Chapter 1: The dead world
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It was the pure Void infront of him, Death should have been the end.
Lucian didn't remember how he died. There was no tragic accident, no gunshot, no sickness that he could recall. One moment, he was alive, and the next it was nothing.
Now, he drifted in an endless, black abyss, weightless and formless, like his body had been erased from existence. There was no warmth, no sound, nothing but a terrible emptiness that stretched forever.
As his conciseness drifted deeper into the void, sudden whispers began.
Thousands of voices. Some screamed in agony, others laughed in madness, and some only sobbed. They slithered through the darkness like worms, sliding past his ears and into his skull.
"He does not belong here."
"Oh god. Another broken soul."
"The god is already dead. The world is dying hehehehe~hehehe."
Lucian tried to speak, but his lips did not exist. He tried to move, but he had no arms, no legs what left of him was only a distant awareness of himself.
Then, a deeper voice spoke, one that did not whisper but instead echoed through the void like thunder.
"You should not be here."
Something unseen wrapped around him, a force ancient and one that felt wrong, pulling him deeper into the abyss. A cold, wet touch slithered along his thoughts, and for the first time, he felt true terror.
Then a different voice.
"Wake up before they take you."
Lucian felt his very soul ignite in pain. His body was being burned, reshaped, reforged in silver-ish fire.
"WAKE UP."
And suddenly the voice grew louder.
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"Ugh!"
Lucian's eyes snapped open, and his lungs screamed for air.
He lurched forward, choking, his body convulsing as if he had been drowning. His skin was slick with sweat, his throat raw, and every muscle in his body ached as if he had been torn apart and stitched back together.
A sharp pain stabbed through his skull as memories that weren't his own surged into him, memories of the body his soul was dragged into.
"Where-?" He looked around, only to see a unfamiliar place.
The memories surged in making his head a mess.
'This isn't Earth, and more importantly...This isn't my body?'
'...This is Nocturnal?'
The realization hit him like a hammer. He was not himself. His old life on earth, the modern world, and somehow the body he inherited had the same name as his.
Lucian Veyne, the name felt like a distant dream compared to the vivid, brutal memories of this new existence.
He was in a small, dimly lit chamber with rough stone walls, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and something metallic.
'blood?'
A few corpses surrounded him, their faces were asif gaunt and exhausted before they were killed. The man closest to him knelt by his side. He was old, with silver-streaked hair and deep lines carved into his face, his eyes filled with equal parts relief and caution.
"Lucian," the man breathed. "You've awakened."
Lucian tried to speak, but his throat felt raw, dry, as if he hadn't used it in weeks.
The old man studied him carefully, as if searching for something in his expression.
"Do you remember your name?"
Lucian swallowed. His mind swirled with two sets of memories—his past life, and this one. His name here was same as his past life, the body he now inhabited already had an identity.
"Lucian," he rasped. "Lucian Veyne."
The old man nodded slowly. "Good. That means the forcefull Awakening hasn't completely destroyed you."
'Awakening?'
Lucian tried to move, but a deep ache settled in his limbs, his body weak and unfamiliar. As he struggled to sit up, he noticed something else—his skin was cold. Almost too cold.
Noticing his discomfort, the old man placed a hand on his shoulder. "You've been asleep for three days. Since we forced your awakening, We feared the transformation would kill you."
Before Lucian could question him, a loud thud echoed through the room.
Everyone froze.
A second thud.
A low, guttural growl rumbled from the other side of a wooden door at the far end of the chamber.
Lucian's breath hitched. The sound was very wrong—not human, not animal, but something in between.
The old man's expression darkened. He turned to the others and whispered, "They're here. Be prepared!"
---
The room plunged into silence.
Lucian didn't need his new memories to understand what was happening. His instincts screamed at him—something outside the door was hunting them.
Another slam—this time, the wooden barricade cracked, splinters flying.
The dead body nearest to Lucian was of a woman who clutched a young child to her chest, eyes still wide in fear. Near her A younger man, his hands darken, held a jagged silver dagger in a white-knuckled grip, with hus jaw broken.
'They are? The people related to this body?' in the memories inherited by Lucian, there were the faces of the people present here.
