My Vampire Harem Will Dominate Everything

The skies above Akiko's capital were no longer skies. They were warzones.

Clouds cracked like glass. Lightning screamed. The wind fled.

The storm raged above the city as three titans clashed in the air, their power eclipsing the stars.

Ezra sliced through the air, a streak of darkness across the heavens, his wings of shadow unfurling wide as midnight. His Aura surged around him, warping the air into an undulating void.

Across from him, Caspian hovered in regal silence, silver hair flowing around him like threads of war. His body radiated lethality, and in his hand shimmered the ethereal mark of Riptide, the relic of death with a touch.

"You've lost control." Caspian said calmly. "Stand down."

Ezra bared his teeth, wings curling behind him. "Not until my daughter is in my arms again."

"So be it."

Caspian vanished.

He reappeared a blink later, inches from Ezra, hand extended.

Ezra flared his wings, twisting in midair, barely avoiding the touch. He felt the ripple of Riptide sing past his shoulder, a whisper of soul-death.

It wasn't pain. It was erasure, and it terrified even him.

But Ezra had already reached into the weave.

With a flick of his fingers, he bent the path of Caspian's next attack, adjusting the vector by a margin too small to notice, but enough to spare his life. He didn't know how he was able to find the right thread in a split second and manipulate it, but like the Progenitor had said, he had all he needed within him already.

Caspian snarled and came again, faster.

Ezra blocked with his forearm, twisting to the side. He caught the movement a split-second too late. Vance had entered the fray.

The air dropped in temperature instantly.

Vance, silent and cold, floated a few paces above, his eyes glowing with icy light. His hand was outstretched, wreathing the wind itself in a web of frost. He thrust it forward and the sky froze.

Literally.

An entire section of the atmosphere calcified, slowing Ezra's movement like he was moving through incredibly thick honey.

Ezra grunted, kicking against the frozen air as Caspian struck again, this time almost touching his ribs. Ezra spun, his eyes widening as he flicked his finger on the weave, forcing the relic's death-touch to miss him by inches.

"Two against one?" Ezra hissed. "And you call yourselves royalty?"

"You're threatening the court." Caspian growled.

"I'm defending my child!"

Rage ignited behind Ezra's eyes.

He flared his Aura, cracking through Vance's frost just long enough to pull himself free. Then he dove higher, flying hard, fast, climbing to gain control of the aerial battlefield.

They pursued him like twin shadows, one with frost in his breath, the other with death in his hand.

Ezra twisted midair, opened the weave again, and smiled. "Let's even the field."

He reached deeper than he ever had, not into the battlefield, but into Caspian and Vance.

Their soul threads gleamed in his mind, wound tightly around a lattice of power that had sustained them for centuries.

Avatar.

Their Eighth Ring ability. The reason they could exist in multiple forms. Why their relics never tired. Why their enemies never knew which body to strike.

Ezra pulled.

And snapped the entire network apart.

Both Caspian and Vance gasped, an audible, soul deep gasp, as their link to their secondary bodies shattered. The energy collapsed into a single thread.

One body.

One life.

Their Eight Rings? Gone.

Caspian's eyes widened in horror. "What have you—?"

"I made you mortal." Ezra said coldly.

Vance flinched, momentarily flickering as if adjusting to a tighter reality.

They hesitated.

Ezra did not.

He surged forward, shadows coiling around his fists, as he flicked golden threads, weaving counters against Riptide.

Caspian focused just as Ezra arrived before him. His hand blurred forward, hand glowing, but Ezra dove through it, not by speed, but by unraveling the relic's function mid-strike.

He touched the thread between Caspian's soul and his relic, and severed the connection. Riptide's glow faded. The death touch stopped working.

Caspian stared at his hand. "Impossible."

Ezra grinned, blood on his teeth. "Possible."

Vance moved, sending Glacier's time lock forward, freezing air, energy, even momentum as it passed, but Ezra had seen it coming.

And he turned it back.

He bent the weave around Vance's relic and folded the time-lock onto itself.

Vance froze.

Just for five seconds.

But it was enough.

Ezra turned to Caspian, who was now exposed, cornered, powerless.

A storm of darkness gathered in Ezra's palm. He compressed his Aura into a spear of nothingness and hurled it at Caspian's chest.

The prince blocked it, barely.

But Ezra was already behind him.

He struck with both hands, ripping through Caspian's armor, driving his claws deep into the man's back. With a roar, he drained Caspian's entire vitality, the relic screaming as it disintegrated.

Caspian's eyes dimmed. His soul thread snapped.

Ezra felt the power enter him like a star igniting in his chest.

And something bloomed inside of him as he ascended to the Seventh Ring.

The ability came with it. Foresight.

Time unraveled before him, pathways blooming like veins of golden light. Possibilities. Outcomes. Threads of the future.

He saw Vance break free. Saw his next ten strikes. His defenses. His angle of retreat.

He grinned.

When Vance finally broke out of the lock and moved, Ezra was already there.

He dodged like a man who knew the future, and he did.

Vance's eyes widened as he realized what was happening, but Ezra had read all possibilities in the next few seconds, burning up a large slice of his vitality.

He lunged forward, and his claws sank into Vance's chest. The frost exploded outward, but Ezra drank it in, devouring every sliver of vitality left in the man's body.

Vance's mouth opened, to speak? To curse?

It didn't matter.

His soul broke.

Ezra absorbed the torrent.

An instant later, he broke past, the vitality filling him.

The Eighth Ring. And with it, Avatar.

He felt the network build within him, reflections of himself waiting to be formed. Power waiting to be divided and extended.

He didn't stop.

As Vance's soul unraveled, Ezra dove into the thread.

He tore through the foundations of what was Vance, trying to find one specific thread. His relationships.

He found it, sifting through it like a man possessed. He hit a block and with a grunt, his vitality surging into the weave, he broke through Nihil's shielding.

And there—

He saw her.

Akiko. And most importantly… Aurora.

Her threads glowed faintly, wrapped in a familiar barrier.

Ezra's body trembled.

He had her.

"I'm coming." He whispered into the wind. "I'm coming, Aurora."