New Brave World
A young man stood in an office that felt more like a museum, furnished with antique mahogany furniture and adorned with paintings by William Bouguereau. He slid his fingers along the grain of the polished desk, lost in thought.
"Here."
Across from him, a woman in a tailored suit with reddish-blonde hair handed him a long hairpin. With her intelligent beauty and cool, detached expression, she looked at the young man as if he were pathetic. He neatly combed his black hair, took the pin from her, and twisted his hair up to secure it. His long black hair brushed past the snake motif inlaid on the hem of his clothes.
"You look like some nightclub hustler. Who on earth would wear a suit studded with sparkly junk like this? How am I supposed to walk around dressed like that?"
The young man gave a bitter smile as he traced the gleaming silver emblem on his chest.
"It's a spell crest. Ordinary people can't see it."
The woman replied curtly.
"That's supposed to be comforting? The people I deal with aren't ordinary, you know. Which means everyone I meet will be able to see it…."
"You're the King of Vampires now, Tetra Anax. Try to maintain some dignity. And choose your words more carefully, Serin."
The young man flinched at that.
Quite some time had passed since he had taken the name Tetra Anax, yet he still wasn't used to it.
Tetra Anax, King of Vampires—the Saint of the Night who attained enlightenment beneath Seirius (Sirius, the Dog Star).
Those who remembered his final years might bristle at the title of "saint," but those who remembered his true self would not deny it.
Anyone who remembered the true figure of Anax, the Saint of Seirius, would know…
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Before humanity conquered the darkness, vampires too suffered under humanity's darkness. Bound by their inability to act freely under sunlight, vampires were easily exposed and purged by humans. In an age when all humans depended on sunlight to live, creatures awake only at night could not conceal their existence.
Those who became vampires out of greed for eternal life could be condemned as suffering the consequences of their own choices.
But not all vampires had bitten others' necks out of a desire for immortality.
Some were born with the latent trait of vampirism, which manifested the moment their secondary sexual characteristics matured. Others were unwilling victims of vile sorcery, turned into vampires against their will. Still others became vampires due to the whims of gods, or through misguided worship and faith.
Those newly transformed were exterminated by humans, and even the lucky few who survived for long struggled to guarantee their continued existence. Even ancient, powerful vampires were forced to live in hiding.
Then appeared one said to have been born beneath the Dog Star—the Saint of Seirius. Carrying the staff of Caduceus, this saint walked out of the wilderness, called himself Anax, and protected vampires from humans, and humans from vampires.
Using his formidable telepathy and precognitive abilities, he began erasing vampires from human awareness. Before long, vampires became creatures of myth, and humans and vampires lived in the same world yet in different dimensions. Thus began the "World of Moonlit Night."
With his powerful ability to manipulate psychic waves and foresee the future, he dominated human minds, artificially creating gaps in perception to protect vampires.
Within the twisted darkness of human consciousness, vampires flourished while avoiding humanity. It was the beginning of the moonlit world—a realm where magic and monste existed beyond human awareness.
Anax protected vampires, while also protecting humans from vampires and lycanthropes alike. He walked a dangerous tightrope, balancing science and magic, spirituality and reason.
Yet Anax, the Saint of Seirius, foresaw his own destruction.
As navigation advanced, papermaking spread, and metal type came into use, the number of books grew. Civilization developed, populations increased, and the amount of information humans produced grew exponentially. Possessed of powerful precognition, Anax was increasingly affected by this flood of information. The more he peered into humanity and manipulated their memories, the more humanity in turn influenced him. The sheer volume was beyond what even a transcendent being like Anax could endure.
But if he sealed his powers, rejected the deluge of foresight, and fled, the existence of vampires would be revealed to the world. And if that happened, it wouldn't be vampires alone who would be destroyed—humanity itself would be ruined by immortality.
Anax had no choice, even knowing he would become an incarnation of madness.
To protect himself from the overwhelming torrent of information, Anax copied himself. It was a desperate measure—and the worst possible one. By creating a being equal to himself yet surrendering control to it, he only accelerated his own downfall.
Knowing full well it would hasten his destruction, he still replicated himself, stripped away his senses, and created an oracle system designed solely to process information.
In the meantime, humanity invented electric light and finally conquered the darkness of night.
For vampires, it was an abrupt renaissance.
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When electric lights were invented and electricity drove away the darkness, humans began living at night as well.
As a result, vampires could now live freely among humans even without Tetra Anax's protection. With many people working at night, simply living nocturnally no longer revealed one's true nature.
Someone once joked:
"Overtime work saved the vampires."
It wasn't entirely wrong. In an era where nocturnal living aroused no suspicion, vampires could survive without Tetra Anax's protection.
And so vampires bound by his laws began to stray.
A life of eternal youth and immortality, colder than a long winter night and far longer than one—enduring loneliness and the torment of creeping madness, vampires turned humans into vampires to escape their solitude. They created their own kind, comrades to flee from isolation and pain.
As the number of vampires rapidly increased, newly turned humans failed to understand Anax's laws. Fearing that the balance of the world—and even human civilization—would collapse, Anax became increasingly obsessed with prolonging his own life.
"If not me, who else? I'm barely holding this chaotic world together as it is. If the one in control disappears, rage and madness will overrun the world."
When a precognitive like him became trapped in obsession, his fate set its course.
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The child born of the dark goddess Lilith, who had conceived Anax at the dawn of time, was the perfect material for extending Anax's life. To fully transfer Anax's power, the finest vessel was required—and Lilith's child was unquestionably ideal.
Yet it became the cause of Anax's ruin.
When he captured Lilith's child, Serin, to prolong his life, his own ego was instead absorbed by Serin's.
Serin had been created for that very purpose. A child of necessity, born to save the world from Anax's madness and grant him rest. His mighty ego embraced the Anax shredded by insanity, and at last Anax found peace within Serin and fell asleep.
Thus, a new Anax was born.
The Saint of the Dog Star donned the body of a werewolf and regained a whole mind and noble ideals.
But by then, vampires had multiplied endlessly and risen in rebellion against Anax…
And the countless streams of information produced by humanity would destroy even this new Anax.
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"You've grown a lot."
He ran a hand through his hair and smiled bitterly.
Serin—Lilith's son, now the new Tetra Anax, a Lilith—had an instinctive sense that the life given to him would not be very long.
In the 13th century, the library of the University of Paris (Sorbonne) held barely a thousand volumes. But how much information was produced in the 21st century? An incomparably larger population was generating information at an incomparably faster rate.
Anax, who walked the tightrope between reason and madness and called himself the guardian of the moonlit world, could not turn away from it all. To endure it, Tetra Anax created the oracle system and replicated himself, producing auxiliary processors to manage the information—but even so, the limits were clear.
Of course, he still had more time left than the life expectancy he once assumed when he believed himself human. Not enough to deserve the title of an immortal vampire, but enough time to make humans who lived barely a century feel envious.
But what was he to do about the ever-encroaching fear of madness?
And the distrust of himself?
"I've grown too much."
Serin murmured again, running his fingers through his hair.
"There are reports that he was sighted in Belarus."
The woman who oversaw one sector of Tetra Anax looked at Serin as she spoke. Created as auxiliary tools to Anax, they advised Serin in voices stripped of human emotion.
"Can you persuade him? It seems reckless."
"I'll have to try."
Serin nodded.