'the original lucian of this world...and this dead bodies of the people here. It seems they were all survivors of there tribe.'
As lucian kept trying to figure out what was happening through the memories, he found out most of his memories were fragmented and missing.
He turned to the old man. "What's out there?"
The old man's jaw tightened. "A Blood Hunter."
The words triggered something deep inside Lucian's new mind—a buried memory, a horror he had never personally experienced, yet somehow knew with certainty.
Blood Hunters.
Creatures born from failed vampire experiments—twisted mockeries of life, flesh that never stopped mutating, bones that moved like living weapons.
They had no eyes. Only jaws filled with hundreds of needle-sharp teeth, They existed for one purpose: to hunt.
Another slam. The door buckled.
Lucian's pulse pounded. He was helpless. His body was still weak, and his Awakening—whatever it was-was incomplete.
The old man turned to him. "Lucian, listen carefully. Your Silver Awakening is still happening. You need to focus. If you don't, you won't survive."
Pain suddenly ripped through Lucian's chest.
It felt like his blood was turning to molten metal, his bones vibrating like they were being reforged from within.
He barely had time to react before the door exploded inward. A long, clawed hand forced its way through the broken wood, twitching violently.
And then, the Blood Hunter crawled inside.
Lucian's breath caught in his throat, it was worse than his memories.
The creature's skin was stretched too tight over its bones, its mouth an unhinged maw of layered fangs. Its arms were too long, its fingers twisted into razor-sharp talons. The stench of rot and blood clung to it.
It let out a horrid, warbling screech, and Lucian felt his body seize in terror.
'i am going to die again!'
Then—
Something inside him snapped. The silver inside him ignited.
His breath hitched as a searing, cold fire spread through his veins. His fingertips tingled, something shimmering beneath his skin.
His Awakening was happening. But could he control it before he was torn apart?
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The Blood Hunter lunged.
Lucian barely had time to react. His body—weak, uncoordinated, foreign—refused to move the way he wanted. The creature's elongated claws sliced through the air, aimed directly at his throat.
A silver dagger flashed in the darkness.
Ronan—the old man who had been at Lucian's bedside—moved fast for his age. His blade plunged into the monster's forearm, the metal sinking into its pale, pulsing flesh like a hot knife through wax.
The reaction was immediate.
The Blood Hunter shrieked, its voice a sickening mix of a dying animal and a child screaming underwater. Its entire body convulsed violently, flesh bubbling as if something beneath its skin was trying to crawl free.
Lucian's stomach twisted. It wasn't just one body.
The thing's arms were too long, the fingers splitting at the knuckles, creating more hands that twitched and groped blindly. Its chest bulged, pulsing, and for a sickening moment, Lucian saw a second face press against the inside of its ribcage, its mouth frozen in an endless scream.
"What the hell are these things?"
Ronan tore his dagger free, and the wound didn't bleed. Instead, the skin around it writhed, splitting open to reveal something darker, wetter, wriggling beneath.
Another Blood Hunter slithered in through the broken doorway.
This one was worse.
Its torso bent backward, spine snapping with each movement, its limbs unfolding like a spider made of human bones. Its face was barely a face—a hollowed-out cavity where eyes should be, with a jaw that unhinged wider than a man's torso. Its mouth trembled, drool mixing with blood, its teeth shifting independently like something alive.
"What the fu*k is that?"
Lucian's entire body locked in fear.
The creature crawled forward on too many limbs, moving with a jerky, unnatural gait, like a corpse being puppeteered by invisible strings.
It didn't lunge immediately. It stopped just short of Lucian. Its hollow face tilted toward him.
It was sniffing him.
Lucian's breath came out in ragged, panicked gasps. He could feel its breath on his skin, cold and wet.
Then slowly It started laughing.
Not a deep growl, not an animalistic snarl. A human laugh.
A wet, choking, uneven giggle, as if it were mimicking something it had heard before.
Lucian snapped. "Hick!"
He threw himself backward, trying to get away. His foot slipped in something wet—blood—and he crashed onto his back, pain jolting through his spine.
