THE BREATHLESS WAR
THE MAKING OF AAMON BLOODBANE
There was no sky here.
Only a ceiling of slowly swirling void, like a black ocean above Elara's head, rippling with unformed stars and frozen screams. The floor beneath her was obsidian, veined with red and silver sigils that pulsed as if feeding from her heartbeat.
She stood inside a dream, but it felt more real than waking.
And Aamon stood beside her. No longer a shadow in her mind, no longer a distant whisper. Here, he was man, or something close to it, tall, dark-skinned, regal in bearing, eyes a swirling mixture of crimson and moonlight.
He wore no crown. He didn't need to.
There was something ancient in his posture, in the cadence of his silence, in the gravity of his nearness. His voice, when he spoke, was not loud.
But it moved the dream around them.
"Elara," he said, walking a slow arc around her, barefoot over obsidian, "do you know why I brought you here? Why I chose not to simply... consume you?"
She didn't answer.
"Because," he continued, "you must understand what I am. Not the names your people whisper. Not the fear stitched into old scriptures. But the truth."
He raised a hand. The dreamspace cracked open. Memories poured into the air like phantoms — glowing figures etched in light and ruin. And then, he began:
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I. THE HYBRID BIRTH – FORBIDDEN BY THE OLD BLOOD LAWS
"I was born in the Time Before Memory. An age when gods still walked like giants, and the laws of blood were older than the stars above them."
A vision appeared. A woman, regal and terrifying — Velasatra the Vein-Mother, her face pale as death, her lips crimson with endless thirst. Behind her, the obsidian towers of the First Vampire Court loomed like spires of carved night.
"My mother was a queen among vampires. Not merely undead... but Sungiven, touched by the Bloodsong, an echo of creation itself. Her veins did not flow with blood, but with a chorus of ancestral power."
Then, another image. A vast moonlit forest. A beast — larger than any wolf, fur white as ash, eyes silver like a storm. Kael-Gor of the Pale Howl, the last Alpha of the Moonblood Lineage.
"My father was the last of his kind. A werewolf not born of curse, but of lunar communion. His howl could bend time. His breath could freeze fire."
They came together not out of lust, But prophecy.
"Their union was blasphemy. It defied the Law of Divergent Seed, carved into the marrow of creation by the proto-deities. Vampires and werewolves were meant to remain apart — opposites, counterforces. But they conceived me."
The vision of a child, born under a blood-red eclipse.
Eyes open. Fangs already visible. Claws already formed.
"I was born under both moon and sun. I could drink blood and shift bone. Two spirits warred in me — the beast, and the predator. I should not have lived."
But he did.
And the world noticed.
---
II. CHOSEN BY THE DYING PANTHEON – THE FIRST BLOODREAPER
"The gods were dying then. Their realms collapsing, their creations rebelling. Bloodlines were mutating. Power was leaking into unclean forms."
Aamon stepped through memories like a shadow through water.
"They came to me. The Council of Hollow Thrones. Not because they trusted me. But because they were desperate."
The scene shifted — a ring of thrones, carved from starlight and bone, gods sitting like skeletal kings, their faces cracked by time.
"They gave me a gift. Or a curse."
He turned his back to Elara, lifting the back of his tunic.
Across his spine was the Reaping Sigil — a living glyph that pulsed like a heartbeat, engraved into his bone.
"With it, I became the first Bloodreaper. I could walk between realms. I could erase names from ancestral memory. I could drink divinity itself."
Images flickered — Aamon slaying elder fae, devouring corrupted angels, draining the last moon priestess beneath a falling temple.
"Each bloodline I reaped, I absorbed. Each echo made me stronger."
And slowly... something changed in him.
---
III. THE FALL – FROM REAPER TO FORSAKEN GOD
"My task was simple: cleanse the mutations. Restore the order of blood."
But then...
"I met one I was forbidden to face. The First Hollow God. A creature not born of gods, but who willed itself into being."
Elara saw it — a monstrous form, humanoid but wrong, its face a mirror of all things feared and forgotten. A being made not from birth, but from belief.
"I was sent to erase it. Instead... I listened."
The Hollow God spoke not in words, but truths. And Aamon heard them.
"You are not a balance," the Hollow God whispered. "You are the end of the equation. The answer the gods fear."
Aamon killed the Hollow God — but instead of destroying it, he drank its essence.
"And in doing so... I became what the gods could not control."
THE BLOODREAPER ASCENDANT.
A being with:
The strength and rage of werewolves.
The immortality and blood-magic of vampires.
The reaping and memory-erasing of a divine executioner.
And the godhood of a self-willed Hollowed One.
---
IV. THE SEALING
"They united, then — all pantheons, even the ones at war. They struck me down not in battle, but in conspiracy."
The memory darkened.
"My body was sealed beyond time. Entombed outside the universe's edge, where entropy itself forgets to breathe."
Images flickered of an impossible tomb, floating in an ocean of stars dying in reverse.
"My soul, shattered. Bound to oracles — mortal vessels. Through them, I would speak. Manifest in slivers."
"My name was burned from history. My bloodlines purged. But the curse remained."
Aamon turned to Elara, stepping close.
"And now, I awaken again. Not because I clawed my way out… but because you are the doorway."
Elara, trembling, spoke for the first time. "Why me?"
Aamon's eyes glowed faintly. "Because your blood sings with echoes of Velasatra and Kael-Gor. Because your spirit touches the Nyxis. Because you are what I was before I became this."
His hand hovered near her chest — not touching — but she felt it in her soul.
"You are the first true child of the old bloodlines. The last echo of a prophecy unfinished."
And softly, almost regretfully—
"You will be the mother of what comes next."
Elara's breath caught.