The silence in the cave was more terrifying than the Shadow's screams. Niloufer stood there, her breath hitching, her hands still bleeding onto the ground. Alex did not move; he stood with a straight back like a statue carved from black marble, but the energy radiating from him pressed against Niloufer's chest, making it hard to breathe.
Niloufer looked at Alex with a glimmer of hope amidst her fear and said in a trembling voice: "Alex… we survived!" Alex didn't answer immediately. Very slowly, he turned toward her, his features void of any human expression, his eyes drowned in a horrific blackness. Niloufer stared into those dark voids and whispered, her voice shaking with intense anxiety: "Alex… are you okay?"
At that moment, with a brutal movement her eyes couldn't even track, Alex lunged at her and sank his fangs deep into her neck. Niloufer tried to flee, tried to push him away with her trembling hands, but her body was too weak to resist such savage strength. Alex continued to drain her blood with a manic hunger until her strength collapsed, the world went dark in her eyes, and she fell unconscious in his arms.
In that instant, a deep voice echoed from within Alex's consciousness, a scream resonating: "What are you doing? Do not let the blood of mortals control you!" His eyes slowly began to return to their natural color. He opened his eyelids to see the scene he had created: Niloufer, her face pale as the dead, drenched in her own blood and completely unconscious.
Alex panicked and began to shake her in terror: "Nilo! Nilo! Wake up!" He placed his hand on her neck to check for a pulse, but he felt nothing… no pulse, no breath. He recoiled, screaming in regret: "No… what have I done? Forgive me… what have I done?!"
Alex looked at the wound on her hand, and it seemed to him as if the skin was knitting itself back together with lightning speed. He looked at her other hand, then at her neck… there was no trace of any wound! Alex was stunned and said in disbelief: "This is impossible! Am I hallucinating? What is happening to her?" He continued to shake her frantically: "Nilo… Nilo… wake up!"
Meanwhile, Leo had regained his original form as a full-powered Vampire. He rose from the bed where the old man had sheltered him and stepped out of the hut like a ghostly shadow, soaring over the city that had shown him no mercy the day before.
He landed in the very garden he had been kicked out of earlier. He touched the grass with his hand and said in a tone filled with contempt: "There is no place for the place that rejected me…" With a swift flick of his fingers, a terrifying blue flame erupted from his hand, devouring the grass and trees in seconds.
The man who had kicked him out before came running in terror, screaming: "You again?!" Leo turned toward him coldly and said: "Yes." The man began to scream "Fire! Fire!", but Leo cut him off with a single word: "Silence!" The man's voice stopped instantly; his mouth could no longer utter a word. Leo looked at him with piercing eyes: "How do you want your punishment to be?" The man tried to run, but Leo spoke again: "Silence!" The man froze in place like a stone.
The city's residents began to wake up to the powerful smell of smoke. Leo approached the man and said with a chilling smile: "It seems… today is your day." Leo extended his sharp claws and dragged them across the man's face, from his forehead down to his mouth, leaving an eternal scar. He told him: "So that you remember me every time you look at your face."
Then he commanded coldly: "Move!" The man's feet began to move forcefully toward the blazing fire despite his desperate attempts to stop. The people of the city saw him walking slowly into the fire; they rushed toward him, trying to grab him and stop him with all their might, but their bodies collided with him as if he were a wall of iron.
They asked him in bewilderment and horror: "What are you doing? Have you lost your mind? What is this on your face?" The man collapsed to his knees in the middle of the flames, his hands covering his blood-stained face, screaming hysterically:
"He's a monster… A MONSTER!!"