Chapter 248: The Future That Died (Part.I)

Carmilla, Scarlet, Serafall, and Chysis were seated on one side of the coffee table in the living room.

Victor sat alone on the other.

Chysis had been called shortly after the conversation in the bedroom, and the change of setting had not been accidental. Victor did not want to tell them all of this while squeezed into a bed with three women practically refusing to let go of him. He needed to look at all of them, explain things in the right order, and, most importantly, keep the conversation from turning into chaos before he even reached the important part.

The result was a situation that looked strangely similar to an interrogation.

Serafall sat at the center of the sofa, leaning slightly forward with her elbows resting on her legs. Carmilla remained beside her with a serious expression, Scarlet was far quieter than usual, and Chysis kept her arms crossed while watching her grandson closely.

Victor looked at the four of them.

For a few seconds, no one spoke.

"First..." Victor took a deep breath, resting his forearms on his knees. "I want to apologize."

Serafall frowned.

Victor did not look away.

"Not because I did anything with the intention of hurting you." He ran a hand through his hair. "Actually, everything I did was precisely because I didn’t want anyone getting hurt because of my decisions."

Serafall tilted her head slightly.

"Victor, what exactly are you talking about?"

"This."

He let out a long sigh.

There was no reason to keep delaying anymore.

"I’ve already died once."

Silence.

None of them reacted immediately.

Scarlet blinked.

Serafall simply stared at her son.

Chysis opened her mouth.

"Victor, that—"

Carmilla placed a hand on her shoulder.

Chysis turned her head.

Carmilla did not look at her.

"Let him continue."

The Marshal remained quiet for several seconds before closing her mouth again.

Victor silently thanked her.

"I’m not talking about almost dying." He looked at all of them again. "I’m not talking about having my heart destroyed, regenerating afterward, or any supernatural shit like that."

Victor placed one hand over his own chest.

"I died."

His voice did not change.

"My life ended."

Serafall went completely still.

Victor took another deep breath.

"I was born a vampire, just like in this life. Son of Serafall Valentine, member of the Valentine bloodline, all the rest of it."

A small, humorless smile appeared on his face.

"Except I was born broken."

Scarlet frowned.

"Broken how?"

"Some genetic problem."

Victor shrugged.

"We never found out exactly what it was. My body was vampiric, but practically incapable of functioning like one."

Carmilla began paying even closer attention.

"My ability to absorb blood was almost nonexistent," Victor continued. "I drank it, but my body absorbed so little that it was almost useless. My body could never produce enough energy, never developed properly, and my regeneration was a joke."

He looked at his own hands.

"And I couldn’t just start eating normal food either."

Chysis understood immediately.

"Because your body was still vampiric."

"Exactly."

Victor nodded.

"So I had all the needs of a vampire and practically none of the advantages."

Serafall slowly lowered her eyes.

Victor noticed, but continued.

"I was weak."

He remained silent for a few seconds.

"No. Weak would still be generous."

Victor raised one hand.

"An ordinary healthy human could do things I couldn’t. Running for a few minutes could leave me bedridden. Sometimes I couldn’t even get up on my own after going days without absorbing enough blood."

Scarlet clenched her hands.

Victor smiled faintly.

"I was worse off than a disabled human."

"Victor..." Serafall murmured.

"I’m not saying this so you’ll pity me."

He looked at his mother.

"It’s simply what happened."

Serafall remained quiet.

"My first years of life were the closest thing to hell I can describe." Victor leaned back in the chair. "Doctors, treatments, transfusions, techniques, specialists, higher and higher quality blood... nothing worked properly."

Chysis narrowed her eyes.

"And me?"

Victor looked at her.

"You tried to help."

Chysis asked nothing else.

Victor continued.

"When the time for the Ascension Ritual came, I didn’t even participate."

Scarlet raised her face.

"You didn’t participate?"

"No."

"But in this life..."

"I know."

Victor smiled slightly.

"That’s one of the differences."

He clasped his hands together.

"Back then, entering the Ritual would have been suicide. I wouldn’t have had enough strength to survive the first stages, much less compete with anyone else. So I was simply removed from the list."

Serafall looked increasingly uncomfortable.

Victor noticed her fingers slowly tightening around the fabric of her clothes.

"The Ritual happened without me," he continued. "Jake entered."

Chysis’s expression immediately changed.

"And killed the others."

Victor nodded.

"All the major prodigies who were there."

Scarlet’s eyes widened slightly.

"All of them?"

"Practically."

Victor began listing it without much emotion.

"The generation that was supposed to become an important part of the Valentine Family’s future strength was massacred in a single night."

Chysis became serious.

