Liana spun around at lightning speed, letting go of the maroon velvet curtain, which immediately blocked the horrifying view in the underground hall. Her feet hurriedly carried her through the darkness of the balcony. An icy chill swept over the back of her neck, convincing the girl that the pair of red eyes below had just closed the distance without making a sound.
She ran without caring about the hunger that had been tormenting her stomach. The stone stairs she had descended earlier now felt far steeper and more slippery. Her shoes pounded against the rough stone, creating booming echoes that reverberated off the corridor walls.
Liana's breathing came fast and ragged. Her lungs burned when she finally reached the main corridor level. But her pace suddenly slowed as she looked left and right.
The atmosphere around her had changed completely.
The stone corridor she had passed through earlier now looked entirely different. All the carved wooden doors lining the walls appeared identical, with no signs, directions, or memorable decorations to guide her. The wall torches cast a dim orange glow, making the shadows of the stone walls seem to dance and move.
"This is impossible," Liana whispered frantically.
She turned right, following the route she believed led to the stairs up to the servants' dormitory. After only ten steps, the heavy sound of footsteps drifted faintly from behind her. They scraped against the marble floor—not hurried, but steady and relentlessly oppressive.
Panic drove Liana to run faster. She turned again at the nearest intersection, then veered into another, narrower corridor. Every time she hoped to find an exit, all she found were endless rows of stone passageways crossing one another.
The footsteps behind her drew closer. There wasn't just one person—there were two sets of footsteps, moving so lightly yet so close together.
Liana spotted a massive, rotting wooden cabinet in the corner of a dead-end corridor near a stone pillar. Without thinking, she slipped into the narrow gap between the back of the cabinet and the dusty stone wall. She drew in a deep breath and pressed a hand to her chest, trying to keep her wildly pounding heart from making a sound.
She froze her entire body.
A few seconds later, two tall figures slowly passed in front of the cabinet. Through the narrow gap where she was hiding, Liana could see flashes of aristocratic robes trimmed with gold.
"I'm certain that scraping sound came from this direction," said a young man's lazy voice. It was the same voice as the blond young man who had been sipping from a silver goblet down below.
"Maybe it was just a mole," replied the girl's voice beside him. "Or a new servant foolish enough to wander around during the banquet."
"If it's a servant, then we get a bonus midnight snack," the blond boy replied with a low laugh.
The laugh sounded perfectly calm, yet it distilled a horror that sent Liana's blood running cold. She clamped both hands over her mouth. Tears of anxiety welled in the corners of her eyes, but she held them back with all her strength.
The two fanged students continued down the corridor, and the sound of their footsteps eventually vanished around a distant turn.
Liana took broken, gasping breaths after making sure the area had gone quiet again. Her body sagged against the cold stone wall. In the cramped darkness behind the cabinet, her thoughts drifted back to memories from several weeks earlier.
The black-Nocturne-wax-sealed scholarship acceptance letter she had received at the orphanage. Promises of a free, world-class education, a generous monthly salary simply for working as support staff, and a chance to change her bleak fate. Every word written in gold ink on that expensive paper now felt like one enormous lie.
Nocturne Academy was not an elite school for gifted humans from all over the world. It was an isolated cage, a private hunting ground where ordinary humans like her were deliberately raised to serve as a supply of living blood for the cold-blooded predators.
"They set me up," Liana whispered, her lips trembling.
As she tried to steady her breathing, a strange sensation suddenly rose from inside her throat. Her head began to spin.
A strange scent slipped into her sense of smell. The sharp, heavy, unmistakable odor of liquid copper. The scent of blood.
The scent wafted from the end of the corridor, carried by a cold breeze drifting softly through the air. Strangely, instead of making Liana's stomach churn even more as it had when she saw the scene in the hall, the nausea gradually faded.
In its place came a strange pulse in the lower part of her chest. A razor-sharp thirst drove her salivary glands into overdrive. Drool slipped from her mouth before she could stop it. Her throat burned with unbearable thirst, as though every cell in her body recognized that coppery scent and urged her to draw closer.
Liana clenched her fists, driving her nails into her palms until the pain brought her back to her senses.
"No. What's wrong with me?" she whimpered softly.
She rejected the maddening sensation. With great effort, Liana crawled out from behind the cabinet. She had to keep moving. Staying in one place was no different from willingly offering her neck to those bloodsuckers.
She stepped slowly out of the dim corner, choosing the opposite direction from the one the two students had taken. She tiptoed across the cold marble. Every time she passed a turn, Liana strained her ears, listening for every whisper of wind or rustle of fabric.
But these stone corridors seemed determined to lead her astray. The path that should have gone straight instead sent her circling back to the same place. The stone walls around her seemed to close in, trapping her inside a pathless maze.
Liana kept walking at a half-run until her breathing grew ragged again. The strange thirst in her throat intensified, growing more pronounced as the coppery smell stabbing at her nose became stronger.
She quickened her pace past a row of wall lamps that suddenly went out one by one behind her. Darkness crept swiftly after her, chasing her like a black tongue ready to swallow her whole.
Liana ran without looking back.
At last, her footsteps stopped abruptly when her eyes caught sight of the end of the corridor ahead. A thick stone wall stood solidly there, completely blocking the way. The corridor was a dead end.
Liana spun around in a panic, ready to change direction. But her feet froze on the marble floor.
A dark red liquid had soaked the floor several yards in front of her. It had spilled from a silver goblet lying on its side beside the wall, spreading across the cold stone.
Liana stood transfixed. The liquid in the silver goblet was not red wine, but blood that was still steaming warm—and a tall shadowy figure now stood directly before her.