The hallway was silent now.
Aaron stood barefoot among the dissolving ashes of two creatures that should not exist. Frost still clung to the wallpaper. His neck ached where teeth had torn flesh minutes ago. Now the skin was smooth. Unbroken.
He stared at the blue panel floating before his eyes.
Name: Aaron Gill
Bloodline: Devouring Bloodline
Sub-Bloodline: Vampire Primordial (1%)
His hand passed through it. No resistance. No texture. Light without substance.
"What... is this?"
He had seen magic in his past life. Cultivation manuals. Qi manifestations. Spiritual artifacts that glowed with inner fire. But this? A floating window of text that responded to his attention, displaying abilities like a merchant's inventory list?
This was not cultivation.
He closed his eyes.
Darkness. The ordinary void behind closed eyelids that every human knew from birth.
Except it wasn't dark anymore. The panel remained. Crisp. Glowing softly. Suspended in the black like a lantern behind thin silk.
He opened his eyes. Panel visible.
Closed them. Still there.
"Imprinted," he murmured. "Not on the eyes. On the soul."
His past-life knowledge offered no framework for this. He would need to learn from scratch.
---
The bat transformation called to him first.
Among the listed abilities, it was the only one that offered movement. Escape. If more vampires came, if something worse followed, he needed options beyond a fifteen-year-old body with fading muscle memory.
He focused on the ability. The panel pulsed.
Bat Transformation
Shift form into a swarm of bats. Range: 10 meters. Cooldown: 1 hour.
Simple enough.
Aaron took a breath. He centered himself the way his old master had taught—feet planted, shoulders loose, mind cleared of distraction. Then he pushed intent toward the ability.
Nothing happened.
Again. Deeper focus. He pictured the form in his mind. Small. Winged. Many.
A cold sensation spread from his chest. Not painful. Strange. Like ice water flowing outward through his veins instead of blood. His skin prickled. His vision fractured—
And then he was everywhere at once.
Seven viewpoints. Eight. Twelve. The hallway exploded into a kaleidoscope of angles. He saw the floor from above, the ceiling from below, the walls from every direction simultaneously. His body was gone. In its place, a cloud of small black bats, wings beating in frantic unison.
The sensation was nauseating.
He tried to move left. Half the bats went left. The other half scattered in panic, bouncing off walls, tangling in curtains. He tried to reform. The bats swirled, collided, refused to coalesce.
Control. Find control.
He focused on a single bat. One viewpoint among many. He guided it toward the center of the swarm. The others slowly followed, drawn by some instinct he didn't understand. After thirty seconds, the swarm stabilized. Twelve bats. Twelve viewpoints. One mind struggling to hold them together.
He flew.
It was nothing like walking. Nothing like the body. Three dimensions of freedom, but every turn required coordination across twelve separate bodies. He drifted down the hallway, bumped into a vase, nearly scattered again, and corrected.
---
The front door opened.
Mr. Aldridge's voice echoed from the foyer. "Young Master? I've returned early. Margaret's surgery was rescheduled, so I—"
Aaron's twelve bat-bodies froze midair.
The butler stepped into the hallway.
He saw the bats. A dozen of them. Hovering in formation like something no natural flock had ever done. He saw the broken window at the end of the hall. The frost melting on the walls. The ashes that still swirled in small, greasy spirals on the hardwood.
And then he saw the clothes.
Aaron's clothes. Shirt. Pants. Underwear. All lying in a heap exactly where Aaron had been standing when he transformed.
Mr. Aldridge's face went through three expressions in sequence. Confusion. Disbelief. Then something close to primal fear.
"What in the—"
One of the bats squeaked. It was involuntary. Aaron's panic leaking through.
Mr. Aldridge grabbed a broom from the closet. He raised it like a weapon and charged at the swarm, swinging wildly.
"Get out! Out! Filthy things!"
The bats scattered. Aaron couldn't hold formation under the assault. Two bats nearly got swatted. He poured all his focus into a single command: Upstairs. Window. Now.
The swarm fled. Twelve bats shot up the stairwell, wings beating desperately, Mr. Aldridge's shouts echoing behind them.
---
Mr. Aldridge stood in the hallway, broom still raised, breathing hard.
The bats were gone. He could hear them fluttering somewhere upstairs, but the sound was fading.
He lowered the broom. Looked at the floor.
The clothes. The young master's clothes. He recognized the shirt—dark blue cotton, a birthday gift from Dr. Winc. The pants. The undergarments. All arranged as if Aaron had simply... vanished out of them.
He knelt. Touched the fabric. Still warm.
"This is..." He didn't finish the sentence. There was no sensible way to finish it.
He gathered the clothes. Folded them. His hands trembled slightly. Fifty-three years of service in wealthy households had exposed him to many strange things—affairs, hidden addictions, the occasional petty crime. But this?
He climbed the stairs slowly. Each step creaked under his weight. At the top, he hesitated, then walked to Aaron's bedroom door.