"Jake really managed to do that?"

"He did."

She remained quiet.

"And Edgar?" Serafall asked.

Victor looked at her.

"He survived."

Chysis’s face hardened.

"Of course he did."

"Yes."

Victor let out a small bitter laugh.

"Today that seems fairly obvious."

Carmilla rested her chin on one hand.

"So in that life, Edgar remained inside the Valentine Family."

"He did."

"And you didn’t know he was a traitor."

"No."

Victor shook his head.

"I didn’t even have enough access to family affairs to discover something like that. I was basically a sick child everyone was trying to keep alive."

Serafall closed her eyes for a moment.

Victor saw it.

This time, he decided not to interrupt.

"Some time passed after the Ritual." His voice became lower. "And then the thing I spent this entire life trying to prevent happened."

The room seemed to grow even quieter.

Chysis leaned forward.

"What?"

Victor looked directly at her.

"The Valentine Family was destroyed."

Chysis did not move.

Neither did Serafall.

"Not completely," Victor added. "But enough."

He breathed through his nose.

"It was an attack on an absurd scale. Fast, brutal, and much better prepared than it should have been. The main headquarters fell, a large part of our structure was destroyed, and an enormous number of members died that night."

Chysis stared at him as though deciding whether she should interrupt.

She did not.

"I don’t know everything that happened."

Victor ran a hand over the back of his neck.

"That’s important. I was useless. I wasn’t on the battlefield, I didn’t attend meetings, and I had no access to military information. Everything I know about that incident came from the little I saw and things I heard afterward."

Serafall already seemed to know the next part would directly involve her.

Victor looked at his mother.

"You got me out of there."

Her eyes met his.

"That night?"

"Yes."

Victor nodded.

"You abandoned the Valentine Family."

Chysis quickly turned toward her daughter.

Serafall did not look at her.

Victor continued before any wrong interpretation could take root.

"Not because you didn’t care."

He smiled faintly.

"You did it because I wouldn’t have survived if you stayed."

Serafall swallowed.

"You carried me out of that place and never went back."

Victor lowered his gaze.

"We spent the next twenty years together."

Scarlet brought a hand to her mouth.

Carmilla remained still.

Chysis carefully asked:

"And the Family?"

Victor spent a few seconds thinking of the best answer.

"Survived."

Chysis let out the breath she had been holding.

"But very differently."

She immediately became tense again.

"I don’t know exactly what happened in the years immediately afterward. My mother kept me far away from everything."

Victor looked at Serafall.

"Years later, you mentioned that the vampires had begun reorganizing and that a new Queen was taking on an important role around ten years after the destruction."

Chysis frowned.

"New Queen?"

"I don’t know who she was."

Victor shook his head.

"I never cared enough at the time to ask."

For a second, Chysis looked as though she found that absurd.

Then she looked at Victor and understood.

A boy who spent his entire life trying not to die probably had little interest in vampire politics.

Victor looked at Serafall again.

"We were alone."

She looked pale.

"You lost almost everything."

Serafall’s expression finally cracked slightly.

Victor spoke more slowly.

"You started using your own blood essence to keep me alive."

"I did what?" she asked.

"Transferred small portions to me."

Serafall froze.

Carmilla closed her eyes for a moment, immediately understanding the gravity of it.

Victor continued:

"At first, it worked."

He looked at his hands.

"My body could make better use of your essence than normal blood. So you kept doing it."

Serafall did not need him to explain the rest.

Even so, Victor did.

"Every year, you became weaker."

She looked away.

"And I stayed alive."

Victor let out a short breath.

"If we can call that living."

Scarlet looked close to tears.

Victor looked at her and made a slight motion with his head, asking her not to interrupt.

"My condition kept getting worse anyway. You sacrificed power, essence, blood... everything."

His voice lost some of its firmness.

"But it wasn’t enough."

Serafall kept her eyes on the floor.

"After a few years, you began to change."

Victor chose his words carefully.

"You became quieter. More withdrawn. You stopped talking to almost everyone. There were days you wouldn’t even leave the room unless I needed you."

Serafall pressed her lips together.

"You became depressed."

No one spoke.

Victor stared at his mother for a few seconds.

"I knew it was because of me."

Serafall immediately raised her face.

"No."

Victor smiled.

"I know that now."

She went quiet.

"Back then, I didn’t."

That hit her harder.

Victor continued before she could respond.

"I was in my early twenties when my body finally gave up."

He took a deep breath.

"There was no battle."

There was no smile this time.

"No enemy."

Victor stared into nothing for a moment.

"I simply got weaker."

Scarlet lowered her eyes.

"One day I couldn’t get up anymore."

