NOCTURNE REQUIEM

Selene's body writhed in rebellion.

The hunger wasn't just an ache; it was a searing, insatiable fire, curling through her veins like molten metal.

Every muscle trembled, her stomach clenched, and each breath carried the phantom taste of blood, maddening in its absence. It was everywhere.

The rhythmic pulse of liquid rushing through unseen veins.

The warm, coppery scent drifting beneath the damp chill of the chamber.

It taunted her, wrapping around her restraint like barbed wire.

She clenched her jaw, her fangs pressing painfully against her lower lip. No. She wouldn't give in.

Her fingers scraped against the rough stone wall, nails splitting as she dug in, seeking an anchor in the numbing cold. But it wasn't enough.

A tremor shook her frame, sweat slicking her skin despite the icy air pressing against her like a death shroud.

Across the dimly lit room, Lucian leaned lazily against the doorway, the flickering torchlight casting restless shadows over his sharp features. His silver eyes gleamed; cold, knowing, amused.

"You're only making it worse, the dose I gave you last night is not enough to sustain you forever." His voice was velvet and iron, smooth yet merciless.

Selene bared her throbbing fangs at him. "I don't need your advice."

Lucian's lips curved in the ghost of a smirk. "You say that now."

She shivered as she look at her fading self in the mirror, her physical features unstable, "Why do I look like that?" She mumbled.

He sighed passively, "You're glitching because you haven't taken the required amount of blood, think of it as you're half human- half vampire for now"

A shudder wracked through her body. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to drown out the siren call of blood; thick, rich, and intoxicating.

But it was too late. Her fangs throbbed with a pulse that wasn't hers. Her throat felt like sandpaper, parched and raw.

Lucian took a slow step forward, boots echoing against the stone. "You think stubbornness is strength?" He tilted his head. "It's not."

Her nails dug deeper into the wall, but her body betrayed her. A traitor to its own cause.

Then the System's voice seeped into her mind, smooth and clinical.

[Critical Hunger Threshold Reached. Override Imminent.]

A dagger of white-hot agony stabbed through her skull.

Selene gasped, her vision fracturing as she staggered. The room tilted violently. A high-pitched ringing swelled in her ears, drowning out everything else.

Lucian sighed. "You can drink willingly…" His voice was closer now, a dark promise. "Or you can let the System take control."

Her knees buckled as she fell from the bed.

Lucian caught her wrist with effortless ease, his grip firm yet strangely careful. His presence loomed over her, an encroaching shadow.

"Either way, you're drinking."

Selene shuddered, her breaths coming in shallow gasps. The scent of blood thickened in the air, and suddenly, her now faint heartbeat wasn't the only one she heard, it was as if the entire world pulsed around her, throbbing, calling.

Lucian lifted a small vial between them, the glass catching the dim light. The liquid inside was dark, rich, crimson. It glowed like a whispered temptation.

Selene's stomach twisted. The scent crashed over her, rich and metallic, wrapping around her senses like a velvet vice.

"Take it." His voice was quiet now, almost gentle. "It's better than tearing someone's throat out."

Her hands curled into fists. "I won't—"

Another wave of pain struck, sharper this time, tearing through her like razors beneath her skin.

Lucian's voice dipped lower. "Yes, you will."

Selene's breath hitched. She hated him. She hated him for being right.

With a growl of frustration; of surrender, she snatched the vial from his grasp and drank.

The moment the blood touched her tongue, her world shattered.

Her consciousness lurched; violently and unnaturally.

For a heartbeat, she was weightless, suspended in a void. Then, reality snapped into place.

She was no longer in the chamber.

Selene stood in a vast underground facility, the air thick with an artificial chill that seeped into her bones.

The walls stretched endlessly, lined with towering glass pods,each filled with people; humans, floating in crimson liquid. Their bodies hung motionless, eerily weightless in the thick fluid, their veins tethered to an intricate web of tubes.

Slowly, methodically, their blood siphoned away, feeding into a grotesque labyrinth of machinery pulsing with dim, rhythmic light.

A metallic scent clogged her lungs, the overwhelming stench of blood mixing with the sterile tang of antiseptic.

Selene tried to move. She couldn't.

Her body refused to obey, locked in place by an unseen force. The creeping dread slithered up her spine, cold and suffocating. She wasn't just seeing this.

She was trapped in it.

Somewhere in the distance, a voice echoed, low and clinical.

"The System is evolving. Anomalies must be contained."

A figure stood before the pods, their silhouette bathed in the eerie, shifting glow of blood-filtered light. Shadows clung to them like an extension of their form, concealing their features, making them less than human, more than a phantom.

Selene's breath hitched.

The figure turned, slow and deliberate.

Their face remained obscured, until it didn't.

They looked directly at her.

Selene's entire being froze.

Her pulse hammered against her ribs, a frantic rhythm of wrong, wrong, wrong.

Wrong place, even worse time.

They weren't supposed to see her. This wasn't real.

It couldn't be real.

The figure took a step forward, their presence pressing against her like an unseen weight.

"You shouldn't be here."

Then...

A blinding white light exploded through her vision, searing through every nerve like lightning fracturing the sky.

Selene's eyes snapped open.

The chamber reassembled around her in a rush of cold stone and flickering torchlight. Her body lay sprawled on the floor, her breaths ragged, her limbs trembling from the aftershock.

Beside her, the shattered vial glistened in the dim light, its contents completely drained.

Lucian's voice cut through the disorienting haze, low and sharp.

"What did you see?"

Selene blinked. See?

"Yes, you were screaming"

Her mind was a void.

A faint unease coiled in her chest, whispering that something was wrong, that something had happened, but it was like trying to grasp smoke.

Had something happened?

The System's voice hummed softly in the back of her mind, cool and indifferent.

[Synchronization Complete. Unstable Data Purged.]

Lucian's gaze bore into her, waiting.

Selene pressed a shaking hand to her temple. "I… I don't know."

She felt like something had slipped through her fingers, something strangely important. But no matter how hard she tried, the memory was gone.

Lucian's gaze darkened. "I see."