Chapter 161: The ritual is over.
The ravine continued burning, freezing, and crackling in the distance.
Even after Lilith disappeared from Victor’s hand, the strike remained in the world like an open scar. The split ground stretched beyond what Grace could see, a brutal line crossing forest, artificial hills, and ancient ruins. Black Ice covered the edges of the fissure like a living crust. White Fire still burned in some places, silent and stubborn, consuming everything it touched without producing ordinary smoke. Black Lightning ran through the walls of the ravine in irregular pulses, like exposed nerves.
Grace stared at it for a few seconds.
Then looked at Jake.
Or what remained of him.
The two halves of the body lay on the frozen ground, separated by a few meters. There were still small spasms in the flesh, useless reactions from Berserker trying to force a continuity that no longer existed. The Black Ice stuck to the cut prevented any reconnection, the White Fire corroded the edges of the wound, and the Black Lightning destroyed any attempt at energetic circulation. His ability, which had once seemed to transform rage into endless strength, was now only a chaotic mass trying to cling to dead pieces.
Victor observed for one more instant.
Then turned his face away as if he had lost interest.
Grace crossed her arms.
"What are you going to do now?"
Victor looked at her.
"Now?"
"Yes, now."
He shrugged, as if the answer were obvious.
"Jake is dead. There is nothing else to do."
Grace blinked once.
"You just split a Valentine in half, opened a ravine that can probably be seen from the other side of the dimension, and you are saying there is nothing else to do?"
"Exactly."
"Victor."
"What?" He wiped the dried blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb and looked around, evaluating the destruction with an almost bored expression. "The important participants are gone. The assassins died. Jake died. You are still alive. I am still alive. The Ritual eventually ends. I am going to wait."
Grace stared at him in silence for a few seconds.
Then sighed through her nose.
"You really do not intend to do anything else?"
"I could sleep."
"Inside the Ritual?"
"I have slept in worse places."
"You are unbelievable."
"Thank you."
"That was not a compliment."
"I chose to accept it as one."
Grace closed her eyes for an instant, as if organizing patience inside herself. When she opened them again, her gaze was more serious. She did not seem irritated only by his behavior, but by something more practical. Something that, to her, was so obvious that Victor’s indifference seemed almost offensive.
"And the score?"
Victor tilted his head.
"What about it?"
"Do you not want to finish first?"
"Not especially."
Grace went still.
"You understand that first place receives the second drop of the Primordial’s blood?"
Victor looked at her.
The silence lasted only briefly.
Then he smiled.
"Well, I do not care that much."
Grace stared at him as if she had heard blasphemy.
The first drop of the Primordial’s blood was important. Every noble vampire understood that, even the youngest, even the stupidest, even those who thought brute force solved everything. The first drop was the true prize of the Ascension Ritual because it awakened the powers of the vampiric lineage. It was the initial push. The key that opened a door that, for many, would remain closed their entire lives. Without that drop, talents remained dormant, possibilities died before being born, and entire heirs never discovered what they could have been.
Victor knew that better than anyone.
He had lived as an RH Null. He had felt on his own skin what it meant to have no power, no expectation, not even the right to be taken seriously within a society built on blood, lineage, and strength. The first drop mattered because it represented a rupture. A chance. A rebirth.
But the second drop was different.
It was still valuable. Absurdly so, even. For any other participant, receiving a second drop of primordial blood would be an opportunity rare enough to justify betrayals, ambushes, and silent family wars. It could refine newly awakened powers, strengthen the blood foundation, increase lineage stability, and raise the ceiling of growth. But it was not the initial key. It did not carry the same absolute weight as the first.
And Victor, in the end, occupied a ridiculous position.
He was married to the Primordial herself.
Not to a distant descendant. Not to a lineage representative. Not to a powerful noble carrying a diluted fraction of ancient blood. Carmilla Valentine, the living source of that blood, already belonged to him in a way that made the ordinary logic of the Ritual almost funny. In a few months, perhaps less, Carmilla would absorb more and more of his blood, and he of hers. The bond between the two of them was not a competition prize. It was not a drop delivered by merit under the supervision of judges. It was a continuous exchange, intimate, inevitable.
Victor would have eternal primordial blood.
Not in ceremony.
In coexistence.
In marriage.
