Chapter 126: Birth - Leah
The moment the levitation carriage bursts through the castle's upper floor, the right wing clips the chimney.
Metal tears with a sound like fingernails scraping iron. The carriage tumbles in midair. I grip the control lever until my knuckles go white. Kael braces himself against the back seat to keep from being thrown out.
"Stabilize!" he shouts.
"I'm trying!"
The airflow from the carriage base sputters for about three seconds, then rebalances. We hover over the city, roughly five hundred meters up. Below, the grid-like streets are packed with vehicles crawling through the morning light.
The smoke column ahead keeps rising. Black—not from the platform exit, but from underground ventilation shafts. A dozen manhole covers blow off at once, crashing onto the road with metallic clangs.
"It's coming out," Kael says.
I push the control lever to max. The carriage accelerates toward the smoke column.
Wind pours through the shattered window, carrying a stench—burnt rubber and something more metallic-sweet, like blood heated to boiling. Side A's Shadow energy oxidizing in Side B's atmosphere makes a completely different smell from the vampire world.
The platform entrance is an abandoned subway station. We crash through a hole in the ceiling, the airflow kicking up dust and debris from the floor.
The carriage lands. The chassis slams against the track, sparks flying.
I kick the warped cabin door open and jump down, gun in hand. Kael follows right behind, holding a UV scalpel from Dr. Chen's lab—plastic handle, quartz glass blade, fifteen centimeters long.
Center of the platform.
The giant bat lies dead on the ground. Its belly torn open from the inside, the wound edges dissolved rather than bitten, like something melted through the womb with acid.
And beside the giant bat's corpse—
Dr. Chen is standing there.
He's taken off his white coat. Underneath is some kind of tight combat suit, black, with a white marking on the surface: WX-001.
At his feet is a pool of silver liquid. Not blood—some kind of fluid flowing from the giant bat's wound, slowly writhing, pooling together.
"You're too late," Dr. Chen says. He doesn't turn around, his voice echoing through the platform. "It's already been born."
The pooling silver liquid starts to solidify. Not into a solid mass—forming into something skeletal. First the spine, vertebrae clicking together one by one, like someone stacking blocks. Then the ribs. Then the limbs.
Incredibly fast. Within thirty seconds, the skeleton takes shape.
Then muscle covers it. Not red muscle—dark red, like clotted blood. Skin forms last, translucent, showing the vessels beneath—the fluid flowing inside is black and silver mixed together.
Its face—
Has three.
One in front, one on the left, one on the right. Each one different: the front looks like Kael, the left looks like Christina, the right looks like... the Perfect Him.
All three faces open their eyes at once.
The front has ice-blue vertical pupils. The left has silver round pupils. The right is pure black, no whites at all.
It lets out a cry.
Not a baby's cry—some ultrasonic hybrid, like hundreds of radios tuned to the same dead frequency. All the glass on the platform shatters, fragments raining down like a storm.
I raise my gun.
UV rounds hit its chest.
The round sinks half an inch, then pops back out, falling to the ground. The wound heals in a split second, skin smooth as new.
"UV doesn't work on the finished product," Dr. Chen says. "It only works on semi-finished products and host bodies. Now it's fused Side A's Shadow core with Side B's stem cells, perfectly adapted to the physical laws of both worlds."
He turns to face us. His expression isn't triumph—it's some kind of... academic satisfaction. Like an experiment finally working out.
"Welcome to witness history," he says. "The first cross-world organism. Its blood can give White Box members eternal life. Its bones can open permanent passages. Its consciousness—"
The monster's middle head turns toward us. The ice-blue vertical pupils lock onto Kael.
"—is dominated by your fragment," the doctor says. "So the first thing it wants to eat... is you. Prince de Noct. The complete Gatekeeper bloodline."
The monster moves.
Its movement isn't like a beast's—more like liquid. Its body slides across the ground, impossibly fast for something with that much mass. It glides over the tracks, over the debris, straight at Kael.
