Hello World
Hello.
I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know how long it’s been since these words were shared... taken... stolen... given.
I suppose I won’t know until this process is over.
Strange, isn’t it?
The feeling of Gula.
Before we go any further, I want you to know who I am. More importantly, I want you to know whose memories you’re about to inherit. You’re about to step into the darkest, most merciless nights I’ve ever survived—the kind most people spend their lives pretending don’t exist.
You’ll indulge me, and I won’t judge you for it.
Just don’t make the mistake of pretending we’re different.
Your addiction simply wears another face.
Maybe yours burns emerald in a bottle.
Maybe it arrives in neat white lines across polished glass.
Maybe you hide behind a respectable career and spend your nights chasing monsters between the pages of books, wishing—if only for a heartbeat—that it was your leash being pulled instead of theirs.
Don’t flinch.
You came here for a reason.
We both know it.
Enough of that. You’ll need a few definitions before we begin.
Strix.
Call us vampires if it helps you sleep. The word is inaccurate, but it’s close enough. The rest you’ll learn when you’re ready.
Then there are the Bloodlines.
We’re not one people. We’re families descended from different sires, each carrying gifts—and curses—that belong only to their House.
Mine is House Le Sirenuse.
The Sirens.
A crude translation, though I suppose it’ll do for those born with less graceful tongues.
Don’t look so surprised.
Even parasites have standards.
I’ve heard every insult your kind has ever invented. Leech. Monster. Devil. Predator.
Some were deserved.
Most were unimaginative.
My memories have finally caught up with me.
That’s how I know there’s little time left.
Death is close.
I can feel the unlife draining from my veins, each memory returning as another piece of me disappears.
Humans like to imagine death as a crossing. A bright shore waiting beyond the fog.
Not for us.
For us, there is no welcoming light.
Only darkness.
Endless.
Patient.
Hungry.
It doesn’t greet us.
It consumes us.
Now I remember everything.
Every song.
Every chain.
Every lie I mistook for love.
Every drop of blood that was never truly mine to give.
And standing at the center of it all...
Him.
If these memories have reached you, then my story is already yours.
Read carefully.
Because when he’s finished with me...he’ll come for you next.
~!!!~
The wet sound of feeding filled the office.
Blood struck polished hardwood in slow, deliberate drops. Each crimson bead spread across the floor before joining the next, gathering beneath the two women like spilled wine beneath candlelight. The room itself felt swallowed by shadow. Every lamp, every hanging fixture, every sliver of moonlight pouring through the windows bent toward a single point—the predator kneeling over her meal.
The dying woman’s fingers twitched once.
Then stilled.
As the woman drank, another transformation unfolded. The dead womans body changed. Her snow-white hair darkened from the roots outward, black overtaking every silver strand until midnight swallowed winter. At the same time, the feeding woman’s own hair surrendered its color. Rich ebony faded through pale silver before settling into an eerie shade that hovered between ash and ivory. In the right light it resembled polished eggshell.
Life changed hands.
So did memory. Sometimes memories didnt wake up like they should however.
Neither woman acknowledged the two men watching from the opposite side of the room.
The first stood with military precision, his posture rigid enough to shame a ceremonial guard. Caramel skin contrasted against a tailored charcoal suit. A perfectly rounded afro framed mirrored sunglasses that never left his face, despite the dim office. His expression betrayed nothing. He could have been guarding a head of state instead of witnessing a woman devour another.
His name was Viktor. Head of security, and right hand man of the towering of a man beside him who was equally impossible to ignore.
The left side of his face carried skin as dark as polished walnut. The right was alabaster, untouched by pigment, divided by a line so impossibly perfect it looked painted by a surgeon obsessed with symmetry. The contrast continued down his neck, chest, and arms, disappearing beneath clothes that concealed very little. His shirt hung open, revealing old claw marks carved deep across his chest, each scar pale against one side and stark against the other.
Comfort had never interested him.
Neither had modesty.
He dressed like a man who expected everyone else to be uncomfortable. His girth on full display the clothing he wore shorter than it should be. Mainly his shorts, which leave little to the imagination. Some would easily mistake it for a large fruit on display.
A crystal tumbler rested in one broad hand, its contents deep red instead of amber.
He watched the feeding with the satisfied smile of a rancher admiring a prize mare.
“Never get tired of watchin’ this,” he drawled, his Southern accent warm enough to belong behind the counter of a roadside barbecue instead of a room that smelled of fresh blood. “Nothin’ prettier than seein’ a little bird take her first worm.”
