Part one hundred forty seven — Departures

　The following morning arrived quieter, guests packing and preparing for their own journeys home, the mansion settling back into something resembling normal after the previous evening's chaos.

　"Send word," Kai told King Alaric, as the delegation prepared to leave. "Whatever you need, going forward."

　"I will," Alaric said. "And Lord Kai — thank you. For considerably more patience than I think I deserved, given how this all began."

　Sieg departed shortly after, promising the first batch of students within the month. Sophia lingered longest, watching her own new recruits gather nearby.

　"Two days," she reminded him. "Eris starts training them."

　"I remember," Kai said. "You made sure of that."

　She smiled, and left with the rest.

Alright. Quiet again, mostly. Guess it's time to actually catch up on everything else this world's still got waiting.

What follows happened long before any of this — before Kai's own reincarnation, before Horizoncrest existed at all. I include it here because I believe, eventually, it matters.

　In a kingdom ruled by high vampires, a girl named Natsumi Tachibana died in Hokkaido, struck by a stray bullet on her way home from school.

　She woke in an entirely different world.

　Reborn among the very vampire race whose kingdom had, on that same day, been devastated by an attack from the Dragon of the West.

　The survivors fled into the neighboring nation of Teorema, protected by a hero powerful enough to keep the dragon from crossing its borders.

　Natsumi's new parents — the ones who had carried her to safety — died defending that retreat, leaving her in the care of her elder sister, Mori.

　She was named Corri Vanessa.

　The surviving vampires blamed the newborn for their kingdom's fall, certain her birth had somehow drawn the dragon's attention.

　Mori refused to let them harm her.

　And for that, the two were driven out, left to survive alone.

　Mori found an abandoned cave near Teorema's border and made it their home.

　She hunted.

　She provided.

　She did everything she could.

　But Vanessa's skin burned beneath the sunlight, and she required blood constantly to survive — traits belonging not to a high vampire, but a lesser one.

　A classification the surviving vampires had believed extinct within their own bloodline for generations.

　And Vanessa carried four curses.

　Not one.

　Four.

Thanatos Engine — a curse that set a specific date of death she would repeat endlessly until she understood why it happened.

Fortune's Favorite — a curse that spared her from fortune while denying it to everyone around her.

The Survivor's Curse — allowing her to live only because everyone else died.

Blessed Solitude — ensuring she was always, permanently alone.

　Five years passed this way.

　Mori cared for her sister despite everything, never once resenting the burden.

　Then, one day, Mori told Vanessa she needed new clothes and left for the nearest town.

　Vanessa waited.

　Hungry.

　Alone.

　Unable to leave the cave until darkness fell.

　When night finally came, she went looking for her sister.

　And found her instead.

　Mori had been cut in half.

　Yet she remained alive, sustained only by a vampire's own considerable regeneration.

　"Leave the forest," Mori managed.

　A blade found her throat from behind.

　A vampire hunter.

　He finished what he'd started.

　And then he cut Vanessa down where she knelt in shock.

　Minutes later, her skill — Absolute Rebirth — brought her back.

　All four curses activated at once.

　She returned older.

　Taller.

　Fourteen years old in a single instant.

　And with it came every memory.

　Every past life.

　Every death.

　Every existence she had lived before.

　All of it flooded into her mind at once.

　Alongside a fifth affliction.

Starvation.

　Hunger without end.

　She killed the hunter first.

　Then the village above the cave.

　Every last soul.

　When she finished feeding, the first curse claimed her.

　A bloodstained clock appeared.

　Its hands ticked backward.

　Then came death.

　And rebirth.

　Again.

　And again.

　Punishment for something she hadn't even chosen.

　Vanessa looked up at the sky, tears running down her face.

　And quietly, to no one at all, she spoke.

　"So this is my life now."

　That was fifteen years before Kai ever opened his eyes in this world.

　She has died more times since than she can properly remember.

　The hero, Valt Horax, has killed her more times than either of them can count.

　They call her the cursed vampire now.

　The anomaly.