The window was open. Curtains billowing in the night air.
Mr. Aldridge stared at the open window. Then at the folded clothes in his hands. Then back at the window.
A thought formed. He rejected it. It formed again.
He knocked.
"Young Master? Are you sleeping?"
Silence.
He turned the handle. The door swung open.
Aaron lay in bed. Covers pulled to his chin. Eyes closed. Chest rising and falling in slow, steady rhythm. Dressed in different clothes—a simple gray t-shirt and sweatpants.
Mr. Aldridge stood in the doorway for a full ten seconds. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"Young Master?"
Aaron didn't stir. His breathing remained deep. Peaceful. The picture of innocent sleep.
The butler's eyes drifted to the folded clothes in his hands. The exact clothes that had been lying empty on the hallway floor ten minutes ago. He looked at the sleeping boy. At the clothes. At the boy.
He backed out of the room. Closed the door softly.
In the hallway, alone, he whispered to no one: "I need a raise."
---
Next Day
Morning came pale and gray.
Aaron sat at the breakfast table, eating scrambled eggs one bite at a time. His movements were slower than usual. Deliberate. The night had drained him in ways he didn't fully understand yet. Not just physically—the transformation had taken something from him. A cold hollowness sat in his chest, like hunger but deeper.
Mr. Aldridge served toast. His eyes kept flicking to Aaron, then away. He said nothing about the previous night. Professionalism won over curiosity, or perhaps fear won over both.
"Will you be needing the car today, Young Master?"
"Yes. School."
The butler nodded. "I'll bring it around."
---
The Bentley pulled up outside East Side High at 8:23 AM.
Students streamed through the main entrance. Backpacks. Laughter. The low thunder of a hundred conversations. Normal. Ordinary. Aaron had walked these steps a hundred times.
He opened the car door.
Sunlight hit his skin.
The pain was immediate. Not heat—he knew heat. This was different. His skin didn't warm; it reacted. The exposed flesh on his hands and face began to prickle, then sting, then burn. Tiny blisters rose on his knuckles. His cheeks flushed red, then redder, then angry crimson.
He wanted to scream.
The sound caught in his throat. He bit down. Hard. His past-life training took over—pain was information. Pain could be managed. He cataloged the sensation: surface-level. Worsening rapidly. Not fatal but escalating.
Mr. Aldridge was watching him through the rearview mirror.
"Kash," Aaron said. His voice came out tight. Controlled. "I'm not feeling well. Take me home."
The butler's eyes widened. "Shall I call Dr. Gill?"
"No. Just home. Now."
The car door closed. The sun vanished behind tinted glass. The burning continued—not worsening but not fading. Aaron looked at his hands. The blisters were real. Small. Wet. His skin was actually damaged.
Mild effect, the panel had said. This was mild?
The Bentley pulled away from the curb. Aaron sat in the back seat, hands trembling in his lap, and watched the school recede through darkened windows.
---
One Hour Later
Aaron sat in the mansion's study. Curtains drawn. Lights off. Computer screen glowing.
His fingers moved fast across the keyboard. Search terms were not elegant but functional:
vampire sunlight weakness
how do vampires avoid sun
why does sunlight burn vampires
protection from sunlight methods
The results were... mixed. Most were fiction. Fan forums. Roleplaying sites. Useless.
But buried among the noise, fragments of truth emerged. Historical accounts. Folklore that matched across cultures. Patterns.
Sunlight harmed vampires—consistent across nearly every source. The severity varied. Some legends said instant death. Others described exactly what Aaron had felt: burning, blistering, pain but not destruction. The "mild" rating from his system suggested he was on the weaker end of the vulnerability spectrum. For now.
He found techniques:
Thick clothing. Full coverage. Hats, gloves, scarves. Practical but suspicious in summer.
Umbrellas. Parasols. Old-fashioned but effective. A black umbrella could block direct exposure.
Specialized creams. High-SPF formulations. One obscure medical journal—Dermatological Anomalies Quarterly—mentioned a zinc-based compound used by patients with extreme photosensitivity. He bookmarked it.
Timing. Avoid peak hours. Travel at dawn and dusk. Stick to shadows. Urban environments provided natural cover.
Night activity. The simplest solution. School was a problem. School happened during the day.
He leaned back in the chair. The blisters on his hands had faded. Still tender. But healing. Faster than normal.
His eyes drifted to the panel. Still there. Still waiting.
Sub-Bloodline: Vampire Primordial (1%)
The percentage bothered him. It implied growth. It implied this was only the beginning.
He closed the computer. Sat in the dark. The house was quiet. Mr. Aldridge had retreated to the servants' quarters, probably trying to convince himself last night was a stress hallucination.
Aaron flexed his fingers. Watched the last traces of blisters fade.
School would be a problem. Sunlight would be a problem. The hunger in his chest, cold and growing, would be a problem.