Tales of flame and void

The moment Zelaine Roseblood arrived at the ANSEP base, she went straight to her room and collapsed onto the bed — traveling coat still on, boots half-kicked off. No formal check-ins. No reports filed. Just sleep — deep, undisturbed sleep.

Such was the nature of the Rosebloods.

True vampires in essence, though their kind hadn't needed blood in centuries. But the instincts — hunger, desire, rage — still pulsed beneath their skin like old poison. To dull those urges, they chose another path.

They slept.

A lot.

For Zelaine, sleep wasn't escape. It was a tranquilizer. A kind of meditation. Sedation for the fire beneath her ribs.

It wasn't until hours later, with a growling stomach and a frizzy mess of sacrlett-red hair, that she finally stirred.

---

Her first act after waking: food.

She shuffled down the empty corridor in slippers, hair still wild, expression half-dead. The kitchen was running on automation this late, so she loaded a tray, ignored the junior staff whispering "gloomy vampire lady", and returned without a word.

Zelaine's quarters were… neat. Not polished. Not obsessively clean. Just… intentional.

Her blanket was folded with one hand. A single vase held wilted but chosen flowers. On her desk: a vial of rosewater and a sheathed silver dagger bearing the Roseblood crest.

She liked cleanliness — but not effort.

After a long bath, she emerged in her usual aesthetic: a loose dusky-mauve cardigan, the sleeves a bit too long and slipping off one shoulder. A navy-blue vintage skirt brushed her calves. Scuffed white sneakers. Lived-in, quiet, comfortably her.

She finally settled at her desk and prepared to eat.

Her comm device pinged.

The screen flared: ANSEP Command.

She glanced.

Ignored it.

> "Ruins the mood," she muttered. "I'll deal with it after food."

She lifted her fork — a slice of sweet-pickled ghostfruit hovering at her lips…

And a man appeared in her room.

Out of thin air.

With a stupid smile.

---

>"Miss me?" Atiya Yaisha said.

The fork clattered to the floor.

Zelaine stiffened. Her pupils shrank. Her hand darted toward the dagger — paused mid-draw.

>"You—! What in the warped hells—!"

She rose so fast the chair shrieked backward.

>"Does your sister know you enjoy teleporting into a woman's room while she's eating, you degenerate space-hopping pervert?!"

Atiya blinked. Unbothered. "Whoa. That escalated."

Her eyes narrowed. Cheeks burning — part rage, part embarrassment.

>"Atiya, I swear on the Roseblood graves—"

>"You wanna try eating a Hingcha?"

He said it like he was offering dessert.

Zelaine froze.

>"…What?"

Atiya casually pointed behind him.

The door was no longer a door.

It had twisted — space itself torn like cloth. Beyond it: hallways stretched and fused, rooms leaking into one another, basement threads tangling with the upper levels. A patchwork of spatial corruption.

>"A trapper," he said. "Hingcha class. It's already begun feeding."

Her expression darkened.

She glanced at the distortion, then back at Atiya.

Sighed.

Picked up her fork again.

> "If it tastes worse than this damn ghostfruit… I'm eating you instead."

----

Zelaine and Atiya darted through the twisted corridors, shadows coiling like vines around them. Atiya's thread-sense flared with tension, but for some reason, the creature's presence remained elusive.

>"Are you sure this thing's still here?" Zelaine asked, ducking under a warped doorway. Her voice was dry, tinged with irritation. "Aside from twisting hallways and violating spatial privacy, what else can it actually do?"

>"Once it threw a Yai bomb at me," Atiya muttered. "Beyond that? Not much. Maybe non-physical offense. Illusions. Corruption."

Zelaine rolled her eyes. "So basically, you know nothing. Brilliant."

>"Shut up," he snapped, but there was no venom in it.

Suddenly, glowing spheres of Yai energy shot toward them from multiple angles.

Zelaine raised a hand. With a flick of her wrist, petals unfurled like blades, spinning into a protective vortex. The orbs collided and scattered into harmless sparks.

>"Petals. Again?" Atiya muttered.

>"Don't interrupt me, you soon-to-be dinner of a walking tentacle goddamn mop," she hissed.

Zelaine, for all her sarcasm, moved with elegance honed over years. The petals danced with razor precision, intercepting threats before Atiya could even register them.

Atiya focused, his threads stretching out like a silent net. He finally sensed the creature—faint, coiled near his quarters.

>"I found it."

Before Zelaine could retort, Atiya warped them both.

They landed in his room.