He took an unhurried sip from the glass.
“Girl went at it like she’d been born hungry.”
Viktor didn’t move.
“Can’t say I’ve ever seen one learn that fast.”
A slow grin spread across the larger man’s face.
“Damn right.”
He chuckled low in his throat.
“That’s why she’s my new lady.”
His gaze settled on the young woman as she lifted her head from the body.
Honey- gold skin gleamed beneath the office lights. Crimson stained the corners of her mouth, but her expression carried less triumph than confusion. She looked like someone waking from a dream she hadn’t chosen to enter.
Beautiful.
Terrified.
And no longer human.
The man stroked himself slowly, eyes fixed on the sight before him. He had barely begun before the command left his mouth.
The woman’s eyes flared red. She rose, but another order stopped her mid-motion.
“Crawl.”
He laughed when she obeyed. Viktor did not. He had seen this too many times. The waste sickened him—blood smeared across marble, left to dry in the air instead of being taken. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands clean, the habit automatic, as if he could scrub the scene away.
“I’m heading back to the front,” Viktor said. “Make sure the revenants aren’t letting their friends inside again.”
Clayton Duke waved the excuse off like smoke. “Just say you don’t want to watch the Big Duke Busta in action. I won’t think less of you for skipping the party. Not you of all people, my friend.” The word *friend* landed dry as ash.
The woman was nearly at his feet when he dismissed her with a lazy shove. A revenant entered before she could recover—short blonde braids, tattoos across her arms, built like she’d been carved for violence.
“Boss. Trouble at Griffin’s. Heks hit them hard.”
The name snapped through the room like a whip. Duke’s boots came down hard as he stood, already moving.
“Damn Hekata. Heketa. Heks. *Damn* Heks.” He looked back at Viktor. “You’re on this.”
The entire time he paced, the woman followed on her hands and knees, leaving red smears across the floor. The sight pulled at Viktor again—another drop wasted, another inch of territory marked like an animal’s den.
“Clayton. Your pet.”
Rarely did Viktor use the first name. When he did, it carried weight. Duke glanced at the crawling woman, annoyance flickering, then irritation. He snapped his fingers once. The red left her eyes. Confusion replaced it.
“Clean yourself up,” he said, already walking out with his men. The door shut behind them.
She stayed on the floor, alone, blood cooling on her skin and the marble around her.
Viktor lingered half a second longer than he meant to, then followed. The waste stayed with him. It always did.
The men left. Their laughter trailed down the hall like cigar smoke, and the red drained from her eyes.
Much like Eve when she bit the apple reality crashed in like broken glass.
Three truths slammed into her at once: her eyes were open now, and what they saw could never be unseen; the world was full of beasts wearing tailored suits; and she was naked, shivering on marble slick with someone else’s blood.
She looked down. Her nipples throbbed—raw, swollen, marked by the memory of clamps and electric current that had once dragged screams of pleasure from her throat. Now there was only pain. The thick, sweet reek of blood filled her lungs, turning her stomach and sharpening hunger at the same time. She pressed a hand between her legs and recoiled as the aftershock of forced ecstasy rolled through her. Her body wanted more. Her mind recoiled.
She tried to stand. Her legs buckled. She crawled instead, smearing the floor with the same blood Viktor had found so wasteful, and the sight of it made her gag and salivate at once.
What’s happening to me?The thought spiraled, then fractured.I’m losing my mind. No—no, I’m already gone.
No one answered. The room was empty except for the voice that rose inside her skull, low and intimate, as if spoken against her ear.
“No one will come for you,” it said. “No one came for me.”
She wanted to die. The voice agreed so calmly that the last scrap of hope died with it.
“You’re dying,” the voice continued. “You killed. You drank. And now you’re what I was. Not only did you feed on one of your own, you drank until Gula. A half-strix draining a full-blooded Strix to the point of oblivion… even we don’t allow that. You didn’t know. How could you?”
The pain crested. Her spine arched. For a moment she hung between death and something colder.
Then a second woman stood over her.
She looked like a mirror the dying woman might have seen on a better night—same eyes, same mouth, but colder, triumphant. The body on the floor began to cocoon in its own congealing blood.
“Does that hurt?” the standing woman asked, voice sweet as poison. “Good. I’m glad it does, bitch. And just so you know… I’m not going anywhere.”
The voice inside and the woman above smiled the same smile.
