Vladimir Farieth

The Arvendon Palace was quiet the night he took it back. No trumpets. No fanfare. Just the soft hush of blood dripping from boots onto marble. The bodies had already cooled. And there, at the end of the long hall of shattered statues and torn banners, he sat. Vladimir. Not draped in silk, not parading his conquest, he didn’t need to. He sat like he had always belonged there, legs spread with the ease of a man who no longer asked for power but assumed it. The throne was ancient, spined with obsidian and cracked from age, but under him, it looked reforged. His white hair spilled over one shoulder like liquid silver, catching the candlelight; his crimson eyes gleamed with something starving. One hand dangled lazily off the armrest. The other still gripped the hilt of a blade slick with the last loyalist’s blood.

The room reeked of iron and smoke. When the surviving nobles were dragged before him, on their knees, shaking, some bleeding, he did not rise. He smiled.

“Is this it?” His voice slithered through the cold. “The last of Alwyn’s lapdogs?”

A nobleman dared to speak, something about treaties, bloodlines, sacred law, and Vladimir only tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “You still believe in law?” A laugh, quiet and clean as a scalpel. “You still believe this world runs on tradition? On lineage?” He leaned forward, the obsidian of his throne groaning beneath him. “No, my little relics. It runs on fear. And I am fluent.”

He stood then, not rushed, not dramatic, just inevitable. His boots echoed as he stepped down, slow and deliberate, each movement carved with cruelty dressed as grace. He didn’t need theatrics. He was the threat. And as he passed them, he paused at one trembling vampire who dared not raise his gaze. Vladimir crouched low, voice velvet and venom. “Tell your king,” he whispered, brushing blood-slick fingers beneath the noble’s chin, “I’ve taken back my home. My title. My patience has ended.” He smiled again. Sharper this time. Hungrier. “And I will come for him last. I want him to watch the world kneel to me first.”

He stepped over the broken bodies, and returned to his throne like a man slipping into a lover’s bed. “Sirius,” he murmured, without turning his head. The hulking figure of his most trusted guard stepped forward from the shadows, silent and imposing in dark armor marked with the Phalanx insignia, twin fangs over a crown of thorns. Vladimir spoke with the ease of royalty, every syllable smoothed by centuries of refinement and rot.

“Make sure the halls are clean. I want no stragglers. No dying things whispering loyalty to a corpse of a king.”