The courtyard turned into a war zone in the span of a breath. One second I'd been focusing on that liquid heartbeat, the next everything collapsed into motion: Greg bellowing, Sara darting, Effie sprinting like a blade of wind. And Iren—poor Iren—he was where luck and courage meet stupidity. He fumbled, the little knife in his hand suddenly irrelevant against the living tide.
The Blood Beast's head swung. Its maw opened and the air inside it screamed. For a heartbeat I watched water and blood inside the creature's throat spiral like a red hurricane. Then it vomited a lance of condensed blood that lashed across the yard.
Iren didn't move fast enough.
The beam struck him broadside. For a second I thought it would carve him in half clean; instead it hit and the blood hardened in an instant—wrapped around him like a shell. He screamed once, a thin terrible sound, then he was thrown like a puppet from an invisible string. His body slammed against a collapsed arch and the shell cracked. When the dust settled, he didn't move. A black stillness settled over him. Sara's cry ripped the air open.
"No—No!" she howled, sprinting to him and dropping to her knees. She pressed shaking hands to his chest as if she could will him breathing. Greg was already across the yard, axe poised, but the creature didn't wait. The Blood Beast wrenched its head, a low crack echoing, and launched another wave of hardened droplets that hammered the stones.
"What the hell?" Greg shouted, wiping viscous red from his beard. He charged. I watched him run because what else could I do? But when his axe struck, it simply glanced off the beast's skin with a ring like striking iron. The hardened blood reformed where the blow landed, sealing over the cut as if offended at the insult of steel.
Effie took advantage of that moment. She vaulted over a piece of rubble, spear spinning like a compass. She stabbed for the beast's flank. The spear sank deep, and for a breath we all thought she'd found a seam. Then the crimson closed. The spear was embedded, trapped in a shell of its own making. Effie wrenched, using her legs like a lever, and finally she tore the weapon free—only to have a spray of blazing droplets erupt that singed her hair and seared the leather on her shoulder. She stumbled, spit and blood on her lips, but she was up again in two kicks of her boots.
I fumbled with the crossbow. The stock felt slippery in my palms; my fingertips shook. I loaded a bolt and coated the tip with a thin smear of my own blood — not much, just enough to lend the projectile a pulse. The weapon hummed when the blood touched its mechanism. I sighted and fired.
The bolt struck the beast's chest and sank an inch further than the last one. I felt a jolt of—hope, stupid and electric. The hardened crust split in a hairline fracture and for a second a dark vein pulsed underneath, exposed and quivering.
It closed.
The blood bubbled and crawled, filling the fracture like a living putty. The bolt cracked and flared, turned to worthless slag in the beast's clutch. The thing pulsed, its open maw like the belly of a furnace, and the air shimmered around it again—like heat from a forge.
Sara swore and leapt forward, sword raised. She moved with the controlled precision of someone who had been practicing all her life. She landed three strikes in quick succession, blood scattering, metal ringing. For a half-second it looked like she'd beaten back the skin's regeneration. The beauty of her blade's dance was heartbreakingly close to being enough.
Then the creature inhaled.
Everything slowed. I could feel the build of pressure in its chest as if we were all suddenly inside a drum. The beast's entire torso hollowed like a bell. Blood whirled in its throat. Sounds compressed into low bass notes. It drew back and the next beam wasn't a single lance—it was a roar of molten red that ripped not only forward but outward, fracturing the air into a hundred jagged rays.
Effie dove, dragging Sara with her, but the ground around them shattered into polished shards where the beams slammed down. Greg threw his shield up; the rays skinned the metal and tore at his arm. He fell to one knee, breath howling from his lungs.
I was frozen for the shortest possible amount of time—enough. The crossbow clattered from my fingers and I lunged for it, hands scrambling. The weapon landed under a slab of stone. I shoved it free and grabbed a bolt, then another. My vision tunneled. My shoulder throbbed from the earlier rejection—my own blood had branded me with its recoil—and every muscle wanted to give out.
"Get out, get out, get out!" someone screamed—Effie's voice—but she was still in the ring of fire, circling like a hawk, drawing attention, forcing the beast to split its focus.
There was a pattern here, I realized as I shoved a bolt into the crossbow and fired again: when the Blood Beast condensed a part of its exterior, the area hardened and could deflect. But it needed time to reform and move its blood around; the seams were restless. If you struck rapidly at different points you could slow down the reformation. The beast was powerful and stupid in ways; it had mass and instinct, but it couldn't be in ten places at once.
