My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Chapter 762: A Realm Without Sun

Clone One stood still on the flat black plain with his feet planted on the icy stone. He pulled his Primordial Essence back into his body and locked his presence all the way down. Anyone who walked past him with their eyes closed would feel nothing but cold, empty rock.

The pale leader was fast, but he was panicked. And in such panic, he had left clues.

Even on stone as hard and slick as black glass, his sprint had left faint scuffs where his boots scraped the surface. Clone One could smell his fear too. Above, the four pale moons threw long, overlapping shadows across the plain, and every few seconds, far ahead, one of those shadows flickered as the runner cut through the silver light.

Clone One took a step forward. His boots made no sound on the rock.

He followed the runner’s path from a quarter of a mile behind, moving across the dark plain like a ghost and keeping to the shadows. Ahead, the leader never slowed down. Every hundred yards, he twisted his head around and scanned the empty dark behind him with his crimson eyes.

The plain was flat and bare. The leader looked straight through the silver light, saw nothing moving anywhere, and ran even faster.

Clone One kept the distance steady and let him lead the way.

After two miles, the flat ground began to rise. A low ridge of jagged black rock cut across the horizon and climbed toward a high crest overlooking a wide, sunken basin. The leader scrambled up the slope, his fingers digging into the stone, and disappeared over the top.

Clone One glided up the slope a few seconds later and stopped just below the ridge line. He looked over the edge.

***

A massive estate sat in the center of the dark basin below.

It was an enormous manor of black cut stone, with tall spires that rose into the dark sky like needles. High walls of polished black stone surrounded the whole estate, lined along the top with cold silver ironwork. The place looked ancient and grand, like it had belonged to the same powerful family for thousands of years.

Tall iron gates stood closed at the entrance to the outer courtyard.

The leader reached the gate and fell against the black iron bars. Two guards stepped out from the shadow of the gatehouse. Like him, they had bloodless pale skin, sharp handsome faces, and slightly pointed ears under neat black hair. Their armor of dark leather and black metal gleamed under the four moons.

The leader spoke in a rush, his hands shaking as he pointed back toward the plain.

Clone One listened. Thanks to his Universal Linguistics, every word that carried up the ridge on the still air was perfectly clear.

"The beast is dead," the leader said in a cracked voice. "The others are dead too. A human did it. He knows where the door is."

The guards’ cold faces stayed calm, but their eyes sharpened. They exchanged one look, then swung the heavy iron gate open just enough for the leader to slip through. The moment he was inside, they slammed it shut and bolted it.

Clack!

From the ridge, Clone One watched the inner courtyard. Servants moved along the covered walkways with slow, careful steps, their heads down and their mouths shut. Everyone inside those walls moved with the stiff, frightened care of people who served someone who could end their lives with a flick of a finger.

Clone One stayed behind the rocks.

He had no idea what was waiting inside that manor. Whoever owned it had kept a secret door between worlds hidden for who knew how long. Charging through the front gate without knowing what was in there would be stupid.

He took a slow breath and fixed the shape of the spires, the curve of the walls, and the spot where the gatehouse stood firmly in his memory.

’He works for whoever owns that place,’ Clone One thought. ’I’ll come back later.’

He turned his back on the estate, slipped down off the ridge, and headed into the valley toward the dark stone buildings scattered across the far side of the basin.

***

Clone One walked through the outskirts of the settlement with soft, steady steps.

The quiet in this world wasn’t natural. Back on Earth, even the dead of night had the rustle of leaves and the sound of distant traffic. In the magic universe, the forests had wind and the calls of wandering monsters.

Here, there was nothing at all.

The air was cold and heavy and completely still. The sky was empty of birds, and no water ran through the stone gutters. High above, the four pale moons hung frozen in the starless dark and bathed the black streets in a milky glow.

The buildings were made of the same dark stone as the manor, with flat, elegant fronts and no windows on the lower floors. Narrow, straight roads cut through the settlement in neat lines.

