New World | SOOKAI

Chapter 22

.. Nosferatu.. ?

The being before me glared intently. I couldn't tell if he was angry or intrigued by me. I understood nothing about him still but the concept of my location was starting to become glaringly apparent. I didn't much scare easily but he had me frozen on the spot. I was too afraid to even breathe. Even Taehyun hadn't instilled this much foreboding in me.

"Consider yourself anointed, human. For you now stand before the very FIRST of the Immortally Damned."

The first of the immortals...? The first... vampire?

"You're... Dracu-"

"It matters not what your thoughts can conjure to chronicle me as, child."

The sharp-toothed grin across his repulsive face stretched from cheekbone to cheekbone as he stared straight through me.

"It is a scarce occurrence for a mortal to find me here on the knife's edge of one's life. The heavens deemed you.. Unworthy.. of paradise and your blood tells me that your plight is.. Peculiar."

What was he trying to say? That I was.. different? Was this not the normal rituals of a human becoming a vampire?

"Your human vessel has been raped with a convoluted amalgamation of dark essences, both venom and blood, alike."

Was that why I was here? Because my body had accepted too many altering substances from immortal individuals? Did that make me.. special?

"How very fortunate of you to receive such an exceptional curse."

.. Curse? Was this why I had been denied access to Heaven?

"Mortals as serendipitous as you are granted a momentous prize for possessing such a riveting circumstance as yours."

He held his long, pale arms extended on either side of himself like Christ upon the cross.

"You must now direct your mind to your ultimate choice, for you have been chosen."

His form began floating upwards several feet into the air before me. The deathly frame of him vanished and in its place, my eyes were met with long ears with jagged edges that ended with sharp, pointed tips. Horns grew out upon where his head once sat, twisting and turning like that of a matured stag. Thick, boney spikes erupted out of a torn shoulder like the roots of an ancient tree. One of his two red eyes faded while the other became more crimson still, a pitch-black pupil as black as an onyx sat in the centre. And.. two wings, black and leathery like a colossal unidentified bat never seen by human eyes before.

"Know that you can only adorn one of the cursed attributes. You will be granted its power upon your eternal awakening, but it will come with.. a sacrifice."

I could only stand and stare in terror as he continued to bargain with me.

"The choice you make will condemn you further. You will lose all you once knew about your mortal existence. Your curse will consume you whole. But within your insanity, you will possess an unrivalled capacity that no other living or perished being can withstand. You will be reborn into an undying demon of the night like no other."

The deathly silence came flooding back as the ancient vampiric-being halted his pitch. He was waiting for an answer. But I... couldn't. I couldn't possibly choose anything. Soobin would be lost to me and I would.. Be lost to myself. I would lose everything I loved. I would become a monster. I would no longer be the person Soobin held in his heart. I would awaken just to.. Kill him.