The Blood Sacrifice

The darkness that enveloped the armory was total, thick, and laced with the ancient chill of the unseen whisper. The piercing wail of the palace alarm was now a maddening accompaniment to my pounding heart.
"The Ascent begins now. And the first sacrifice must be blood."
The voice echoed in the absence of light, yet it didn't come from any discernible direction. It was everywhere.
Marcus didn't waste a second. The dragon in him was fully awake, and his scales were now visibly defined beneath the thin material of his shirt. He ripped the heavy ceremonial sword off the nearest rack and smashed the guard’s electronic keypad, granting us exit.
"Stay behind me!" he roared, pulling me into the dimly lit hallway. The emergency lights were flickering, casting long, frantic shadows.
"The main hall!" I shouted, the memory of the shattering glass sharp in my mind. "That's where the alarm sounded!"
We ran, our footsteps echoing on the polished stone. The Dragon Guard were already moving, a torrent of armored muscle rushing toward the center of the palace.

The Shifting Target

When we reached the massive, multi-story main hall, the scene was one of contained, lethal chaos. The huge, stained-glass seal of the royal family—a work of art that had stood for centuries—was shattered, its pieces scattered across the marble floor like frozen shards of light.
But the real focus wasn't the broken glass. It was the center of the hall, where a terrible struggle was unfolding.
Sophie.
My daughter, the newly anointed Queen Regent, was fighting for her life. Two hooded figures—not the sloppy vampire Emrys had described, but powerful, quick-moving shadows—had her cornered near the grand staircase. They were not using swords or claws, but a strange, coiling dark energy that seemed to drain the light around them.
"Sophie!" I screamed, feeling a primal maternal terror that momentarily eclipsed the whispers and the cosmic balance.
Sophie was brilliant, strong, and highly capable, but the attackers were using a magic she clearly hadn't anticipated. One figure held her pinned with a tendril of black energy while the other was making a deliberate, slow movement toward her neck, holding a ritualistic, razor-sharp obsidian dagger.
Marcus didn't hesitate. He was a streak of dragon fury.
"NO!" he bellowed, throwing the ceremonial sword like a javelin. It spun end-over-end, a streak of silver lightning, and slammed into the shoulder of the figure holding the dagger.
The figure shrieked, a high, non-human sound, and dropped the dagger. The other assailant, startled by the force of the blow, released Sophie.
"Run!" Marcus roared, drawing their immediate attention to himself. He stood over the dropped dagger, his frame massive, his full dragon aura blazing—a brilliant, golden counterpoint to the darkness they wielded.

The Second Sight

Sophie didn't run. She scrambled back, grabbing the heavy, ornate railing of the stairs to steady herself. "They want my blood!" she gasped, her voice raw. "For the Ascent! Not yours, Mom, mine!"
The pieces clicked into place with horrifying speed. Sophie, the purest of our lineage, the newly empowered Queen Regent, was the perfect symbol for a blood sacrifice. The enemy wasn't just destabilizing the palace; they were attempting to perform a magical ritual, and they needed a powerful life force to fuel it.
As Marcus engaged the two figures—their dark energy colliding with his pure, burning force—I saw the scene differently. My consciousness, still fragile from the viral infection and the cosmic revelations, shifted. I saw the air crackling with sigils I didn't recognize, etched by the enemies' magic. They weren't just attacking; they were casting a massive gate.
One of the Dragon Guards reached the stairs and grabbed Sophie, pulling her out of the immediate danger zone.
"Go! Get her out of the hall!" I yelled.
I ran toward Marcus, ignoring his shouted command to stay back. I had no weapon, but I had power—the same power that had been the unwitting cause of this entire mess. I focused not on fighting them, but on disrupting the sigils they were etching. The energy in my veins pulsed, a brilliant, silver-white force that channeled the power of the Moon itself, amplified by the life growing inside me.
As my energy struck the magical architecture they were building, the hall roared. The sigils vanished in a flash of corrupted purple light. The two hooded figures staggered back, weakened by the disruption.

The Retreat

Marcus seized the opportunity. He slammed the heel of his boot onto the fallen obsidian dagger, shattering it into pieces, and then unleashed a wave of pure, concentrated fire. The heat was immense, forcing the assailants to momentarily retreat down a hallway leading toward the palace's ancient catacombs.
"They're going deep!" Marcus panted, his chest heaving, his dragon scales retracting slightly. "They're trying to escape through the lower levels!"
I rushed to him, checking his body for wounds. "They're trying to buy time to restart the ritual! The next full moon, Marcus! Emrys said it starts then!"
He pulled me into a quick, rough hug, a silent acknowledgment of the danger and our victory in this immediate skirmish. "We saved Sophie. That's all that matters now."
But as the remaining Dragon Guard secured the hall, their Captain rushed back, her face ashen.
"Your Majesties," Lyra whispered, pointing down the hall where the attackers had vanished. "The sacrifice may not have been completed... but they didn't leave empty-handed."
She pointed to the wall, near the entrance to the catacombs. Scrawled quickly in a strange, viscous, dark-red liquid were three horrifying words. Not a sigil, not a riddle. A simple, personal threat.
"WE TOOK HIM."
The realization hit me with the force of a battering ram. The dark liquid wasn't paint. It was blood.
It wasn't Sophie's blood they had taken. It was the blood of an earlier, more vulnerable victim. The alarm, the shattering glass, the hooded figures... they had been a diversion. A large, coordinated distraction to draw our focus while they seized someone else.
The air rushed from my lungs. I looked at Marcus, and his face was a mask of cold, unadulterated horror.
"The boys," he breathed, the sound torn from his throat. "They were sent home this morning! Who did they take?!"