Supreme Hunter of Beautiful Souls

Chapter 591: For one night, let the world wait.

The room Queen Liza had given them seemed less like guest quarters and more like a royal wing temporarily disguised as diplomatic courtesy. It was too spacious, too silent, too luxurious. The walls were made of polished black stone, crossed by red veins that glowed softly like blood beneath marble. Heavy curtains covered the tall windows, but let a sliver of the vampiric capital’s eternal night escape through. Outside, distant towers shone with crimson lanterns, and the shadows of nocturnal birds crossed the dark sky.

The bed at the center of the room was enormous, with columns carved from dark wood and black silk sheets. There were sofas, a table with fruit, wine, water, tea, blank parchments, ink, communication crystals, and even a small silver bell to call servants. Naturally, Kael had not touched any of it.

He was lying in the middle of the bed, still dressed, with his red hair spread over the pillow and his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Sylphie lay on her side beside him, propped on one elbow, watching him in silence. Irelia occupied a nearby armchair, one leg crossed over the other, reading a partial copy of the notes Amelia had made. Amelia was seated at the table, organizing documents, names, and possibilities with a calm only someone very accustomed to chaos could maintain.

For several minutes, no one said anything.

Then Kael sighed.

"What do I do now?"

The question did not come with anger. Nor with despair. It came low, tired, almost irritated that it existed. As if he had spent his entire life being pushed from one disaster to another, and now the universe had decided to hand him not only a conspiracy, but an ancestral conspiracy embedded in the foundation of an entire kingdom.

Sylphie touched his chest with the tips of her fingers.

"You breathe first."

Kael kept looking at the ceiling.

"I am breathing."

"Not the right way."

"There is a wrong way to breathe now?"

"When it is you, yes."

Irelia raised her eyes from the paper.

"She is right."

Amelia, without stopping writing, added:

"You tend to turn breathing into preparation for combat."

Kael slowly turned his face toward her.

"How do you know that without looking?"

"You sigh like someone about to threaten an institution."

Sylphie smiled faintly.

"She is also right."

Kael returned his gaze to the ceiling.

"Great. I am surrounded by experts on me."

"Finally you noticed," Irelia said.

The small exchange brought a little lightness to the room, but it did not last long. The weight of the meeting was still there. The ancient signature. The Order of the First Blood. Vlad not merely as a victim, but as an initial accomplice. The vampiric hunger. Liza’s request. The possibility of involving Eleonor, Elion, and even Yggdrasil in a project capable of altering the vampires’ relationship with their own nature.

Kael closed his eyes.

"That organization was in the ancient records of the royal lineage. Not as recent invaders. Not as opportunists who appeared after Vlad. They were already there. Perhaps from before most clans even knew how to write their own history."

Amelia set down the quill.

"Yes."

"That means the problem is larger than Liza imagined."

"Yes."

"And larger than Eleonor imagined."

"Probably."

"And, for some reason, I am in the middle of it."

Irelia folded the paper and placed it on her lap.

"You are not in the middle by accident, Kael."

He opened his eyes and looked at her.

Irelia held his gaze calmly.

"You brought Liza back. Saved Elizabeth. Interfered in the collapse of the Vampire Kingdom. Became King of Witches. You have access to Eleonor, Elion, Yggdrasil, and Sylphie. And, whether you like it or not, now you are one of the few people all sides need to listen to."

Kael was silent for an instant.

"Was that meant to comfort me?"

"No. It was meant to stop you from pretending you can walk away and leave this to someone else."

He let out a short laugh, without humor.

"I hate when you are precise."

"You hate it because it works."

Sylphie ran a hand through his hair, brushing a few red strands away from his face.

"You do not need to solve everything today."

Kael looked at her.

"No?"

"No."

"Are you sure? Because my experience says that, when I ignore a problem for more than six hours, it grows teeth, wings, or a beautiful queen."

Irelia coughed to hide a laugh.

Amelia looked at him serenely.

"In this case, the beautiful queen is already part of the problem."

Sylphie immediately turned her face toward Amelia.

"See?"

Kael closed his eyes.

"That was not the point."

