Rain poured for two straight nights, soaking boots and cloaks until everything smelled like moldy bread and disappointment.

Basil the mule, ever the champion of bad timing, refused to walk when it rained and only moved if bribed with dried beets.

But the worst part?

The night ambushes.

The vampires were like smoke—silent, swift, and untraceable until they were already clawing at your face.

Every night, screams broke the silence. Sometimes it was just a sentry being dragged off into the darkness, sometimes it was a whole cart overturned and burned.

Selis hardly slept. She stayed curled in the corner of the wagon with a stake in one hand and a bottle of holy water clutched like a child's stuffed toy in the other.

One night, she woke up to a pale face grinning inches from her own, only for it to vanish into ash a second later as another hunter drove a spear through its back.

"Sweet dreams," the hunter said, wiping his blade.

Selis didn't sleep again for the rest of the trip.

====

After four miserable days of dodging fangs, repairing wheel axles, and trying not to murder the guy who snored like a troll being strangled, they finally reached the capital.

Or what was left of it.

The outer wall—once glowing with holy enchantments and protective runes—looked like a war zone. Cracks split through the once-impenetrable stone. Glowing sigils flickered like dying candles, and black scorch marks streaked across the entry gates.

During the day, the entire city seemed to be working toward one singular goal: repairing the barrier. Priests chanted until their throats bled.

Artificers dragged massive glyph stones into position. Engineers scaled scaffolding with thread-thin strands of blessed metal, trying to weave the magical field back together like a torn net.

But it wasn't enough.

The vampires returned every night.

"We barely drive them back before dawn," a weary officer told them during intake. "Then we have to rebuild what was destroyed again."

The first wall had become the battlefield. Every available vampire hunter was assigned to it—stationed like pawns along a brittle chessboard, hoping to hold the line long enough for the barrier to come back online.

"Just one more day," the priests kept saying. "Just one more night."

But each night dragged longer. Each defense more desperate.

Selis didn't complain. She reported to her station at the wall with the rest, took her assigned quadrant, and stared out into the dark fog where death waited. It wasn't about bravery. It wasn't even about duty.

It was about getting back into the capital.

Where secrets lived.

Where the truth about the Emerald Blood might finally be within reach.

Besides, being cannon fodder wasn't the worst position—

Not when you had a plan.

Selis and the others had barely crossed into the Third Wall before they were rushed out again—assigned to defend the vulnerable villages just beyond the capital's reach.

No warning. No scouts. No tension-building silence or eerie signs. Just the sudden shriek of a wardstone shattering, the crash of timber, and villagers screaming bloody murder as something tore through the outer wall like it was made of damp paper.

"YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME," Selis shouted, drawing her blade before she'd even unbuckled her pack.

The smell hit her first — old blood and rotting moss — followed closely by the blur of motion that slammed into a nearby guard and sent him cartwheeling through a fruit cart. Apples and limbs went flying in all directions.

Another hunter had already yanked her spear off her back, eyes gleaming. "Well, so much for soup and a nap."

They sprinted into the chaos.

Three vampires — fast ones, lean and wild-eyed — skittered across the rooftops like oversized bats on caffeine. One leapt, claws out, fangs gleaming.

Selis ducked, slashed upward, and caught it clean across the ribs.

"Too slow," she muttered, then had to roll aside as another launched itself at her legs with a screech.

Another hunter impaled the second one mid-air like she was playing morbid javelin toss. It twitched once on the end of her spear, then went still.

Selis landed on one knee, panting. "There's no end to them!"

From behind them, a half-dressed villager ran past screaming and holding a frying pan like it was divine judgment. "THEY'RE IN THE WELL! THEY'RE IN THE WELL!"

"Oh, come on!" Selis groaned. "Who ambushes a town from the well?!"

Another crash — this time, the inn caught fire. A third vampire barreled out of it, flailing and on fire, shrieking unintelligibly until it collapsed into the mud.

A second later, a burly woman with singed eyebrows and a flaming torch appeared behind it, bellowing, "NO REFUNDS!"

"Gods," Selis muttered. "I love this place."

By the time dawn threatened the horizon, they'd lost two guards, four villagers, and most of the village square. Half the livestock had escaped (or been eaten), and the well was now officially banned until someone figured out if it had vampire eggs in it.

Selis collapsed against a wall, blood-slick and caked in soot.

No one spoke for a while.

Not the wounded, not the watchmen perched on crumbling stone outposts, not the priests who'd run out of prayers and now only murmured the last lines like a broken record.

The silence wasn't peace—it was suffocating, heavy with exhaustion and dread. Selis could feel it pressing down on the entire squad stationed at the wall. The despair was so thick in the air, it almost became tangible—like the foul mist left behind after the vampires retreated before sunrise.

No one had the strength to pretend anymore—not even to themselves. The thin hope that they could hold out for a few more days had already crumbled like the cracked stones beneath their feet.

If the high-ranking vampire hunters didn't arrive soon, and the barrier on the first wall wasn't restored, it was only a matter of time before the second wall fell.

Selis sat among them, back leaning against a broken pillar that still faintly glowed with fragments of holy runes. Her fingers trembled slightly, stained with ash and dried blood. Her uniform was torn near the shoulder where a vampire's claw had barely missed her neck. Her knees ached. Her eyelids felt like lead.

But then . . . she thought of something.