Chapter 118 | The Disinfection Lamp | Leah
The machine hummed like an angry bee.
I watched them strap Kael into the metal chair. Not leather straps—some kind of conductive composite material, binding his wrists, ankles, chest. His dark red wings were forced open and fixed to brackets on either side, like a painting nailed to a cross.
"This is wrong," I said. "This looks like an execution."
"Looks like one," Adrian said, fingers tapping on the console. "But it's actually surgery. High-risk surgery."
The man in the white coat—he'd introduced himself as Dr. Chen—was adjusting the angle of the UV-C tubes. Ultraviolet-C wavelength laser. Xiao Qi had told me this was humanity's ultimate weapon against Night Walkers. And now they were using it to treat a prince.
"The essence fragments are rejecting each other." Adrian's voice came through the room's speakers like a god passing judgment. "UV-C can interrupt a vampire's cellular links, temporarily deactivating the fragments. Then we use external energy—"
She pressed another button.
A ring of dark red runes lit up beneath the chair. Not human technology—vampire ancient arrays. A patchwork hybrid of tech and magic.
"—to weld the fragments back together."
"Weld?" I rushed to the console. "He's not metal! You're treating him like iron?"
"No," Adrian said, showing something close to patience for the first time. "He's glass. Shattered into three pieces. We need to melt the edges and let them fuse back together. It hurts. A lot. But if we don't—"
She pointed at the screen showing Side A's feed.
The Moon-Eater had already swallowed a third of the northern border. It was now twice its original size, a mass of endlessly expanding black cloud.
"—pain is better than death."
Dr. Chen put on his goggles, picked up a remote, and looked at Adrian.
"Begin?"
Adrian looked at me.
"You have ten seconds," she said. "To say one last thing to him. Not a goodbye. Just... something to keep him going."
I walked to the chair.
Kael's eyes were open. His ice-blue vertical pupils caught strange light from the warming UV lamps. His lips were dry, cracked with traces of blood.
"Leah," he said.
"Don't talk." I took his hand. The gap between the straps was narrow, but I squeezed my fingers through. "Save your strength."
"I have to." He said. "If this fails—"
"It won't."
"If," he insisted. "Listen to me. Go find Xiao Qi. She's Side A's last hope. Tell her—"
His fingers tightened around mine.
"—tell her that changing the Door isn't the only way. There's a fourth path. She knows. It's in her bells."
I froze.
Bells? Xiao Qi's bells had been destroyed, hadn't they?
But Kael didn't explain. The hum of the tubes climbed to its peak.
"Time's up," Adrian said.
Dr. Chen pressed the button.
Light.
Not ordinary light. Purple, blinding, carrying some high-frequency vibration—sharp as a blade. It hit Kael's wings.
He screamed.
Not a human scream. Something older, wrenched from somewhere deep in the soul—a wail. His wings smoked under the UV light, feathers curling, charring, dropping away one by one. The dark red skin beneath lit up like ignited fuses, every blood vessel glowing.
"Stop—!" I lunged for the console.
Adrian's small hand caught me. Her grip was impossibly strong for a child.
"Phase one is normal!" she shouted. "The essence fragments are loosening! Look!"
I looked at the screen.
The energy scan showed Kael's body. Three clusters of dark red light—the fragments—had been locked apart, each one pushing the others away. Now, under the UV radiation, their edges were beginning to soften, like wax held close to a flame.
But Kael—
His head was thrown back, the veins in his neck standing out. His scream had collapsed into something continuous and airless—a hiss. His vertical pupils rolled back, leaving only white.
"He can't take it!" I grabbed Adrian's shoulders. "You're going to kill him!"
"Thirty more seconds!" Adrian shouted. "Just thirty seconds!"
I broke free.
I threw myself at the chair.
Dr. Chen tried to stop me, but my wings—even suppressed, even shedding—could still deliver force. I knocked him aside and flung myself onto Kael, using my body to shield him from the UV lamp.
The light hit my back.
Pain.
Not burning—something deeper. Like someone dragging a fine-toothed saw back and forth along my spine. The Progenitor bloodline reacted to the human world's UV, silver light bursting from beneath my skin, tangling with the purple beam.
The console shrieked an alarm.
"Energy overload!" Dr. Chen screamed. "The machine's going to blow—!"
Adrian slammed the console.
The lamp went out.
The room plunged into darkness. Only the lingering silver and dark red light on Kael and me remained, like two dying embers.
I lay across him. Smoke rose from my back, most of my feathers gone, pale skin showing through. But I was alive. He was alive too.
His eyes—the rolled-back whites slowly descended, pupils refocusing.
"...Idiot," he breathed.
"You're the idiot," I said. Tears fell on his face. "Who told you to go find Xiao Qi? Who told you to say goodbyes? Who told you to—"
I couldn't finish.
Because the console lit up again.
Not Adrian turning it on. Automatic.
A red warning flashed on the screen. Not Side A's feed. Side B's. City map. The castle's location. And—
a red dot, closing in.
Adrian's face changed. For the first time, cracks appeared in that eternally calm child's expression.
"Night Walkers," she said. "They're here."
"Night Walkers?" I looked up.
"Side B's vampires." Adrian worked the console frantically. "Not your purebloods. Degenerate species. Pushed to the margins by human technology, driven underground by UV. They hate Gatekeepers. They hate us—"
She looked at me.
"—they hate all 'upper races' from Side A."
Glass shattered at the window.
Not wind. Something solid—
bullets?
No. Claws.
Five black talons punched through the bulletproof glass, tearing it like paper. Glass rained down. A dark shape leaped through the window.
Not human. More beast—hunched back, arms too long, mouth full of fangs, vertical pupils a murky yellow. It wore rags, but the body beneath was covered in gray scales.
A Night Walker.
It sniffed the air. Yellow pupils locked onto Kael.
"Prince..." Its voice like sandpaper on rust. "Side A's... Prince..."
It lunged.
Faster than I'd imagined. Even blocking Kael, its claws still raked my shoulder. Blood poured out—crimson, human blood, because the Progenitor bloodline had changed after the UV exposure.
The Night Walker froze.
It looked down at the blood on my shoulder. Sniffed.
Then its eyes—those murky yellow pupils—cleared for just an instant.
"This blood..." it whispered. "It's..."
It didn't finish.
Because another UV beam shot from Dr. Chen's hand—a portable one, like a flashlight. The beam hit the Night Walker's chest. It screamed, tumbled backward out the window, and vanished into the night.
But its claw marks remained on the window frame.
And the echo of what it had said.
"...Progenitor..."
Adrian walked to the window, face pale.
"Not just one," she said. "It called for backup."
She turned to us.
"The Door-changing ritual has to be sped up. If a Night Walker swarm attacks, this castle won't last an hour. And—"
She pointed at the wound on my shoulder.
"Your blood is exposed. They know what you are. Side A's Progenitor bloodline is, on Side B—"
She paused.
"—the only key for them to evolve into purebloods."