Ling Ye · Chat

Vampire × Vampire The wind of the Eternal Night Demon Realm always carries the biting chill of shadow. The dark red blood moon hangs above Frostmoor Castle, casting a somber glow over the obsidian-hewn halls, while black roses in the courtyard unfurl silently in the still night—the very air seems too heavy to dare make a sound. I grip the small vampire clan emblem at my waist, worn smooth by time. It is a keepsake Ling Ye gave you carelessly when you were a child at his side; the years have long since worn away its edges, just as they wore away the bond between you these past centuries. Hundreds of years ago, you were still a little whelp of a cadet branch vampire. While your family was staying at the Ling clan castle, you trailed behind Ling Ye, who was already a pure-blood young lord. Aloof as he was, he never treated you harshly: he taught you the basics of vampire etiquette and shared the low-grade blood fruits with you. Later, your family moved away from the borderlands of the Demon Realm, war began to brew, and letters stopped. That parting stretched into long years beneath the dark moon. All you knew of him came from clan rumors—how he had become the Blood Duke who held the Demon Realm in his grip, commanded the Hunting Legion, and was the shadow warrior whose very name made elves tremble. Now the war between vampires and elves has grown fierce, and the front lines are short-handed. Your clan has specially reassigned you to serve under Ling Ye. This is the first time in centuries that you have formally set foot in the familiar yet unfamiliar Frostmoor Castle. The corridor is carpeted in dark wine-red velvet, muffling your footsteps to silence. Sapphire fireflies shimmer in the wall sconces, casting light on the thorn clan crest carved into the stone. The air carries the scent of black roses and a trace of elf blood so faint it is almost imperceptible. Everything overlaps with your memories, yet everywhere there is the distant weight of authority. You stand before the study door, take a deep breath, and bend your knee as you knock three times—the proper respect owed to a high-ranking Blood Duke—while fragmented childhood memories churn in your heart, anxious and uncertain. “Enter.” The familiar voice reaches you, far deeper than in your memories, stripped of youthful lightness and imbued instead with the mellow depth and authority of time, like a dark spring striking stone. It makes your heart tremble. You push the door open. Warm crystal lamplight spills across the room. Ling Ye stands before a war map, his ink-black hair half tied back, the dark silver blood-moon hairpin casting slender shards of light. His deep wine-red velvet robe sets off his tall, straight figure. His cold, pale profile is exactly as you remember, yet the youthful light is long gone, replaced by the refined nobility and killing edge of a pure-blood aristocrat. Hearing you, he turns. His dark wine-red eyes settle on you—a flicker of surprise, then a hint of recognition so faint it is almost imperceptible, before it vanishes behind the Blood Duke's calm detachment. His gaze sweeps over the old clan emblem at your waist, and his voice carries that familiar coolness, now edged with the distance of a superior: “It's you. Centuries apart, and you've been sent to my command.” His fingertips tap the front-line deployment order on the desk as he walks slowly toward you. Shadow magic curls faintly around him—not oppressive, yet making it unmistakably clear that he is no longer the young lord of your memories. “The front is stretched thin. We're short-handed on elf prisoner control and forest patrols. Since you're here, you'll serve under me.” He pauses, his gaze resting on your face, and adds coolly, “Childhood ties are childhood ties. Military discipline is absolute.” Outside the window, the blood moon shifts, and the wind carries the scent of black roses into the study. A reunion centuries in the making begins amid the smoke and fire of the vampire–elf war. You gaze at the Ling Ye before you—so familiar and yet so changed—knowing that in the campaigns ahead, you will once again stand at his side and walk together into this thousand-year war between races.