Bleeding steel

Death is not the end

Death can never be the end

Death is the road

Life is the traveller

The soul is the guide

—Sri Chinmoy

***

Inside the fourth universe, planet Arsangah, the world with the bleeding sun.

DRAEKAI

So many people have become puppets controlled by evil...

Before that the black and white winged vampires lived in harmony in our metallic world.

But ever since that unfaithful day, things on Arsangah have become chaotic. The star storm that pelted the wildlife and several other vampires to their demise, ignited the verge of what ate the planet to it's present estate.

Star stones are poisonous when it comes in contact with the surface and atmospheric layer of the planets in our galaxy, Vassius. It ate away our life force and dried up the very beings we preyed on to survive.

The planet I had lived on for several decades began to wear away. The crimson sky started to dissipate and with each passing day the black sea of stars outside the planet, penetrated through the atmosphere. The bleeding sun crumbled before our very eyes and rained its blazing hot pieces on us.

The pieces melted the metallic source of nature and soon shelters grew scare. So did a vital blood source for all vampires.

Amongst all this pandemonium in the land, the black-winged vampires turned against us and many of us white-wings lost of lives in a battle that could have been avoided. I survived... barely. We were taken hostage and locked up somewhere within the decaying planet, somewhere very far away...

I and the other White-winged vampires stared at the barbed-wired cages, longing for the light, longing for the day we'll finally be free and return to Nesquik's gate.

A few days ago, our comrade Hadrian had been dragged away by the black-winged vampires for refusing to eat the tasteless sludge served to us every night at the stroke of twelve. Hadrian had been so far the weakest among us trying to survive as we all hoped that our innocence would be proven. And now seven days later he would be returned to us.

The cell creaked open and the black-winged guard thrust him in with force.

"Hadrian!"

He was drastically paler than before he'd left. There weren't any visible injuries from whip marks or beatings but he could barely keep his eyes open. He looked fairly disoriented in space so Duncan supported him to the only good place to sit and rest.

His steps were unsteady and by the time he reached the haystacks, his arms fell limp by both sides and Duncan stopped feeling his laboured breathing on his collarbone.

"Hadrian?"

Keane noticed that his chest had stopped expanding from breathing. Duncan dropped him down carefully and that was when we all realized that his life was quickly slipping through his fingers.

"Guards! Guards! Hadrian is dying...!"

I shouted but non of the dark wings on duty moved an inch from the door a few metres away.

"We're not asking you to call a healer, if you could just loosen our shackles a bit so we can all share the damage—"

Teague tapped my shoulder urging me to stop talking.

"They won't come, save your energy."

"B-But Hadrian is..."

That was when I noticed the despondent looks on everyone's faces. I glanced at Hadrian and saw that the veins in his hands had already turned silver and reached his heart.

He was a body void of a soul now.

The black-winged guards stopped feeding us after that with neither food nor blood and we dropped dead one after another. Only I remained.

The stench from the corpses corroded the mucus lining in my nostrils and made it almost impossible to breathe. My tongue felt so dry that I could probably lick the ice creeping into my cell from the cracked windows to quench just almost nothing of my thirst.

If I could just get one drop of blood. Just one drop will do. It'll revitalize me and I'll survive for a few more days. I need to make it out of here, I can't die like this.

I-I can't...

I found myself on the filthy and rusted parts of the cell floors, streaked with dead flies and a suffocating miasma from the lifeless bodies. They had refused to decay for reasons completely unknown to me. Which made me wonder if those were really flies and where the smell was coming from if there wasn't any rotting flesh.

Sluggishly my eyes finally flickered shut...

***

Inside the second universe, planet earth.

PROSE MODE

Bodie was so happy that he was able to get the newest release of the game based on his favourite book series "All things bleed."

As soon as the closing bell rang he bolted out of the school doors towards his chauffeur. After a thankless 30-minute trip, his driver was rewarded with a day off. Tomorrow would be Saturday and the more alone time he had at his disposal, the better. He would have the large mansion all to himself and be able to play the game as much as he wanted.

He took a turn left and trudged into Skullcandy avenue. He always hated this place. It was barely six in the evening and it's already sending creepy vibes. It was always desolate and eerily quiet even though the entire neighbourhood was occupied by rich elites.

Everywhere you'd look, black cats, their eyes illuminated by the dim light of the moon, stood on the prowl, meowing and watching those who passed. The wind, shrilly and brisk, howled, accompanying the shiny eyed posse, their eyes especially keen on those walking alone.

Most of all, the part that freaked Bodie out the most was the dark and deep alleyway between two large buildings. It was just before the street leading to his house and there weren't other alternative routes he could follow.

His sister always called him a big baby for thinking that all the scary creatures in his novels existed somewhere in the multiverse. This would have been true and he would have felt like a real wimp all his life if that creature hadn't appeared ten years ago.

He swallowed hard, clutching the box close to his chest and readjusting his glasses. He trudged forward. If he'd remembered about this alleyway much earlier, he wouldn't have given the chauffeur the day off so quickly. Instead he would have told him to wait for him somewhere nearby and pick him up before the intersection at Skullcandy avenue.

Well, there was nothing he could do about it now...

***

Somewhere not too far away.

Draekai found it very hard to keep his eyes open. The power to close them was much stronger than the resistance he was exerting to keep them open. Maybe they will never open once they close.

He was too weak to move a limb or muscle and a faint smell of iron lingered in the air, that was when he finally noticed the wetness in his abdomen and the red substance escaping out of it.

"B-Blood... "

His senses started tingling from the expectation of being fed with the rich red fluid but drinking the vitality out of his body seemed wrong.

Why? He wondered.

Why was he bleeding? Why was his blood red? He tilted his head up a bit, it was the first time in a few hundred years that he'd seen the sky but why was it blue and not red? Strange.

He couldn't move and once again he felt his life force escaping through his fingers. Putting the pain aside, what bit his skin the most was the fact that none of his dead comrades were in sight.

He hated being alone and what made it worse was the unfamiliar scenery. The large metallic dumpsters didn't ring a bell. And the little black creatures continued to stuff their faces with mouldy crumbs, not minding his existence at all.

He heard short footsteps approaching and he tried to talk again but he had used up way more strength than he needed to look at the sky earlier.

No!

He was going to survive, he had to.

He lunged himself forward and wrapped his blood-stained hand around the sneakers of the boy. Bodie had stopped to see what had made a weird noise in the alleyway. His presence blocked the dim light that managed to escape into it.

He wasn't expecting the pull on his shoes at all and when he looked down, he almost screamed out his lungs.