Carmilla’s hand slowly tightened around Scarlet’s shoulder.

"Then I started losing consciousness."

Victor swallowed.

"And then I died."

Serafall remained completely still.

Victor looked directly at her.

"In your arms."

The silence in the room became absolute.

Serafall did not blink.

Chysis had completely lost her usual posture.

Scarlet was gripping Carmilla’s hand tightly.

And Carmilla, although she looked the most controlled of the four, never took her eyes off Victor.

She was the one who finally spoke.

"Was that a vision of the future?"

Victor immediately shook his head.

"No."

Carmilla narrowed her eyes.

"Are you certain?"

"Absolutely."

Victor pointed at himself.

"If it had been a vision of a possible future, then this couldn’t exist."

Scarlet frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"My bloodline."

Victor opened one hand.

A small amount of blood appeared over his palm.

"If that had only been a vision of a possible future, I still would have been born with this bloodline dormant in that life."

Carmilla began to understand.

"But it never awakened."

"Never."

Victor closed his hand and the blood disappeared.

"I lived for decades and remained useless until I died."

He pointed at his chest.

"Now look at me."

Chysis remained silent.

"I awakened a bloodline no one can properly identify. My blood evolves, adapts, changes other people, my body withstands things it shouldn’t, and after twenty years in this life..."

Victor smiled faintly.

"I can enter a fight against several super vampires at once and actually expect to come out alive."

Carmilla slowly nodded.

"Then something changed before your birth."

"Or at the moment I returned."

Victor shrugged.

"But whatever the explanation is, that wasn’t a vision."

Serafall had been quiet for far too long.

Victor noticed when she finally raised her face.

Her eyes were fixed on him.

"Victor."

"Hmm?"

She hesitated.

For a few seconds, General Serafall Valentine, one of the most powerful vampires of her generation, seemed unable to formulate a simple question.

"Was I a good mother?"

Victor stared at her.

He had not expected that.

Serafall did not look away.

"In that life."

Victor smiled.

This time, genuinely.

"You’re still the best."

Serafall closed her eyes.

Her face relaxed for a fraction of a second, and Victor realized that answer mattered to her in a way he would probably never be able to explain.

"Even when you were broken," he continued, "you never abandoned me."

Serafall opened her eyes again.

Victor smiled.

"So yes."

She slowly nodded.

Carmilla let that moment last only a few seconds before returning to the main point.

"So you went through..."

"Reincarnation," Victor interrupted.

All four looked at him.

Victor scratched the side of his face.

"At least that’s the closest word."

Scarlet frowned.

"What happened after you died?"

Victor became thoughtful.

"That part is even stranger."

Chysis sighed.

"More?"

"A lot more."

Victor adjusted himself in the chair.

"After I died, I met someone."

Carmilla immediately became alert.

"Who?"

"A woman."

Scarlet narrowed her eyes.

Victor noticed.

"Don’t start."

"I didn’t say anything."

"Your face did."

Scarlet crossed her arms.

Victor continued.

"Her name was Morgana Scarlet."

Scarlet blinked.

"Scarlet?"

"Yes."

"Was that her surname?"

"Or part of her name. I have no idea."

Victor shrugged.

"I had just died. I wasn’t conducting an interview."

Carmilla almost smiled, but held it back.

"Who was she?"

"According to her..."

Victor made a strange expression.

"A Demonic Dragon."

Chysis became serious.

"A what?"

"That’s what she said."

"Demonic Dragons aren’t exactly something that appears to dead people for entertainment," Chysis commented.

"I thought it was strange too."

Victor continued.

"She started talking about some kind of experiment."

Carmilla frowned.

"An experiment involving you?"

"Probably."

"You didn’t ask?"

"I was dead."

Victor raised his hands.

"Sorry for not conducting a proper investigation while my corpse was still warm somewhere else."

Chysis ran a hand down her face.

"Continue."

Victor nodded.

"Morgana said she would unlock my bloodline."

Serafall immediately gave him her full attention again.

"She did?"

"I assume so."

"In exchange for what?"

Victor smiled.

"I had to become the strongest."

Chysis stared at him.

"That’s all?"

"That’s what she said."

"That doesn’t sound like a deal."

"I didn’t think so either."

Victor rested his chin on one hand.

"She seemed much more interested in observing the result of something than receiving anything from me."

Carmilla became thoughtful.

"Then this Morgana may be the reason your bloodline is awakened in this life."

"Maybe."

"Or she merely awakened something that was already inside you."

"Also possible."

Victor sighed.

"That’s exactly why I never treated my memories as absolute knowledge. There are too many things I don’t understand."