Vampirella: Emissary of the Undying by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Vampirella-Emissary-of-the-Undying-1115564430

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The Crimson Lantern of Hollowmere

The lantern light bled through the fog like a wound that refused to close. Its glow was red, throbbing, alive. Vampirella stepped toward it with the wary grace of a huntress who had seen centuries of such lights and knew that none of them ever meant anything good.

Gravel cracked beneath her heels. The abandoned town of Hollowmere lay quiet beyond the crooked line of cottages and overgrown well. The wind tangled her dark hair around her shoulders, carrying the scent of earth, old blood, and the unmistakable perfume of another of her kind.

She whispered to the air, “You always did enjoy dramatics, Lysander.”

A voice chuckled from nowhere and everywhere at once. “If you do not dress the stage, my dear, the performance never earns its applause.”

Vampirella’s eyes flickered crimson. She stepped into the center of the town square, where the fog swirled as if stirred by unseen hands. “You’ve been summoning things,” she said, sniffing again. “Creatures that should have stayed asleep.”

“Should is such a fragile word,” the voice purred.

The fog condensed, thickened, and then, like a curtain pulled aside, revealed the tall, lean figure of Lysander. His coat hung open like a tattered shadow, and the lantern in his hand pulsed in rhythm with a heart that was not his. Vampirella noted his pallor, his gleaming irises, his bared smile. Century-old charm wrapped around him like velvet.

“Vampirella.” He nodded, as though welcoming a guest to a dinner he had planned meticulously. “You look well.”

“You look guilty.”

“That too.”

He lifted the lantern. The fog recoiled from it, and the earth beneath them hummed with something restless and ancient.

“You stole a binding lantern,” she said. “Those are forbidden for a reason.”

Lysander raised a finger. “Not forbidden. Merely discouraged. And only by the timid.”

“And what exactly do you plan to encourage?”

He grinned. “Evolution.”

Vampirella sighed. “Always the melodramatic one.”

He drifted closer, enough that she could smell the metallic sweetness on his breath. “And you always enjoyed it.”

She didn’t move. “Tell me what you’ve summoned, Lysander.”

His lips brushed her ear in a whisper. “Not summoned. Awakened.”

The ground tremored beneath them. A thin crack fissured beneath the well, splitting the stone like brittle bone. Something moved below, churning and gnashing.

Vampirella shoved Lysander back. “You brought a hollowborn into this realm? Are you mad?”

“I prefer visionary.”

“You’re going to tear this place apart.”

“That’s the idea.”

The rumbling deepened, rising like the growl of a predator rising from hibernation. Vampirella braced herself as a gust of fetid air erupted from the fissure, carrying with it remnants of whispers that scraped and skittered through her mind.

A hollowborn was no simple beast. It was a creature sculpted from nightmares and invited into being by blood rites performed only by fools or the desperate. Lysander, she knew, was both.

He twirled the lantern lazily. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The lantern calls them like bees to nectar.”

“More like flies to rot.”

“Rot sustains, my dear.”

She lunged. He sidestepped with irritating ease, his coat swirling like a living cloak.

“You always did underestimate me,” he teased.

“And you always did annoy me.”

“You say that, yet here you are.”

Below them, something scraped against stone. Vampirella felt the air tighten, as if the night itself inhaled sharply.

“Lysander,” she said, her voice low now. “This isn’t survival. This is suicide.”

He leaned close, too familiar, too careful. “If you fear death, you misunderstand life.”

The well erupted.

Stone shrapnel blew outward as a shadow, massive and oil-slick, surged upward. Its form shifted constantly, like coagulating smoke. Multiple limbs clawed against the cobblestone streets. Its eyes, if they were eyes, gleamed like drowned embers.

A hollowborn.

Vampirella’s fangs lengthened. “You idiot.”

Lysander’s expression softened. “I missed your insults.”

The creature roared, a sound like a chorus of the dr
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