The first reports sounded impossible.

Which, Seraphina was learning, usually meant the Church was involved.

The monastery command chamber erupted into overlapping voices the moment she and Lucien reached the lower operations level beneath the ruins.

Radio chatter screamed through old speakers.

Emergency maps flickered across projection walls.

Sanctuary scouts moved frantically between tables carrying casualty reports while Morvena shouted at three different people simultaneously with the kind of exhausted authority only ancient vampires and emergency room nurses truly mastered.

Cassian spotted them first.

His expression darkened immediately.

“That was fast.”

Lucien’s hand remained loosely wrapped around Seraphina’s wrist from the moment they ran downstairs together.

Tiny thing.

Not even fully conscious probably.

Still enough that Cassian noticed instantly.

Of course he did.

“Ah,” Cassian sighed tiredly. “You finally emotionally combusted.”

“No time,” Morvena snapped before either of them answered. “Eastern districts collapsed thirty minutes ago.”

Seraphina frowned sharply.

“To Church forces?”

Silence.

Wrong silence.

Morvena looked toward one of the shattered radio consoles.

“Not exactly.”

A scout stepped forward shakily afterward.

Young.

Terrified.

“Whatever they released inside the city…” He swallowed hard. “It’s spreading too fast.”

Lucien’s posture changed instantly beside Seraphina.

Predatory focus settling through him.

“What did you see?”

The scout hesitated.

Then quietly:

“People eating each other.”

The room fell silent.

No one joked afterward.

Because everyone recognized fear when it entered a voice that deeply.

Another transmission crackled violently through the command speakers overhead.

Gunfire screamed faintly in the background.

Then a woman’s voice shouted:

They’re not stopping after silver rounds—

Jesus Christ—

THEY KEEP MOVING—

The transmission cut abruptly into static.

Seraphina’s stomach twisted immediately.

No.

Lucien crossed toward the operations map already.

“Show me outbreak zones.”

Several sanctuary strategists moved instantly.

Red markers spread rapidly across central Prague districts.

Too rapid.

Entire neighborhoods overwhelmed within an hour.

Church quarantine walls already collapsing.

Civilians trapped inside.

Morvena pointed sharply toward the eastern river sectors.

“It started beneath the old sanctification labs.”

Lucien went completely still.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

“Oh no,” he whispered.

Seraphina looked toward him immediately.

“What?”

Lucien stared at the map with visible horror slowly sharpening behind his eyes.

“The immortality trials.”

The room quieted again.

Because suddenly everyone understood at once.

The Church wasn’t releasing vampires.

They were releasing failed experiments.

Cassian swore softly under his breath nearby.

“They weaponized the blood research.”

Lucien’s expression hardened instantly.

“No.” His voice lowered dangerously. “They weaponized suffering.”

Another emergency transmission burst across the command room.

This time visual.

A sanctuary drone feed flickered onto the central projection wall above the map tables.

Prague.

Or what remained of it.

The footage shook violently while the operator sprinted through overturned streets covered in abandoned vehicles and burning barricades.

Then the creatures appeared.

Seraphina felt her blood turn cold immediately.

Not vampires.

Worse.

Human-shaped things moved through the smoke too quickly and wrong somehow.

Their bodies twisted unnaturally beneath torn skin while black veins spread visibly across their throats and faces.

Some still wore Church execution uniforms.

Others looked civilian.

All of them moved like hunger stripped intelligence away entirely.

One creature slammed headfirst through a police barricade hard enough to shatter bone.

Then kept moving.

God.

Its jaw hung partially dislocated while blood streamed down its chest from wounds that should’ve killed it already.

Still moving.

Still hunting.

The drone operator whispered shakily:

They don’t react to silver…

Or sunlight…

Or pain—

The creature suddenly looked directly upward toward the drone.

Then jumped.

The feed cut instantly to black static.

No one spoke.

Because everyone in the room understood the same thing simultaneously:

These weren’t vampires.

Vampires still had minds.

Morvena broke the silence first.

“Aldric released them intentionally.”

Lucien looked toward the dead screen.

“No,” he said quietly.

The room turned toward him.

Lucien’s expression looked carved from something colder than rage now.

“He lost control of them.”

That frightened Seraphina more.

Because Aldric planning apocalypse still implied strategy.

Accidental apocalypse meant panic.

And frightened institutions became catastrophic fast.

Another scout rushed breathlessly into the command chamber.

“Church districts are collapsing internally now. Military barricades failed.” His face looked pale beneath the emergency lights. “Entire evacuation routes are gone.”

Cassian rubbed one exhausted hand across his face.

“Well,” he muttered darkly, “humanity continues handling fear with remarkable professionalism.”

Seraphina moved toward the operations map slowly.

Red outbreak markers kept spreading.

Block by block.

Street by street.

Too fast.

Prague was dying in real time.

“Why release them now?” she asked quietly.

Lucien answered immediately.

“Because Aldric thinks prophecy already began.”

She looked sharply toward him.

Lucien’s gaze remained fixed on the burning city projections.

“He believes war between hunters and vampires became inevitable.” His voice tightened slightly. “So he escalated humanity itself into a weapon.”

God.

Not vampires.

Not monsters.

People.

The realization hollowed something inside Seraphina’s chest.

Aldric spent years preaching salvation from darkness—

and in the end he created something even vampires feared.

Another transmission crackled weakly across the room.

This one barely coherent.

A sanctuary medic crying somewhere through background screams:

They’re biting civilians and the infection spreads within minutes—

We can’t contain this—

There are too many—

Then static again.

Lucien closed his eyes briefly.

Just once.

But Seraphina saw it.

That tiny fracture.

Because this—

this was exactly what he spent centuries trying to prevent.

Fear turning humanity monstrous long before fangs ever did.

Morvena straightened sharply afterward.

“We evacuate western sectors immediately.”

“No,” Lucien said.

The room turned again.

Lucien looked toward the spreading outbreak zones across Prague’s center.

“They’ll outrun evacuation routes within hours.”

Cassian frowned.

“Then what exactly are you suggesting?”

Lucien’s expression darkened.

“We burn the infected districts before the spread reaches neighboring cities.”

Silence.

Horrified silence.

Because everyone understood what that meant.

Thousands still trapped inside.

Maybe more.

Seraphina stared at him.

Lucien looked devastated already.

Not cold.

Not indifferent.

Just someone forced once again into impossible choices history kept making him survive.

God.

The war had barely started.

And already humanity was becoming something worse than the monsters it claimed to fear.

Then the final transmission arrived.

Emergency satellite footage projected across the command wall automatically.

Entire sections of Prague already overrun.

Smoke rising above the river.

Church barricades collapsing beneath swarms of engineered creatures flooding through the streets.

The city disappeared piece by piece beneath spreading chaos.

And somewhere inside the monastery silence afterward—

Seraphina realized apocalypse never looked dramatic while it began.

Usually it just looked like frightened people making one unforgivable decision after another until the world finally broke under the weight of them.