Chapter 5 - Death and Rebirth

A loud *bang* downstairs snapped her out of her daydreaming of events that were unlikely to happen. The noise sounded like something hard falling onto the wooden floor, she thought it may have been her mother falling due to stress and overworking or dropping something heavy, so she got up and quickly rushed downstairs to see what was the matter, throwing the coins on the bed.

As she exited the room a strong aroma filled the air, what she thought was just the scent of iron may be due to something breaking, she soon came to realize was the scent of blood. Reaching the walkway, what she say next instantly made her freeze.

Laying on the ground with bloodstained clothing, a stab wound that went through the chest area, and the lack of any signs of life, was her mother. Shi was too shocked to even move from where he entered, her brain couldn't process what was happening fast enough to even properly work.

In her confused stupor, a long sword pierced through her stomach from behind, as if it was cutting through butter there didn't even seem to be any resistance to it. Falling to the ground as her body strength instantly started to fade, blood gushing out of the open wound.

Her life started fading, barely being able to keep her eyes open with the last ounce of strength she had in her body. She saw the people that stabbed both her and her mother. They were a small group of what seemed like knights, they had armor on that seemed expensive, nothing Shi could afford, and from the emblem on the suit, they must belong to a noble family.

That was all she could notice as her consciousness faded.

She felt as if she was sinking deeper and deeper underwater, it was heavy, she couldn't move a single muscle, her eyes dimmed as the light was vanishing as she was being surrounded by nothing but darkness.

In her head she refused to accept that she was dying, no, she couldn't accept it. It happened to suddenly, she doesn't even know why she was stabbed, why her mother was killed, she had to know, she had to know why they killed her sweet mother. She had to find them, hunt them.

Hunt them. Kill them.

As her emotions flared, suddenly, she heard a voice in the endless darkness. It sounded almost like her own, except odd, it was deeper than her own, and seemed to have a sense of, pride in it. The voice was shouting, speaking loudly, telling her something but she couldn't make it out at first.

Eventually, it grew stronger and clearer, echoing through the darkness for her to hear fully.

"Wake up!" It commanded her.

Shi then suddenly shot up from her laying position, she was standing in a room, it wasn't her house it was just a small completely white room. It was so white that it seemed blinding to her who had been in the darkness for so long before, it felt endless, the white room.

Some time passed as her eyes adjusted to the room and she could now see, standing in front of her was something she never imagined, it was herself, At least, it looked like herself but it also didn't at the same time.

Unlike herself who had dirty silver hair, it had pitch-black hair, easily contrasting the room, with pale white skin, not like her malnourished light white skin. Everything else was a perfect replica, even her eyes, however, its eyes glowed with a crimson hue.

The figure opened her mouth and said in a deep yet somewhat calming voice that echoed in the empty room, "Hello, it's good to see you finally, and before you ask who I am, I am you."

Shi was perplexed, she didn't understand what was going on, how can she be her? Where was this place? And how was she still alive, if she was alive that is, was this the afterlife?

The figure noticing she was confused continued her explanation, "Let me explain everything to you as simple and as fast as I can, and to the best of my limited abilities. You are dead, well to be more precise, you did die, but you are once again alive. You may be thinking, 'how is that possible?' Well, I'll explain that too. You died when those knights stabbed you, but due to your hibernating bloodline, this simply resulted in your body protecting you, and changing to survive."

Shi was even more confused than she was originally. She decided to question this figure before her further, asking it, "What do you mean I died? I don't~" her sentence got cut off with her falling to the ground struggling as flashes of what happened.

She saw her dead mother, the knights stabbing her. Tears ran down her face at the memories flooding back to her, she did die, but more importantly, her mother died, her only family.

She wiped her tears away getting a more stable mindset after a few seconds of crying, now was not the time, the figure spoke fast, so they might be a time limit here.

"So you said some bloodline i had saved me? Explain what that even means." She asked in a more calm tone, still hints of anger and sadness behind her front.

The other her was a bit surprised at first with her quick recovery, as shown by the raised eyebrows on her face, but continued with her explanation, "As you know, your father died before you were born, you've only heard some stories about him and saw some pictures, but what you don't know is that he was a being called a Vampire, making you a Vampire due to how birthing works. As for why you didn't have it all the time, well it seems that the vampiric part was hibernating within you because you hadn't drank any blood, well besides your own just now."

Shi wanted to question it some more but decided not to, it was probably the best explanation to explain how she was still alive. Shi continued with other questions, "Ok so I'm this Vampire race, but what exactly are you, and how do you even know all this? I know you said you're me but I'm here so you can't be me."

The other version of Shi thought for a bit before giving a proper answer, "Well, you can call me XO. or whatever you want. I'm the Vampiric part of you, sort of like a manifestation. Due to it being suppressed for so long, your vampiric genes weren't properly integrated into you, your instincts, the memories that came with your genes, and such, couldn't fuse with you at your younger age, so i was formed to make up for that when you drank blood. Otherwise trying to force those things into your mind now, might break you."

Shi simply nodded accepting what XO said without giving it much of a thought, this caused XO to get confused, "You seem calmer than I would expect."

Shi started to laugh, her laughter was directed towards the question herself asked, "Calm?" She spoke, followed with a sighing, "I'm anything but calm, I grew up a simple kid trying to make money so my mother can finally retire, and now she's dead? And you say I died then got revived because I'm a vampire, which I didn't know about at all? And those damn knights, those damn knights, they came and killed my mother, they killed me, they destroyed my peaceful little life. How can I be calm? I'm far from calm, I have a purpose now, something to charge towards. I will find those knights, and what happens next, well, we'll see."