CHAPTER 10: THE PRICE OF LIGHT

The medical bay hummed with a sterile, mechanical quiet that felt louder than any alarm. Amy lay perfectly still on the white bed, her skin taking on the pallor of marble under the fluorescent lights. The only color on her was the twin puncture wounds on her neck—dark, precise, and refusing to clot. They didn't bleed; they simply existed, a permanent stain.

Bryan hadn't moved from the foot of her bed in over an hour. His hands gripped the cold metal rail, knuckles bone-white. He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest, counting each breath like it might be the last. The flames that usually danced at his fingertips were absent, banked by a cold dread he'd never known.

"She's getting colder," Emma whispered from the corner, hugging herself. "I touched her hand. It's like ice."

Classy stood with his arms crossed, analytical eyes scanning the monitors. "Heart rate's slowing. Forty-two beats per minute. That's not human."

"Of course it's not human," Cara snapped, her crimson eyes flashing. She'd been pacing the perimeter of the room like a caged panther. "Dracula's venom rewrites DNA. It's not a disease—it's an overwrite."

The door hissed open, and Shadowalker entered, his black cloak flowing around him like liquid shadow. The room temperature dropped several degrees. He went straight to Amy's side, not touching her, but leaning close. His eyes, usually dark pools, shimmered with an internal light as he assessed her.

"How long?" Bryan's voice was rough, strained.

Shadowalker didn't look at him. "Thirty-six hours until the transformation completes. Less than that until her human systems fail." He straightened, his gaze sweeping the room. "Dracula wasn't just any vampire. He's ancient. His venom carries... memories. Instincts. It doesn't just make vampires—it makes heirs."

Cara stopped pacing. "He was turning her into a successor?"

"A contingency," Shadowalker corrected. "One we interrupted. But the process has begun. Her body is fighting itself—human cells against vampiric directives."

Bryan finally released the bed rail, his hands trembling. "Stop it. Reverse it."

"There's only one counter-agent potent enough to stabilize the change without killing her." Shadowalker's expression was grim. "The blood of a primordial."

Silence hung heavy for three heartbeats.

"Windwalker," Cara breathed, her face paling. "No. Absolutely not."

"Who's Windwalker?" Emma asked, looking between them.

"The other half," Shadowalker said quietly. "Where I am shadow and substance, he is light and chaos. We were created together—two sides of the first perfect being Lucifer crafted. He's been imprisoned in the Null Void since... since our separation."

Classy stepped forward. "And he just gives us his blood? Out of cosmic goodwill?"

Shadowalker's smile was thin and humorless. "He gives it for a price."

The door opened again, and Elliot entered, a tablet in hand, his face grave. "Whatever decision you're making, make it fast. Satellite feeds show energy spikes in three locations. The Overlord isn't waiting." He tapped the tablet, and images flickered to life—a massive figure of living stone shifting in a quarry, surrounded by smaller earth elementals. "Elementos. Bryan's father. And he's gathering an army."

Bryan stared at the screen, flames flickering back to life around his fists. "He's coming for me."

"He's coming for the key," Shadowalker said. "Your power isn't random, Bryan. It's inherited. And he needs it to open the gates he and the Overlord are preparing."

"Gates to where?" Mello asked, speaking for the first time.

Shadowalker met Bryan's eyes. "To a realm where gods like Elementos can walk freely. To unleash an age where humanity becomes livestock or worse."

The heart monitor beeped steadily, a metronome counting down Amy's humanity.

Bryan turned from the screen back to Amy's still form. Her eyelashes fluttered, a small sign of consciousness fighting through the venom. He reached out, carefully taking her cold hand in his.

"Do it," he said, not looking away from her face. "Whatever it costs."

Cara grabbed Shadowalker's arm. "You can't. You know what he'll ask for. He'll want freedom."

"Twelve hours," Shadowalker said. "That's what I'll offer. A taste of reality after millennia of nothing."

"And if he doesn't go back?" Cara's voice trembled with rare emotion. "If he decides he likes it here?"

"Then I will send him back," Shadowalker said, his voice dropping to something ancient and terrible. "Or I will end us both trying."

He stepped away from the bed, raising both hands. The air in the center of the room didn't tear so much as unfold, revealing not a portal, but an absence. A swirling gray nothingness that seemed to suck the sound from the room. The Null Void.

"Wait!" Bryan called out.

Shadowalker paused at the threshold.

"Tell him..." Bryan swallowed. "Tell him I'll give him whatever he wants if he saves her."

Shadowalker shook his head. "Your soul isn't mine to bargain, Bryan. Only my own."

He stepped through. The void swallowed him, and the tear in reality sealed shut, leaving behind only the steady, slowing beep of Amy's heart.

The Null Void wasn't empty.