Kael dodges.
Not Shadow Glide—pure, human-style rolling. The monster's claws graze his shoulder, tearing through coat and skin, blood spraying out.
I fire three rounds in quick succession. Regular rounds hit the monster's side head. Bullets pierce the skin, but black threads immediately stitch the wound shut.
"It's useless!" Dr. Chen backs toward the control room at the platform's edge. "Your weapons can't hurt it! It is a god!"
The monster lunges at Kael again. Kael blocks with the UV scalpel. The blade slices across the monster's forearm, dark red muscle splitting to reveal the black core inside.
The monster screams for the first time.
But the wound heals. Black threads surge from the core, reweaving the muscle. Just slightly slower than before.
"The core!" I shout. "Go for the black core!"
Kael sees it too. He changes tactics—no more dodging, he charges straight at the monster, scalpel aimed at its chest—below the front face, where the skin is thinnest, the black core's glow visible underneath.
The monster swipes at him with a claw.
Kael doesn't stop. He takes the hit head-on, the sound of ribs cracking clearly audible, while the scalpel pierces the core.
Black liquid gushes out.
The monster howls, stumbles back, all three faces twisting in pain. It clutches its chest with both claws, black threads frantically patching the wound.
Kael collapses on the ground, scalpel still in hand, black fluid dripping from the blade. His chest is caved in, breathing coming with a wet bubbling sound—punctured lung.
"Kael!"
I run over, pull him up. Dark red blood wells at the corner of his mouth, but he's smiling.
"It works..." he breathes, barely audible. "The core... fears the blade..."
The monster isn't dead. It's panting three meters away, all three faces glaring at us, eyes full of hate.
But it doesn't keep attacking.
It turns and runs toward the other end of the platform. Not fleeing—sprinting. Its target isn't killing us, but... somewhere else.
"Where's it going?" I ask.
Dr. Chen stands in the control room, pressing a button. His voice comes through the platform's speakers:
"To the castle. The anchor point. It's hungry, it needs energy. The Gatekeeper's blood can transform it from larva to adult. Once it devours that little girl—"
He pauses.
"—you'll have nothing left that can stop it."
The monster smashes through the platform wall and disappears into the underground tunnel. Dust and rubble fall, hiding its trail.
I lift Kael into my arms. He's terrifyingly light, like an empty shell.
"We're going back to the castle," I say.
"No..." he grips my wrist, weakly. "First... treat the wound... or I won't make it..."
I tear open his shirt. The claw wound on his chest is down to the bone, the puncture in his lung bubbling with blood. I press my hand against the wound, blood seeping through my fingers.
"What do I do?" I ask. "No healing spells! Side B doesn't have a bloodline network!"
"Car..." he points toward the levitation carriage. "Adrian... put... first aid kit on board..."
I drag him into the carriage. Under the pilot's seat, I find a metal case. Inside is human first aid gear: bandages, hemostatic powder, suture needle and thread, plus a vial of epinephrine.
I jab the epinephrine into his thigh.
His heartbeat speeds up, pupils contract. He gasps like a drowning man breaking the surface.
"Go..." he says. "To the castle..."
I start the carriage.
The platform shrinks behind us. Dr. Chen doesn't chase. He just stands in the control room, watching us leave, like watching lab specimens run back to their cage.
The carriage bursts out of the subway station, climbing into the sky.
But I see more vehicles gathering on the ground below. Black SUVs, tinted windows, white markings on the sides—a box with a cross inside.
Sweeper backup.
And not just Sweepers. Military vehicles. Armored trucks.
White Box isn't a small operation. It has human military backing.
The carriage flies toward the castle. Kael leans against my shoulder, breathing shallow and rapid.
"Leah..." he says.
"Don't talk."
"If... I die..."
"You're not going to die."
"If..." he insists. "Find Xiao Qi... tell her... the fourth path in the bell... isn't Door-change... it's..."
He doesn't finish.
His head drops.