The realization that he was standing inside the mouth of a creature the size of a city district was a unique kind of horror. It was a cold, intellectual terror, a sudden, violent re-calibration of the scale of the universe. He was not a warrior in a hostile city. He was a piece of food that had not yet been swallowed. The Whispering Blade's warning had saved him from a fate he couldn't even begin to imagine.

He backed away from the water's edge slowly, his eyes wide as he stared at the colossal "teeth" on the far side of the plaza. He had to get out. Now.

He turned and fled, moving away from the submerged district and deeper into the city proper. He ran through a series of grand, yet crumbling, archways, his soaked boots slapping against the black stone, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the slumbering, city-sized leviathan. He didn't stop until the scent of the sea was gone, replaced by the dry, dusty smell of ancient, undisturbed stone.

He found himself in a different part of Y'ha-nthlei. This district was not submerged or twisted by gravity. It was a vast, silent expanse of colossal, geometric structures. Enormous, cube-shaped buildings and towering, triangular pillars created a stark, alien forest of stone and shadow. There was a profound, unnerving silence here, a dead stillness that felt even more threatening than the chaos of the districts he had just survived. It was the silence of a perfect hunting ground.

He took shelter in the shadow of a massive, cube-like edifice to catch his breath and assess his wounds. The cuts from the shark-creatures were deep, but his unnatural vitality was already beginning to seal the worst of them. He was exhausted, both physically and mentally. The constant, unrelenting hostility of Y'ha-nthlei was a grinding stone, wearing down his endurance, fraying his nerves.

It was in that moment of vulnerability, as he leaned against the cold stone, that his predator's instincts, honed by a hundred life-or-death battles, screamed a silent warning. He was being watched.

He didn't move. He didn't tense. He simply let his eyes drift across the silent, geometric plaza. He saw nothing but stone and shadow. The massive, triangular pillars, each one hundreds of feet tall, stood like silent, ancient sentinels. The silence was absolute. But the feeling of being watched was a physical presence, a cold weight on the back of his neck.

It is the stone itself, the Whispering Blade's voice hummed in his mind, its tone sharp with a tension he had never heard from it before. Do not trust the shapes.

Edward's gaze sharpened. He looked again at the pillars. They were identical, arranged in a perfect, repeating pattern across the plaza. Perfect. Too perfect. One of them, the one nearest to him, seemed... wrong. The shadow it cast was a fraction too deep, its edges a little too sharp. It was a flawless imitation, but his senses, now attuned to the subtle wrongness of this place, could detect the flaw.

He pushed himself off the wall he was leaning against, his body coiled like a spring, his sword and dagger held ready. He took a slow, deliberate step into the open plaza.

The "pillar" moved.

It did not move like a living creature. It unfolded. The sharp, geometric lines of the pillar blurred, the solid stone seeming to flow like liquid mercury. Two long, impossibly thin appendages, each one ending in a curved, scythe-like blade of polished, black obsidian, unfurled from its sides. The main body of the creature remained a shifting, shapeless mass of living shadow and geometry, its form constantly changing, never resolving into a recognizable shape. This was a Star-Vampire, an abyssal entity that was not a creature of flesh, but a predator of living shape and form.

It attacked with a speed that was not just fast; it was instantaneous. It didn't cross the distance between them. It simply wasn't there, and then it was. Its scythe-like arm blurred through the space where his head had been a microsecond before. Edward felt the wind of its passage, the faint, sharp scent of ozone from the displaced air. He had dodged on pure, unthinking instinct.

The fight that followed was not a brawl or a duel. It was a deadly, high-speed game of cat and mouse, played out across a chessboard of alien geometry. The Star-Vampire was a nightmare of an opponent. It had no vital organs to target, no discernible weak points. Its body was a fluid, ever-changing weapon. It used its shapeshifting abilities to mimic the environment, its limbs disguised as archways and buttresses, before lashing out with its bladed appendages from an unexpected angle.

Edward was forced into a purely reactive fight. His enhanced senses, pushed to their absolute limit, were the only things keeping him alive. He was a blur of motion, dodging, parrying, and countering the creature's lightning-fast strikes. The clang of his Sovereign blades against the Star-Vampire's obsidian scythes was a sharp, percussive rhythm in the silent plaza. This wasn't a contest of strength. It was a deadly, high-speed duel of pure precision and reflexes.

For the first time in a long while, Edward felt like he was the prey. This creature was as fast, as cunning, and as relentless as he was. It was a predator perfectly adapted to its environment, and he was the intruder. His own predatory instincts, which had served him so well, were now screaming at him that he had met his match. The feeling was not fear. It was a strange, exhilarating surge of adrenaline, the thrill of a true hunt against a worthy opponent.

The Star-Vampire's attacks were not just physical. With every clash of blades, a faint, psychic dissonance washed over him, a subtle attack on his senses. The whispers of the city grew louder, trying to distract him. The angles of the buildings seemed to twist and warp, trying to confuse his spatial awareness. The creature was not just trying to kill his body; it was trying to unravel his mind.

But Edward's mind was a fortress, its walls built of pain and hardened by a thousand devoured souls. He pushed the psychic attacks aside, his focus narrowing to a single, razor-sharp point: the creature's movements.

He began to see the pattern. The Star-Vampire was a creature of geometry. Its attacks, while blindingly fast, always followed perfect, clean lines. It did not curve or feint. It attacked with the cold, mathematical precision of a machine. It was a living equation of death. And Edward knew that every equation had a solution.

He changed his tactics. He stopped his frantic dodging and began to move with a more deliberate, circular pattern, forcing the creature to adjust its attack vectors. He was no longer just reacting; he was dictating the flow of the battle, controlling the geometry of the fight.

He parried a downward slash, the impact jarring his arm, but instead of retreating, he stepped in, using the momentum to spin inside the creature's reach. The Star-Vampire's other arm lashed out, a horizontal slash aimed at his waist. He dropped, sliding across the slick stone, the obsidian scythe passing inches above his head.

He was on his back, directly beneath the creature's shifting, amorphous core. It was a moment of supreme vulnerability. But it was also his only chance.

He drove his longsword, Regret, upwards with all his strength.

The blade plunged deep into the creature's shadowy, unstable mass. There was no resistance of flesh or bone, but he felt a connection, a feedback of pure, psychic agony.

The Star-Vampire let out a silent, mind-shattering scream, a wave of pure pain that echoed directly in Edward's skull. The creature's obsidian limbs convulsed, and with a final, desperate slash, it brought its arm down. Edward rolled away, but not fast enough. The scythe carved a deep, burning gash across his thigh.

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in his leg. The Star-Vampire was wounded. For the first time, its perfect, geometric form faltered. It retracted its limbs, its shadowy body seeming to shrink in on itself. Then, with a motion like melting wax, it collapsed into a puddle of living shadow and flowed away with incredible speed, disappearing into the dark crevices of the plaza.

Edward stood panting, leaning heavily on his sword, blood pouring from the wound in his leg. He had won. He had driven it off. But as he watched the puddle of shadow disappear, a cold certainty settled in his gut. The creature wasn't fleeing in terror. Its psychic scream had not been one of pain, but of pure, unadulterated fury.

It wasn't retreating. It was going to find a better hunting ground. And it would be back.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.