The creature waited. A monstrous orb of corrupted Yai hovered between its tendrils.

>"Defensive stance," Zelaine said sharply.

Petals bloomed again, but this time into a massive lotus shield, translucent and glowing. The orb slammed into it and dispersed with a howl of energy.

Atiya's traps had worked. The web of threads he'd carefully laid earlier now activated, binding the creature in a lattice of spatial force. Tendrils flailed, severed mid-motion by Zelaine's petals. Her attack—a storm of crimson and silver—shredded most of the creature's limbs.

Zelaine took a step forward, brushing stray hair from her face. "This is just sad. I'd rather drink pig blood than eat this garbage."

Above her, petals gathered in a slow spiral, forming a growing orb of energy.

Atiya's breath caught. He recognized the buildup. She was preparing to end it.

Then something shifted.

The creature, though clearly immobilized, began to shrink. Its form compressed, limbs retracting, until all that remained was a small, glinting spider-like shape.

>"No," Atiya whispered.

The shift wasn't retreat. It was transformation.

He recognized it too late.

The creature activated its trump card.

Phantasia.

An ability unique to certain Hingcha. A last-resort manipulation of reality itself, crafted to match the creature's core nature. It wasn't teleportation.

It was rewriting the battlefield.

The space fractured.

No longer corridors. No longer ANSEP.

They were in a cavernous expanse, dimly lit by unnatural blue glow. The ceiling vanished into shadow. Stone pillars bent at impossible angles. The walls pulsed like the inside of a throat.

Zelaine stared, fork still gripped in one hand.

>"You have got to be kidding me."

Atiya glanced around, his threads coiled defensively.

>"Its domain. We're inside its nest."

>"Oh joy. From dinner to digestion."

Zelaine turned to him, her eyes narrowed. >"You better have a plan."

Atiya hesitated.

>"Well?"

>"I had three," he admitted. "None involved dimension-hopping spiders."

She growled. "Fine. Then I'm improvising."

She summoned more petals, faster this time—hundreds of them spiraling around her like orbiting moons.

Atiya exhaled, crouched low. He didn't say it aloud, but he agreed: this was no longer about winning.

This was about surviving.

>"When we get out of here," Zelaine muttered, "I'm feeding that thing to my cats."

Atiya blinked. "Who the hell feeds Hingcha to a cat?"

>"Rosebloods do."

> They stood in the hollowed-out lair of the beast — no longer part of ANSEP, but somewhere older, deeper, forgotten.

Above them, on the curved stone ceiling, something moved.

Not eyes. Not limbs. Just a shadow. Watching.

Waiting for its meal to walk deeper.

---

✦ Elsewhere Beneath the Same Moon

Far from the winding corridors and the monstrous lair that now trapped Atiya and Zelaine, another crisis was unfolding.

Inside the upper halls of ANSEP HQ, Inteja V Pharsa reviewed the latest priority dispatches. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the incoming reports — multiple Hingcha sightings. Not isolated. Not random. Spread across different locations, all within the same narrow window of time.

It wasn't just an anomaly.

It was a pattern.

She moved quickly through the data. A secondary report flashed on the corner of her screen: the 4th Corps, the unit she had personally instructed to assist Cornicius Corell, had been rerouted. They were currently engaged — overwhelmed, by the looks of it — suppressing a separate Hingcha incident at the Aeon Relay Outpost.

> "Perfect," she muttered under her breath. "The one time I delegate..."

Her attention shifted. A blinking notification marked unread.

Zelaine Roseblood.

Atiya Yaisha.

No response.

No signal trace.

No confirmation ping in the last two hours.

Inteja leaned back in her seat, eyes narrowing just slightly as the threads of concern began to wind their way through her usually unshakable composure.

> "Not like them," she murmured.

She rose from her chair and crossed the silent room. The automated door slid open with a soft whisper, revealing the open rooftop balcony beyond. There, the world lay bathed in silver moonlight, the skies calm — indifferent to the chaos below.

The wind brushed against her coat. A quiet night. Too quiet.

She reached into her inner pocket and retrieved a slim metal case, flipping it open and pulling free a small rolled stick. With a flick of her fingers, she lit the tip using a sliver of faint orange Yai. It smoldered gently, curling soft trails of smoke into the wind.

She took a breath. Let it out slow.

> "You two better not get yourselves killed," she said softly.

"Because I'm not cleaning up the mess if you do."

She stood there for a long moment, gaze fixed on the distant moon — cold, quiet, and watchful.

And somewhere, far beneath that same sky, the real battle had only just begun.