The Blood Hunter's giggling stopped.
And then, it lunged.
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Lucian's body moved before his mind could.
His instincts screamed at him, and he thrust his hand up in desperation—
The Blood Hunter's claws reached for his face—And the moment they touched him, something inside him broke.
A shockwave of cold erupted from his skin.
The Blood Hunter reeled back, screeching, its entire arm turning black and silver. The veins beneath its skin pulsed violently, rupturing, its fingers curling in on themselves as if it were rotting from the inside out.
Lucian gasped, clutching his chest.
The fire inside him was felt real now, burning, shifting, trying to break free.
He could feel it in his blood, his bones, his breath.
"This is Silver energy."
His Awakening was happening. But he didn't have time to control it.
The first Blood Hunter—the one Ronan had stabbed—recovered far too quickly. The flesh where it had been wounded peeled itself apart, and instead of healing, it grew.
New muscles twisted over bone. Extra teeth formed in its palms.
It wasn't just regenerating. It was as if evolving And it was angry.
Lucian was still on the floor. He tried to move, but his legs felt like lead. His body wasn't ready. His Awakening wasn't even done.
The Blood Hunter lunged again as it did Something whistled through the air.
"Grrrr-" The gorned as a silver spear impaled the Blood Hunter's head mid-motion, the force so powerful that it pinned the creature to the stone wall.
It twitched violently, limbs spasming, but the silver burned too deeply this time. Its grotesque form began to dissolve, breaking apart into nothing but ash and steaming flesh.
Lucian barely had time to process what had happened before footsteps echoed through the ruined doorway.
A woman elegantly entered, moving like a predator in the dark.
She was tall, wrapped in a dark cloak, her silver hair shimmering under the dim candlelight. A second spear formed in her hand, solidifying from thin air like she had forged it out of pure will.
'A Silverborn warrior?' lucian could guess what that women was from his inheritance he got.
She glanced down at Lucian, her golden eyes studying him with cold calculation.
"He's the one?" she asked.
Ronan exhaled, wiping blood from his forehead. "Yes, but His Awakening is… a bit different. Maybe because it was forced awakening?"
Lucian, still gasping for breath, managed a weak, "Glad that we're discussing me, while I'm bleeding out."
The woman ignored his sarcasm. She raised a hand, and a faint silver glow enveloped her fingertips.
Lucian immediately felt the pain in his chest dull. The wounds sealed themselves, though the soreness remained.
The woman didn't smile. She simply looked at him with something close to indifference.
"You're coming with us," she said.
Lucian blinked. "…What?"
Ronan ran a hand through his graying hair. "She's right. You can't stay here. The vampires will come looking for you after, afterall they won't let a prey escape."
Lucian stared at them both. 'This is too much.'
He had just been reborn into a nightmarish world, nearly torn apart by monsters, and now he was being dragged into something even bigger.
The woman, however, didn't care about his hesitation.
"You don't have a choice," she said simply.
Lucian sighed, exhausted. "Figures."
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They left the ruined chamber behind.
Outside, Nocturnal stretched before them—a world bathed in eternal night. Towering mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks shrouded in mist. And on the far horizon, a city of pale, spire-like towers gleamed like ivory under the moonlight.
The ruins of the a old capita-city.
Lucian pulled his cloak tighter, the cold air stinging his wounds. As they moved through the abandoned streets, Ronan walked beside him.
"You don't remember much, do you?" he asked.
Lucian hesitated. "Some things feel familiar. Others don't."
Ronan studied him. "Then you should know this."
Lucian turned to him.
"You're not normal," Ronan said. "Your Awakening wasn't like the others. That power inside you quite different. Its also the reason the vampires targeted you and your people"
Lucian knew that only he was left now, of his ones a big tribe. He frowned. "Different how?"
Ronan didn't answer. Ahead, the woman who was supposedly from the Silver Order glanced back.
"Move faster," she said. "The night isn't safe."
Lucian looked once more at the ruined city in the distance.
He had been reborn into a world of monsters.
And whatever was inside him—Might be worse than them all.
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End of Chapter 1
[ Note: I'll be adding character illustrations starting chapter 5~]