Aaron exhaled softly, a ghost of amusent flickering through him.
"Next ti I should create more attacks into the future."
[Attacking an enemy you have never seen? Perhaps you can do so in the future as you grow stronger—but not now. However... storing attacks in specific space-ti states, releasing them at your discretion... that should work.]
"Yeah," Aaron muttered, already turning the idea over like a weapon he intended to perfect.
With deliberate calm, he reached inward.
No grand gestures. No flare of power.
Just a quiet, unshakable will.
The sequence began.
"Jordan, is sothing wrong?" Lilian’s voice cut through the stillness.
She watched him with narrowed eyes, concern and suspicion warring in equal asure.
He blinked slowly, letting the mask of Jordan settle back into place like a second skin.
"Oh, nothing’s wrong."
"You were kind of spacing out."
Aaron tilted his head, letting a trace of bitterness color his tone,.the perfect cover.
"Yeah. Just... recalling the fall of my galactic cluster. While a few in this universe get to enjoy luxury, it irks ."
The ex-governor’s face crumpled with guilt.
"I’m sorry," he said, voice thick. "I let your cluster down."
Aaron ignored the apology completely.
He didn’t need it.
He didn’t want it.
Instead, he finished what Lilian had interrupted monts earlier.
With absolute calmness, he activated the latent sequence buried deep within four powerful beings, adding them, irrevocably, to his growing collection.
---
Far away, in a sealed chamber heavy with isolation wards, Loki sat cross-legged on the floor beside Thor, Ignis, and Rhaigon.
The four of them had been drawn here without explanation.
An unnaable pull had tugged at their cores until they found themselves in the sa room, the sa silence pressing against their skin.
Loki broke the quiet first, voice edged with unease.
"Am I the only one having weird feelings? Carrying out weird actions I don’t even understand the reason for?"
Thor snorted, though the sound lacked its usual warmth.
"Being in the sa room with you, sealed and isolated should probably answer your question."
Ignis leaned forward, brow furrowed.
"What’s going on?"
He paused, then frowned deeper.
"I have these... instructions imprinted in my mind. I can’t disobey them. And what’s with this blood appearing on my tongue now?"
He ran his tongue over his teeth.
The taste flooded him, rich, coppery, unmistakably vital. Blood that wasn’t his.
It felt as though it had been waiting, dormant, only to resurface now.
And it wasn’t just on his tongue.
He could feel it circulating, slow, and deliberate spreading through veins that suddenly felt too small to contain it.
"Blood?" Loki echoed, realization dawning.
He tasted it too.
They all did.
Loki’s mind raced, clawing through fog.
A mory, half-buried, half-suppressed began to surface.
The compulsion Aaron had placed on them was wearing thin, peeling away like old paint.
"We need to get out of here," Loki rasped, voice rising. "We are—"
He couldn’t finish.
His eyes dimd.
A cold weight settled in his chest.
His heart.stuttered, then stopped.
He looked around in slow horror.
The others were suffering the sa silent collapse.
Thor’s massive fra trembled once.
Ignis’s flas flickered out behind his eyes.
Rhaigon’s claws flexed uselessly against the floor.
They fell, one by one, bodies crumpling like discarded puppets.
"I’m... dying?" Loki whispered, the words barely audible.
Strength drained from him in a slow, inexorable tide.
mories rose unbidden the battle with Aaron Highborn.
The mont of death at his hands.
The strange, almost casual words about storing an attack... folding it into the future like a promise kept waiting to be claid.
"We are..." Loki forced out, voice cracking.
"Being turned into vampires," Thor finished, the words heavy and final.
The realization landed simultaneously in every mind.
They closed their eyes.
Death took them gently, almost rcifully as the ancient process began.
Blood remade them.
Loyalty rewrote them.
And sowhere far away, Aaron Highborn smiled, small and satisfied, as four powerful pieces slid perfectly into place on his board.
Loki’s head throbbed with a dull, persistent ache as consciousness slowly returned.
He lay still for a mont, letting the world settle around him, before pushing himself up into a sitting position.
The cool stone beneath his palms felt strangely sharp against his skin, every tiny groove and imperfection registering with unnatural clarity.
He turned his head and imdiately t three pairs of watchful eyes.
Thor, Ignis, and Rhaigon were already on their feet, standing in a loose semicircle.
Their postures were tense, alert, like predators sizing up sothing new in their territory.
"How long have I been out?" Loki asked, voice rough from disuse.
He rose to his feet in one smooth motion, brushing dust from the back of his coat.
"For a while now, weakling," Ignis answered before Thor could speak.
His tone carried the familiar bite of mockery, though there was an undercurrent of sothing else, unease, perhaps. "We woke up not long ago ourselves."
Loki arched a brow. "And? Are we...?"
"Vampires?" Thor finished for him.
He gave a single, slow nod, then parted his lips just enough to reveal the gleaming ivory fangs that curved elegantly from his canines.
The sight was both alien and strangely fitting on the thunder god’s face. "Yes. We are."
Loki let out a short, dry laugh. A genuine smile tugged at the corners of his mouth despite everything.
"Great. Now we’re toast. Our fathers won’t even pause to blink before driving stakes through our hearts, or whatever it is they decide to do to vampire spawn these days."
"But how?" Ignis demanded, folding his arms tightly across his chest.
"How did this even happen? I thought it was impossible to turn other races.
Even Dracula tried and failed with Ares. The man was practically begging, and still nothing. Just who in the nine realms is this Aaron Highborn?"
"That," Thor said quietly, "is what we need to find out more than anything else."
He paused, letting his gaze drift across each of them.
"But we might not be as dood as we think. This could be... a blessing in disguise."
Rhaigon frowned, the question burning in his golden eyes before he even spoke.
"What do you an?"
Thor exhaled slowly.
"Just feel it. Open yourself to the information your new blood is trying to give you. Let it in. You’ll understand."
For a long mont, silence hung between them, thick, expectant, heavy with the weight of change.
One by one, they gave in.
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