The world smelled of dry rot and old copper.
Sir Alaric of Artois sat on the edge of a collapsed stone well, his fingers tracing the jagged, rusted rim of his heater shield. The white cross painted on the wood was flaking away, revealing the grey, thirsty grain beneath. It was June of 1098, and the First Crusade was dying in the dust outside the walls of Antioch.
For seven months, the "Soldiers of God" had sat in the dirt, waiting for a miracle that never came. Now, the miracle was a luxury they could no longer afford. Alaric watched a group of camp followers boiling a piece of horsehide over a smokeless fire. Their eyes were sunken, their skin stretched so tight over their cheekbones that they looked like living cadavers. There was no singing anymore. No prayers. Just the rhythmic, hollow sound of coughing and the dry wind rattling the tents.
Alaric was a tall man, or he had been before the famine carved the meat from his frame. His hauberk hung loose on his shoulders, the iron rings clicking like the teeth of a shivering man. He had come to this land for many reasons—remission of sins, the promise of land, the desperate hope that his family's deaths in the cold winters of France would mean something if he touched the soil of the Holy Land. But as he looked at the grey, unmoving walls of Antioch, he realized that God had not led them here. History had simply run out of room for them.
"Alaric," a voice croaked.
He turned his head slowly. Standing there was Baldwin, a young squire from his own province. The boy was barely eighteen, but his hair had begun to thin, and his gums were bleeding from the lack of fresh fruit. He held a small, leather pouch that looked pathetically light.
"The Bishop says the grain from the coast was intercepted," Baldwin whispered. "There is nothing left. Sir Thomas says... he says we should prepare to eat the pack mules tonight."
"The mules were eaten three weeks ago, Baldwin," Alaric said, his voice a dry rasp. "He means the dogs. And after the dogs, he means the leather of our saddles."
Baldwin looked away, his chin trembling. "Is this how it ends? Dying in the sand like dogs? I thought we were the chosen ones."
Alaric didn't answer. He didn't have the strength to lie, and the truth was a weight he couldn't carry. He stood up, his knees popping like dry kindling. "I'm going to scout the southern ridge. The Turks have been quiet. Perhaps they've moved their picket lines."
"Alone?" Baldwin asked, his voice rising in fear. "The Emir's riders—"
"The Emir's riders want meat, Baldwin. I am nothing but bone and bad intentions. They won't waste the arrow."
Alaric grabbed his longsword—a heavy, notched blade that felt twice as heavy as it had a year ago—and began to walk. He didn't have a horse; he had eaten his destrier, Bayard, in the third month of the siege. He walked because standing still felt too much like dying.
The Valley of Moses
He walked for hours, moving away from the stench of the camp. The smell of woodsmoke, dysentery, and unburied dead was a fog that clung to his clothes. He pushed south, toward the jagged limestone crags of Wadi Musa. The sun was a relentless, punishing eye in the sky, hammering at his temples.
The landscape changed as he climbed. The sand became darker, turning a strange, bruised purple, and the limestone was jagged, looking like the teeth of some buried leviathan. Alaric was delirious. He knew it. His vision blurred, and he began to see his wife, Catherine, standing in the shimmering heat-haze. She was holding a loaf of bread, her face as young as the day he had left Artois.
"Just a little further," he whispered to the ghost. "Just a little further."
He reached a narrow pass where the earth seemed to have been torn open by a violent, ancient hand. It was a rift, a deep fissure in the rock that plummeted into shadows. The air coming from the rift didn't smell like the desert. It smelled of wet pine, crushed lilies, and something sweet—like rotting fruit.
Alaric stumbled. His boot caught on a loose stone, and his wasted muscles failed him. With a sharp, guttural cry, he tumbled backward into the dark.
The Rift
He fell for what felt like an eternity, bouncing off the limestone walls until he hit a soft, damp floor of moss and ancient loam. He lay there for a long time, the breath knocked from his lungs. Above him, the sky was a thin, distant ribbon of blinding blue. Here, in the belly of the earth, it was cool. It was silent.
Alaric rolled onto his stomach, his hand brushing against something that wasn't stone. It was smooth and cold, like polished obsidian. He looked up, squinting through the gloom.
In the center of the subterranean chamber stood the Vilevine.