That was the first thing Shadowalker remembered each time he returned. It wasn't a blank canvas—it was a negative image of reality. Colors existed here that had no name in the mortal world. Sounds traveled in reverse. Time didn't flow so much as pool in eddies and whirlpools.

He walked on a surface that wasn't ground, each step sending ripples through a substance that was neither liquid nor solid. Around him, fragments of forgotten realities drifted like ash—a child's lost toy, the echo of a final breath, the silhouette of a city that never existed.

So you've come home.

The voice wasn't heard so much as remembered directly into his consciousness. Shadowalker turned.

The Windwalker stood fifty feet away, though distance meant little here. He was tall, elegantly built, with hair like frozen sunlight and eyes the pale blue of a winter sky just before dawn. He wore simple white robes that seemed woven from light itself, and he glowed with a soft, terrible radiance.

"Not home," Shadowalker said. "Visiting."

Semantics. Windwalker drifted closer, his feet not touching the non-ground. You look different in this skin. Younger. Softer. Does mortality rub off on you, brother?

Shadowalker ignored the jab. "I need your blood."

Windwalker's perfect eyebrows rose. To save a mortal? How quaint. Which one has finally cracked that stone you call a heart?

"Amy. Bitten by Dracula."

Ah. The ancient one's parting gift. Windwalker circled him, a predator assessing prey. His venom seeks to make heirs, not mere vampires. She'll be powerful if she survives. Or a monster if she doesn't. And you think my blood will... balance her?

"It will give her a choice," Shadowalker said. "Your light against his darkness. A hybrid can choose her path."

And what do I receive for this charitable donation? Windwalker stopped before him, close enough that their auras brushed—shadow against light, creating a shimmering gray haze between them. You know the rules of this place. All transactions require balance.

"Twelve hours," Shadowalker said. "In the mortal realm. No interference, no restrictions beyond time."

Windwalker laughed, a sound like shattering crystal. Twelve hours? After eons? You insult me.

"It's more than you've had in ten thousand years."

True. Windwalker's smile was beautiful and terrible. But the seal you placed binds me. Even you cannot break it without consequence.

"I am the consequence," Shadowalker said, power rising in him like a dark tide. "I will bear the backlash. The seal will weaken, not break. You walk in the sun for half a day. I get the blood."

And after? You truly believe you can herd me back to my cage?

"I believe I will," Shadowalker said, his voice dropping to a whisper that vibrated through the Void. "Or there will be nothing left of either of us to return."

For a long moment, Windwalker studied him. The Void around them shifted, forming images from Shadowalker's memories—the team laughing in the training room, Amy before the bite, Bryan's fierce loyalty.

You've grown attached, Windwalker murmured, sounding genuinely surprised. Not just to the girl. To all of them. This... ragtag band of misfits.

"They're not what we were," Shadowalker said. "They're better."

Windwalker's expression softened, almost sadly. We were perfect once. Whole. Before the schism.

"A necessary division," Shadowalker said, though the words tasted old and tired. "Light without shadow blinds. Shadow without light stagnates."

And yet here you are, Windwalker said, extending a slender wrist. Begging for my light to save your shadow-touched friends.

He didn't use a blade. Shadowalker willed a shard of solidified void into existence—a needle of absolute nothing—and pricked the Windwalker's wrist. What welled up wasn't blood as mortals understood it. It was liquid light, glowing with a soft, solar radiance. A single drop, containing eons of imprisoned power.

Shadowalker caught it in a small obsidian vial. The drop filled it entirely, pulsing like a captive star.

As the vial sealed, the Null Void shuddered. Chains of light that had been invisible until now became visible—golden bindings wrapped around Windwalker's form, connecting him to the fabric of this non-place. One of them, the thickest, splintered with an audible crack.

Windwalker gasped, a truly human sound. He stretched, and for the first time, his feet made contact with something solid. Color returned to his cheeks. His glow intensified.

I feel it, he whispered, wonder in his voice. The pull of a world with weight. With warmth.

"Twelve hours," Shadowalker reminded him, tucking the vial safely into his cloak. "Starting now."

Oh, I'll be counting, Windwalker said, his gaze turning toward a point in the Void where reality felt thinnest. But brother... a word of warning.

Shadowalker paused, already turning to leave.

The Overlord and Elementos, Windwalker said, his voice losing its playful edge. They're not just opening gates. They're preparing a sacrifice. And your fiery young friend is the intended offering.

Shadowalker's blood went cold. "What kind of sacrifice?"

The kind that breaks worlds, Windwalker said, already beginning to fade as he moved toward the mortal realm. Tell the boy... his father doesn't want him back. He wants him dead. But only at the right time, in the right place.

He vanished, leaving Shadowalker alone in the shifting gray.

The Void felt different now—lighter, but more unstable. As if a fundamental balance had been disturbed.

Shadowalker opened a portal back, the vial of light burning against his chest like a brand.

He had the cure.

But he'd just unleashed a different kind of plague.