until then, no one and nothing could take her away.
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