People moved through the streets, but nobody gathered and nobody talked.

The pale beings walked the paved paths with graceful, easy strides. Their skin was as pale as marble and untouched by any sun, and their faces were cold and perfect. Not one of them had a single mark or blemish. They wore fine, dark coats of wool and silk, with their hands in their pockets or resting on the handles of fancy daggers. When two of them passed each other, they gave the smallest nod and moved on.

Then Clone One saw the others.

A short line of humans walked down the other side of the street, carrying heavy baskets full of black root vegetables.

They were thin and hollow-cheeked, and their clothes were rough gray sacks tied at the waist with twine. They walked with their heads bowed and their shoulders hunched, their eyes fixed on the stones under their feet. None of them looked up, not at the pale beings and not at each other.

A pale master walked behind them with his hands clasped behind his back and a face that showed nothing at all. The humans moved with the dull obedience of people who had never known anything else.

They were slaves.

***

Clone One stepped into the deep shadow of an arched doorway and watched the quiet street.

Near the corner of a square, a pale man in a long black velvet coat stopped walking. He stood in front of a two-story house, and his crimson eyes moved to a young human woman standing beside him.

She was thin, barely twenty, with light brown hair pulled back in a simple knot. Her hands were red from the cold.

The pale man took two steps toward her. His boots made no sound on the stones.

"Kneel," he said with a low, cultured voice. There was no anger in it.

The young woman without a word, turned around, and sank onto her knees on the cold stone. She tilted her head to the right and pulled the collar of her rough tunic down to bare the left side of her neck.

The pale man stepped behind her. He reached out with one long, elegant hand and took her chin between his fingers. It looked almost gentle.

He leaned down over her shoulder. His lips pulled back from two long, needle-sharp fangs that caught the silver moonlight.

Then he bit into the side of her neck.

She gasped once, and her back arched a little from the pain, but she didn’t pull away. Her fingers gripped the hem of her skirt until her knuckles turned white, and she stayed completely still. She was used to this. She had done it a thousand times before.

The pale man closed his eyes, and his throat moved as he drank slowly from her vein. The smell of fresh blood drifted across the quiet square.

After half a minute, he pulled his mouth away and wiped a drop of red from his lower lip with the back of a black silk glove. His face was completely calm. He had taken what he wanted and left her alive, with two small wounds weeping on her neck.

"Go inside," the man said.

She bowed until her forehead touched the stone. "Yes, my lord."

She got to her feet on shaky legs, picked up her broom, and slipped through the wooden door, and the bolt slid shut behind her. The pale man smoothed the front of his velvet coat and walked on down the silent street as if nothing had happened.

***

In the shadow of the doorway, Clone One leaned back against the stone wall and let out a slow breath.

Everything made sense now. The fangs and the missing heartbeat. The wounds that healed. The blood-red portal, and a dead world locked in endless night under four moons.

They were vampires.

There was no other word for them. He had stepped through a hidden door in space and landed in the middle of a world ruled by vampires.

Clone One folded his arms across his chest as Liam’s memories came flooding in.

Liam had grown up on Earth reading fantasy novels and watching late-night horror movies, and the stories were all in his head. Wooden stakes through the heart. Coffins full of dirt. Garlic. And never being able to enter a home without being invited in.

’I wonder how much of that is real,’ he thought. ’Do they really sleep in boxes of dirt? Would that guy have burned to ash if the sun came up, or did some writer just make that up to sell books?’

He looked down the street where the man in the velvet coat had gone.

He didn’t know the answers, and he wasn’t in any hurry to leave. Back in the magic universe, life had gotten predictable. The monsters in the canyons were strong, but in the end they were only beasts.

This world had walls and great houses, old families, and a whole race of pale, undying hunters who believed they ruled the dark.

It was the best kind of mystery.

Clone One pushed off the wall, stepped out of the shadow, and walked deeper into the silent streets under the light of the four moons, untill he was stopped by two individuals.