Chapter 777: What Remain

Alex glanced toward Vesa.

"We can hear you."

"I was relying on it."

For an instant, Vesa almost smiled. Thepes pulled at his shoulder again, and the rune flashed between them. He did not appear to appreciate the joke.

Vesa looked toward the trace beneath his chest.

Master had asked her to preserve the artifact until he could examine what had been done to it. She had held to that answer through the fight. Now he had heard how the body lived around it, and he was leaving it inside the creature that had nearly killed the pair.

"You said we would look at removing it," she said.

"And now I am telling you what removing it would do."

Thepes watched her hand.

She wanted the artifact back. She wanted the thing they had built around it gone. But Master could hear Thepes speaking, and he had refused to ask for him to be taken apart.

Vesa folded her small hands against her chest.

"For now," she said. "While he stays behind those marks."

"You think I intend to thank you?" Thepes asked.

"No. Keep testing that mark and I’ll call them back to reset it."

He stared at her. She stared back until he looked away.

Alex checked the rune beside Thepes’s shoulder. Thepes pulled away from him as far as the ice allowed, watching Vesa until she lowered her hand.

The trace around the artifact shifted with his movement. Alucard’s voice wavered, then returned through a different part of the strained pattern. Vesa followed it.

"Master, the path shifted."

"Yes. Stay with the part you can hear."

Vesa adjusted her contact.

She had reached him during the battle when the different powers inside Thepes were being pulled apart. With his body restrained and his injuries slowly closing, those openings were changing again.

The familiar trace now reached her through several overlapping paths. She described them to Alucard.

"The artifact carries something you recognize," he said. "The blood around it has been forced into an arrangement you don’t usually follow."

Alex looked at the thin blood moving around Thepes’s wrist.

"Other Progenitor remains and vampire essence," he said. "We already know what they used."

"You know the ingredients. Watch what holds them together now."

Vesa stayed with the changing trace.

One part weakened as Thepes’s wrist repaired. Another remained clear enough to carry the voice without drawing more power through the damaged place.

She moved her contact to it.

Alucard’s next words came through more clearly. His voice was no stronger; she had only found a better path for the answer he was already trying to send.

He still needed her to describe the change before he could answer. Vesa resented that. After hearing his voice again, she had wanted to give him the entire mess and watch him put it right. Instead, she had to keep the path open while he worked from what she could see.

"That difference matters," Alucard said.

"To keeping you here?" Vesa asked.

"To reaching others too."

Alex raised his head.

Vesa listened more closely. They had found survivors and brought an army here, but there were still vampires scattered beyond the places they could reach directly.

Alucard had wanted them to restore the race. She had not forgotten that while directing the wounded through the streets.

"Not every survivor’s blood still follows what you inherited," he said. "Some has been damaged or altered. A call through the familiar pattern may not reach them clearly."

Mingyue looked at Thepes.

"And his pattern can?"

"It may help you reach survivors the familiar call would miss. It already joins things that were not inherited together."

Thepes’s eyes narrowed.

"You want to use me."

They did want to learn from the way his body had been made. Pretending otherwise would make Alucard’s recognition sound like empty words.

"I want to know whether it works," Alex said. His gaze lingered on the artifact’s trace. "A few drops might be enough."

Vesa extended a hand toward the slowly gathering blood. Mingyue stepped between them and the edge of the restraint.

"He’s still repairing himself. Start with your own blood."

Alex looked at her, then at the slowly closing wrist.

"Vesa, keep what you observed. Don’t pull anything from him yet."

She nodded. Thepes kept watching until her hand was back by her side.

Mingyue spoke to Alucard.

"Would a call give him the same hold he used on the bodies outside?"

"It mustn’t be allowed to become one," Alucard said. "Reaching someone and moving them are different things."

"Then his blood stays out of the first attempt," she said. "We stop if an answer starts moving with the call."

A brief warmth came through the old connection, then its strength dropped again. Alucard was still trying to answer. Vesa narrowed the exchange at once.

"Stop for a moment, Master."

The room fell quiet except for Thepes’s breathing and the faint sounds from the street.

Vesa held only the trace she could maintain without asking for words.

Alex looked toward the doorway. A soldier passed carrying a bundle of cloth, then returned with an empty bowl.

There were people outside who needed help immediately. Farther away, there might be others they had yet to reach, whose condition they didn’t know.

Vesa wanted the whole method before the connection faded. But if she forced him to keep explaining now, they might be left with half an answer and no chance to ask what they had misunderstood.

"Let him rest," she told Alex.

Alex nodded.

"We use what we already have first. A short call through our own blood, with Vesa watching. If someone answers, we find out what they need before promising more."

"And if no one answers?" Mingyue asked.

"We learn that before trying to send it farther."

Thepes gave a harsh breath through his nose.

"You think they will come because you call?"

Alex looked at him.

"I don’t know what they’ll do. Hearing them would be a start."

Vesa felt Alucard’s presence stir, but no clear words followed.

She nearly asked whether that was the beginning he had intended. The trace weakened before she spoke, and she kept the question for later.

Mingyue checked the restraint at Thepes’s damaged left wrist, making sure the repairing flesh had not opened a way beneath the ice. She adjusted the edge without tightening it over the part still trying to heal.

He watched her hand until she moved back.

"I didn’t agree to help you," he said.

"I heard you," she answered.

Alex stood slowly. He kept one hand near his injured side while looking over the room.

"Two guards outside. Call us if he finds a gap. We check the call after the wounded are settled."

Vesa nodded.

He and Mingyue moved toward the door. Thepes remained inside the ice, alive and hostile, with the artifact continuing to carry the faint trace she had recognized during the battle.

Vesa stayed near the wall.

For the first time since finding her old master’s voice, no strike or falling body demanded her next words.

She could still feel him there.

The questions she had kept putting aside returned as she held the damaged connection open.