He used it once, on a bully who had cornered him. The boy’s own combat knife stopped an inch from Quinn’s throat. The bully’s arm simply refused to move. Quinn whispered, “Walk away,” and the boy did, tears streaming down his face, screaming internally. The turning point came during the Mid-Year Trial: a simulated dungeon-break in the colony’s lower sectors. A real rift had opened, spitting out beasts. The teachers sealed the exits, turned it into a graded exercise. Survive for six hours. Kill as many as you can.
Second, the System arrived.
Quinn discovered he couldn’t just bite anyone. The moment he tried, his incomplete hybrid nature caused the victim’s System to flag him as an . A colony-wide alert would follow. He learned to be surgical: a tiny incision, a stolen blood-pack from the medical incinerator, a drop of his own saliva to seal the wound.
Quinn Talen had two problems.
He stared at the screen. Then, with a thumb that trembled only slightly, he pressed . The pain was not transformation. It was deconstruction.
Except Quinn. His Awakening screen had remained stubbornly dark. A Null. A zero. In a world where your job, your status, even your right to breathe clean air was determined by your Level, Quinn was already a ghost.
His only solace was a glitch. Because he was a “forced integration,” the main System didn’t recognize him as Awakened. But it also didn’t recognize him as a monster. To scanners, he was a Level 0 Null. Invisible. Forgotten. My Vampire System
Quinn smiled.
So when a strange, crimson notification flickered across his vision as he coughed blood into his palm, he assumed it was a hallucination.
But to get it, Quinn would have to hunt a predator far stronger than himself. He would have to expose what he was. And he would have to decide: was he still Quinn Talen, the orphan who just wanted to live? Or was he something else entirely—the first vampire in a System that had no rulebook for monsters? He used it once, on a bully who had cornered him
[New Title Unlocked: The First of the New Blood] [Quest: Devour the Alpha. Reward: Cure for Cellular Decay.]
Let the games begin.
He looked at his bloodstained hands. The hunger purred. Quinn whispered, “Walk away,” and the boy did,
And then the new System screen appeared.