My vampiric hand visibly swelled and contracted as the obsidian claw drained the man's blood straight from his heart.
It looked like thick gulps of water being pumped through tight straws — except the straws were the veins in my arm, and what they were pumping wasn't water.
The man shook and jerked and quivered, his voice still breaking out in terror-filled wheezes. He tried to move or get away, but my aunt's foot on his face kept him pressed to the floor without mercy.
With each gulp of his blood that my arm greedily drank, the cold inside it began to thaw.
The glacial numbness that had been seeping out from my grafted limb calmed down to something warm and soothing.
That warmth slowly crawled up my forearm, spread into my shoulder, then went deeper — into places in my body I couldn't quite name but could definitely feel.
…Essence.
My entire body was being flooded with a surge of Essence that circulated throughout before settling into my core.