"But it was said."

"Amelia, please do not feed this."

Amelia picked up the cup of tea.

"I am merely being documentarily precise."

"You conspire even in jealousy."

Sylphie leaned over him, resting her chin on Kael’s chest.

"And we will continue."

"Should that worry me?"

"A little."

Kael looked at her for a few seconds. Sylphie’s expression was teasing, but her gaze was serious. She was using jealousy as a way to keep him anchored to the room, to the bed, to the present. A small, absurd anchor against his tendency to get up and carry the world alone.

He realized it.

And, because of that, he did not complain again.

Amelia rose from the table with several sheets in her hands and walked to the bed. She sat on the edge, near Kael’s feet, and arranged the papers on her own lap.

"We can divide this into parts."

Kael turned his gaze to her.

"Are you going to turn my existential crisis into topics?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

"It was not a request."

Irelia rose from the armchair and came to the bed as well, sitting on the other side. Now Kael was surrounded. Sylphie on his chest, Amelia at his feet, Irelia at his side. He looked around, understood the situation, and sighed.

"Did you plan this?"

"No," Irelia said.

"Yes," Sylphie said at the same time.

Amelia smiled.

"Imperfect coordination, but satisfactory result."

Kael murmured:

"I am trapped in a war meeting inside a bed."

"Better than alone in the corridor planning to invade vampiric archives," Irelia said.

He went quiet.

Sylphie raised an eyebrow.

"You were thinking that?"

"No."

"Kael."

"I was evaluating options."

Amelia turned a page.

"Invading vampiric archives without authorization appears under which category?"

"Bad option."

"Excellent. We are making progress."

Irelia pointed to the papers.

"First part: Vlad. He needs to remain imprisoned in the Kingdom of Witches. That requires a message to Eleonor tonight."

Kael nodded slowly.

"She will agree to keep him imprisoned."

"Probably," Amelia said. "But she will want to know why. And if she learns Vlad was an accomplice, she will demand full access."

"She will have it."

"Second part," Irelia continued. "The Order of the First Blood. We need to send the ancient signature to Eleonor, but also to Elion. If the mark is neither vampiric nor ordinary witchcraft, perhaps it is dimensional, ancestral, or linked to some extinct lineage."

Kael went still for a second.

Sylphie noticed.

"What is it?"

"Extinct lineage," he murmured.

Amelia looked at him.

"Did you think of something?"

"Maybe." Kael slowly sat up in the bed, making Sylphie adjust beside him. "Yggdrasil spoke of ancient things. Elion too. Sectors of the multiverse, forgotten dimensions, entities that do not exactly belong to this world. If this Order is linked to something older than the modern vampiric foundation, perhaps they are not only a political organization."

Irelia grew serious.

"You think they may be linked to external entities?"

"I think that every time someone tries to control an entire race through ancestral blood, it is worth considering that the madness comes from somewhere worse."

The room went quiet.

Amelia wrote something down.

"Then third part: consult Yggdrasil."

Kael made a face.

"She will complain."

Sylphie smiled.

"She always complains about you."

"That does not mean I need to provide material."

"Kael, the signature was in ancient blood records. She may recognize the memory of the seal."

"I know."

"Then we will speak with her."

He looked at Sylphie.

"We?"

Sylphie nodded.

"I will speak first. She may yell less."

Irelia commented:

"Maybe."

Amelia, more honest, said:

"Or maybe she will yell in another direction."

Kael passed a hand over his face.

"Great."

Sylphie intertwined her fingers with his.

"Fourth part: the hunger."

Kael looked back at her.

Sylphie seemed more serious now, her green eyes reflecting the room’s red light. There was something new in her since she had left the Central Realm. A deep, ancient calm that sometimes emerged beneath the woman who laughed at him and got jealous of vampiric queens. It was in those moments that Kael remembered Sylphie had not merely waited for him. She had grown, changed, become something far greater.

"I can feel their hunger," she said.

The sentence made all three of them look at her.

Kael became more attentive.

"How?"

Sylphie looked toward the window covered by curtains.