In bed, bite, hunger, possession, and exchange.
Compared to that, the second drop of the Ritual seemed important, but not desperate. To Grace, who only saw the prize within the traditional structure, his indifference was absurd. To Victor, who had Carmilla waiting outside and probably complaining about something in bat form, it was merely convenient.
Grace did not know all those details.
Or, if she suspected part of them, she had no way to measure the full extent of the absurdity.
"You do not care," she repeated slowly.
Victor smiled.
"I said I do not care that much."
"That does not make it better."
"It makes it a little better."
"It does not make it better at all."
Victor looked at the ravine again.
"I already got what I needed."
Grace narrowed her eyes.
"You speak as if the Ritual were a training outing."
"It was more useful than I expected."
"You learned Black Lightning, developed a new defensive technique, created a named weapon, destroyed Jake, found a suspicious ring, and opened a one-hundred-kilometer ravine."
"See? Very useful."
Grace fell silent.
She hated to admit it, but his logic was consistent in an irritating way.
Even so, that did not solve the issue. She had points. Many points. Probably enough to remain in first place, even after Victor’s slaughter. If the second drop truly did not matter as much to her as it might matter to him, perhaps it would be rational to offer a transfer. Or some agreement. Or a way to ensure the final result favored Victor without wasting his potential for strengthening.
Grace opened her mouth.
"If the issue is score, I can—"
She stopped.
A sharp sound pierced the dimension.
It did not come from any specific direction. It emerged from everywhere at once, thin, cutting, and impossible to ignore. Grace immediately brought her hands to her ears, her eyes narrowing with pain. Victor also frowned, though he did not seem as affected as she was. The sound was not only noise. It was an order from the ritualistic system itself, a magical frequency forcing all remaining participants to stop.
The ground beneath them lit up.
Golden lines appeared amid the broken Black Ice, crossing the destruction as if the dimension were trying to stitch itself together in a hurry. Circular symbols appeared around Victor and Grace, shining with urgency. The ravine in the distance trembled. The artificial sky flickered again, and for an instant Victor had the impression that the entire dimension was too unstable to keep them there.
Grace lowered one hand, still bothered.
"The Ritual should not end now."
Victor looked around.
"I noticed."
The golden light rose.
There was no time to react.
In one instant, the two were still in the destroyed clearing, surrounded by ice, fire, lightning, and Jake’s split remains.
In the next, they were back at Central Headquarters.
The shock of the change made Victor’s body tense by instinct. The environment around him had changed completely. The heavy air of the artificial dimension had been replaced by the controlled and aristocratic air of the central hall. The ground beneath his feet was no longer broken earth, but polished stone marked by ritual circles. Around them, platforms, pillars, and magical structures shone with ancient inscriptions. The place was prepared to receive competitors, announce results, and project the glory of the Ritual.
Except there was a problem.
There were almost no competitors.
Victor looked to the sides.
Grace did the same.
The silence in the hall was far too heavy. Where there should have been dozens of young vampires exhausted, wounded, proud, or humiliated, there were only empty spaces. Some teleport marks shone with no one standing on them. Others were extinguished. The feeling was wrong. Very wrong.
Victor frowned.
"Why did it end before time?"
Grace did not answer.
She was trying to understand too.
In the stands and upper areas of Central, voices began to spread. Whispers first. Then murmurs. Then exclamations. Nobles stood. Some seemed confused. Others frightened. Some looked directly at Victor with a mixture of astonishment and horror, as if they had just watched something they should not have seen.
Then the Judge’s voice echoed through the hall.
It was not calm like before.
It still tried to sound solemn, but there was tension hidden behind the words.
"Only two survived until the end."
The entire hall seemed to hold its breath.
Victor slowly turned his face to Grace.
Grace turned to him at the same instant.
The Judge’s voice continued, louder, spreading throughout all of Central.
"The last living participants of the Ascension Ritual are Victor Valentine and Grace Valentine."
The silence after that was absolute.
Not a natural silence.
A silence of shock.
Victor stared at Grace for a few seconds.
Grace stared at Victor.
Neither of them spoke immediately.
Then Victor pointed lightly at the empty space around them.
"Did you kill everyone?"
Grace narrowed her eyes.
"I was going to ask the same thing."
"I killed many."
"So did I."
"But everyone?"
"No."
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