It was a tree, but it was a mockery of nature. Its trunk was a gnarled, twisted braid of obsidian-black wood that seemed to pulse with a slow, heavy rhythm. It had no leaves. Instead, its branches were draped in thousands of long, needle-thin thorns that shimmered with a dark, oily iridescence. From its lowest branch hung a single fruit. It was the size of a man's heart, translucent and veined with a deep, pulsating violet. It wept a thick, amber resin that smelled like a forest after a fire.
The tree felt sentient. It didn't speak, but it radiated a sense of ancient, patient hunger. It was a relic of a time before men, before gods—a parasite that had been waiting for a host to find its way into the dark.
Alaric was beyond fear. He was a man who had already seen his soul die; his body was merely following suit. Driven by a primal, lizard-brain urge to survive, he crawled toward the tree. He reached out his hand, his fingers trembling.
As his palm neared the black bark, a thorn—driven by a mindless, predatory instinct—flicked forward. It was as fast as a striking viper.
The thorn pierced the center of Alaric's palm, pinning his hand to the wood.
He didn't scream. He watched, fascinated, as his thin, starving blood was sucked into the black wood. The Vilevine shivered. The black branches began to glow with a faint, bruised crimson. In return, the tree began to pump something back into him.
It felt like liquid lead. It was a thick, viscous resin that burned as it entered his veins. It traveled up his arm, turning his arteries into blackened ropes. It reached his heart and encased it in a cage of iron-tough roots.
Alaric's vision exploded in white light. He felt his human heart give one final, violent thud... and then it stopped. The silence that followed was absolute.
He wasn't dead. He was something else. He was the First Origin.
The Awakening
Alaric sat up. The pain was gone. The hunger was gone. The exhaustion that had been his constant companion for a year had vanished, replaced by a cold, crystalline clarity. He looked at his hand. The hole in his palm was already sealing, leaving behind a small, star-shaped scar that looked more like a knot in wood than a human wound.
He looked at the heart-fruit hanging from the branch. He reached out, plucked it, and bit into it.
The juice was thick and sweet, tasting of copper and sunlight. As he swallowed, his senses expanded. He could hear the drip of water three levels below. He could smell the sweat of the men in the camp miles away. He could see the heat rising from the stones above as if the world were made of glass.
He stood up. His armor no longer felt heavy. He felt as though he could tear the limestone walls apart with his bare hands. He looked at the Vilevine. He understood now. The tree was a parasite, and he was its mobile root. It needed blood to grow, and it had chosen a knight in the middle of a crusade—a man surrounded by an ocean of blood.
The Return
The climb back out of the rift was effortless. Alaric moved with a fluid, predatory grace that was entirely inhuman. He reached the surface just as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. The light didn't burn him; instead, it felt like a dull, distant memory. He was "Pure Blood"—the first of his kind.
He walked back toward the Crusader camp, his gait silent. As he approached the picket lines, he saw a sentry—it was Thomas, Baldwin's older brother. Thomas was a good man, a veteran who had fought beside Alaric at Dorylaeum.
"Alaric?" Thomas called out, his voice shaking. "Is that you? We thought... we thought you were dead."
Alaric stepped into the twilight. Thomas gasped. Alaric didn't look like a starving man anymore. His skin was the color of polished marble, and his eyes—once a dull, tired grey—were now a sharp, predatory amber.
"I found it, Thomas," Alaric said. His voice was different. It was deeper, with a resonance that seemed to vibrate in the ground beneath their feet.
"Found what? Food?" Thomas asked, stepping forward, his eyes searching Alaric's face.
"Life," Alaric replied.
The Bloodlust hit him then. It wasn't a choice; it was a biological command. The Vilevine within him—the parasite in his marrow—screamed for the liquid sun that flowed in Thomas's veins. Alaric didn't feel anger. He didn't feel malice. He felt a profound, predatory necessity.
Before Thomas could blink, Alaric was across the space between them. His hand, cold as a winter root, locked onto Thomas's throat.
Alaric leaned in. He didn't use teeth. His fingers, now tipped with retractable, thorn-like nails, dug into the man's neck. He felt the warm rush of life-force pour into him, a heat that made his very bones sing. He drank until Thomas was a dry, grey husk, his skin looking like crumpled parchment.
When he was finished, Alaric stood over the body. He felt a terrifying sense of peace. He looked toward the city of Antioch, the great stone walls shimmering in the moonlight. To the rest of the army, it was a prize to be won for the Pope. To Alaric, it was a harvest.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was Sir Alaric of Artois, but he was also the beginning of the end. He was the First Origin, and the First Crusade was no longer a war for a tomb.
It was the first season of the Vilevine.