"Not as thought. Not as a voice. But since we entered the kingdom, the land feels loaded with thirst. It is not natural like a dry forest. It is deeper. Like roots searching for something that does not exist in the soil."

Amelia went still.

Irelia asked carefully:

"All vampires?"

"Not individually. It is more like pressure in the environment. The entire society has shaped itself around that lack." Sylphie touched her own chest. "Liza is right. It is not only feeding. It is memory, instinct, mana, and bond. They are trying to live on substitutes that keep the body alive, but do not calm the essence."

Kael watched her for several seconds.

"And you think the sap idea may work?"

"I do not know." Sylphie was honest. "But I think a purely alchemical solution will not be enough. If they try to create false blood, they will probably create another dependency. Perhaps even a drug. It needs to be something living enough to dialogue with the hunger, but neutral enough not to enslave anyone."

Amelia wrote quickly.

"A substance without an owner."

Irelia added:

"Without lineage."

Kael murmured:

"Without command."

Sylphie nodded.

"Exactly."

For a moment, the idea remained suspended in the room. Not as an answer, but as a possibility. Small. Fragile. Dangerous. Still, a possibility.

Kael leaned back against the headboard again.

"So what do we do now?"

Amelia raised one finger.

"Message to Eleonor."

Irelia raised another.

"Copy of the seal to Elion."

Sylphie raised the third.

"Contact Yggdrasil."

Kael looked at the three of them.

"And me?"

The three answered together:

"Rest."

Kael stared at them.

"Did you rehearse that?"

"No," Amelia said.

"Yes," Irelia said.

Sylphie smiled.

"A little."

Kael let out a low, tired laugh and let his head fall against the headboard.

"I am the King of Witches, I am in a vampiric palace, dealing with an ancestral organization that infiltrated a royal lineage, and my main strategic order is to rest."

Sylphie moved closer and laid her head on his shoulder.

"Yes."

Irelia sat closer, taking one of his hands.

"Because tomorrow you will need to think without being exhausted."

Amelia collected the documents from his lap and placed them on the table.

"And because decisions made in the middle of the night, in foreign rooms, after traumatic revelations, are usually terrible."

Kael looked at her.

"Is that a diplomatic rule?"

"It is common sense."

"Then I do not like it."

"We know."

Sylphie pulled one of the covers and threw it over him with gentle authority.

"Kael."

He looked at her.

"For one night, let the world wait."

The sentence struck deeper than he expected.

Kael looked at Sylphie for a few seconds. Then he looked at Irelia, at Amelia, at the documents on the table, at the window covered by red curtains, and at the cold ceiling of the vampiric room.

The world would not truly wait.

He knew that.

The Order would continue to exist. Vlad would remain imprisoned. Liza would continue rebuilding a kingdom over cracks. Elizabeth would continue trying to understand who her father had been. Eleonor, Elion, and Yggdrasil would soon be dragged into a problem perhaps too ancient for any of them to find amusing.

But, for a few hours, perhaps he could pretend the world would wait.

Just a few hours.

Kael released the air slowly.

"Fine."

Sylphie blinked.

"Fine?"

"Fine. I will rest."

Irelia looked at Amelia.

Amelia seemed genuinely surprised.

"That was too easy."

Kael closed his eyes.

"Do not ruin it."

Sylphie smiled and settled against him. Irelia released his hand only to lie down on the other side, and Amelia, after hesitating for an instant, extinguished one of the red lights in the room and returned to the bed as well. Little by little, the enormous, cold space seemed smaller, filled with warmth, breath, and presence.

Kael was still thinking.

Of course he was.

But now there was a hand on his chest, another intertwined with his, and a third quiet presence close enough to remind him that thinking did not need to mean sinking alone.

Outside, the vampiric capital remained silent.

Inside the room, for the first time since entering that kingdom, Kael allowed his eyes to grow heavy.

And before falling asleep, he murmured:

"If Yggdrasil yells at me tomorrow, you three are going to explain."

Sylphie answered without opening her eyes:

"Coward."

Irelia laughed softly.

Amelia added:

"I will note that as the fifth part of the plan."

Kael smiled against the pillow.

And finally rested.