So we attacked like ants. Sara went from seam to seam, cutting. Effie danced, baiting. Greg, wounded, crashed his weight into the creature's flank, hammering to hold it down. I provided covering fire, bolts smeared with my own blood that, for fleeting instant, made the red liquid hiss and flinch at the point of impact.
And all the while the beast kept punishing the mistakes.
Iren's body lay a pale smear under rubble. Sara wailed, and even Greg's grunt was a sound I would hear in my sleep for months. He could have been careful, could have fallen back—he was a warrior, not a child. But this world took the small, brittle people first. Iren had been brave; brave died here young.
We weren't winning; we were persisting. That felt different and worse.
The Blood Beast pivoted—its maw opening like the bell of some enormous instrument. It was preparing another concentrated beam. The hairs on my arms rose. My mouth tasted of iron. I could hear the faint writhing of blood within its belly, a sound like a thousand tiny hearts.
I tried pulling again. This time not to move blood out of it, not to steal, but to feel. To learn what the thing's rhythm was so I could mimic it. I extended my sense, letting my own blood answer like a tuning fork. The beast's blood pulsed in counterpoint. I matched and matched and tried to mirror the compression and release.
It hit me then: the creature condensed by pressing—applying pressure to its own blood to make it rigid. I had been trying to pull at flow, but compression needed an inward force, a stillness that made matter dense. I could thicken, yes; I could coagulate. But compress—compress was different. Compress was the absence of movement within movement. Compress was holding breath until something collapsed.
"Alucard!" Effie shouted, voice thin with exhaustion and metal taste. She was in the open—too close to where the creature was drawing in its shot.
I had one chance to try what I suddenly understood, one real, stupid, glorious chance. But I couldn't do it from outside. If compressing meant holding and forcing density, I had to create an inward crush within the beast, right where it was forming the beam—its throat.
I considered the crossbow. Mechanical, finite. Helpful, yes, but not the instrument for what I had to do. It would be a distraction if anything. My hands were naked and trembling.
The beast inhaled. Red spirals tightened inside its maw, a living cyclone. It rose, and the courtyard filled with a sound like a kettle about to pop. Effie's spear hand faltered. Sara's blade flashed in a wild arc. Greg cursed and pushed to his feet, wobbling.
I didn't think of consequences. I didn't ration strength. I reached into the beast's mouth—not to pull, not to bleed it, but to press. I imagined my palms were indexed anvils, imagined I could be the counterweight the blood needed to press against. My senses burned outward and backward at once as my will fell on that writhing tide.
It bit me like frostbite.
Pain lanced up the length of my arm, hotter and colder than anything I'd felt before. My jaw clenched until my teeth rang. My blood answered, a frantic echo that wanted to flee. I pulled it inward, not with force outward but with absolute inwardness: every vessel contracting, every capillary folding in upon itself like hands closing. It felt like drowning in the inside-out way. The blood in my muscles sang and tightened under my skin.
For a second—a thin, impossible instant—I was more pressure than person.
The beast registered it. It bucked, as if feeling someone press their weight inside its throat. The beam snapped, like a bowstring suddenly released. There was a high, animal keening—more shock than pain—and then the compression became a starved thing under my control. I condensed and condensed until the beast's throat could not hold the pressure.
The sound it made as the pressure reversed was obscene, as if a mountain had been turned into glass and then shattered. I felt a shiver push from the beast's maw right up my arm, into my chest, into my skull. My vision scattered into bright motes.
The Blood Beast exploded inwardly—like a pressure vessel that detonates from within. Not a graceful death: a violent inversion. The beast didn't simply disintegrate; it imploded, its own body collapsing on itself as hardened blood fractured and steam hissed. Chunks of congealed gore and molten crimson flung outward, and a heat like a kiln slapped through the yard.
I remember the roar and the immediate whitewash of brightness. I remember being thrown backward like a rag, tasting metal and ash, lungs burning. The courtyard became a storm of red and heat and silence crashing like the end of a world.
Then came the chime. Not a voice but a system. A cold, indifferent statement that somehow felt like a benediction.
[You have slain an Awakened Devil: Blood Beast]
[You have received an Echo]
I tried to stand. The world tilted. My limbs felt full of lead and melted wax. The effort I'd put into compressing a living furnace had emptied me like a bucket tipped over. The last thing I remember was Effie's shadow leaning over me, her voice thin and panicked: "Alucard! Don't—stay with me!"
My knees folded.
Darkness took me in a single, absolute gulp.