We had spent the night in the woods. We sat in front of the burning fire in front of the old horse-drawn cart. The atmosphere, apart from Shyla and Belmont's constant bickering, was filled with the nauseating sounds of hellish creatures blending into the darkness of the night, and perhaps the muffled screams of people brutally murdered in a nearby town.

Dracula's, my father's horrific savagery.

The large scar on my chest ached; this is what he did to me last year, right after my mother's death, when I stood up to him, when I tried to stop him and the genocide he was about to start. My father had changed. My mother's death had destroyed him spiritually, leaving behind a corpse that seemed to have made meaningless decisions...

My mother.

My gaze narrowed with a pain barely concealed even behind the cold masks I wore while staring into the fire. I missed her. I missed us. Our family.

"Hey, fake vampire,"

Suddenly, a sound came from the side, and with reflexes that preempted my reaction, I caught what was thrown at me in mid-air, raising an eyebrow and turning to the little girl next to me. Aeri. That was her name. I hadn't known her long, but she kept calling me:

"Fake vampire."

I didn't show it, but I found it funny, because she was right. I was a hybrid, neither fully a vampire nor fully human. I looked at what she threw at me. An apple? I questioned myself, raising an eyebrow and looking at her. She shrugged indifferently. "You should eat something too."

Oh. Interesting. Why is she thinking about me? I'd never had a friend since childhood, so besides my parents, not many people had thought about me, so it felt strange. After a few seconds of questioning, she laughed.

"Don't worry, I'm not poisoning you." She said, taking a small bite of her own apple. Her voice was mocking. Almost... sweet? I didn't even realize it had formed a small smile on my own lips.I shook my head as I took a bite of my apple. “Even if you poisoned me, you couldn’t kill me,” I murmured in a husky, slightly deep voice, eliciting a soft chuckle from her.