Vampire's Epitaph | ONC 2025

The air quickly went cold as a cloaked figure mounted the hilltop. Eleazar dropped his hand and looked upon the intruder. Daphne gulped, sensing that despite leaving the well not long ago, it was where they were meant to stay. This was the next memory they had to witness, and she only hoped it wasn't as horrific as the previous one.

A gloved hand pulled the cloak back, revealing thick red curls and a soulless, focused gaze. Diantha's gloved fingers reached for the vial around her neck. The small movement shifted her cloak, and the sun glinted off the blue brooch she wore to signify her marriage.

She uncorked it and held it over the well.

"What is she doing?" Daphne gasped, turning to Eleazar for help or answers or anything remotely comforting.

But it wasn't her new friend that tried to save the day; it was his past self. A sharp, slender hand gripped onto Diantha's wrist quicker than she could turn the vial over.

"Don't do this." Eleazar's eyes, which were typically narrow and slitted, were large and beseeching as he spoke.

But Diantha showed no remorse as she twisted her wrist and allowed the toxic contents to slip easily into the water below. The single echo of it resonated up through the well, feeling like a far-off tremor that shook the grounds the well was built on.

"You have done well for me, Eleazar the Morbid." Diantha said, ripping her hand free from his grip. "So gullible Vampires are. If I'd known that, I would have made my move a lot sooner."

"You deceived me." Eleazar's voice was firm and smooth as ever, but his heartbreak bled out of every crevice of his being. He looked... crestfallen.

"I could never love a Vampire. You will pay for your scourge to this land." With a flick of her wrist, the blue pin of the Epitaph raptor was gone from her cloak and lay unassumingly in the long grass at their feet, almost invisible unless you were looking for it.

With a victorious smirk, she covered her hair with her cloak once more and slipped into the shadows provided by the foliage near the well.

Eleazar moved forward and took the brooch from the floor, stepping through his former self. It would soon leave his grasp and return to its original position, but Eleazar gazed at it as if his heart were breaking again. It hit Daphne then that the blue raptor was not a sign of her marriage to Elias Larkspur but rather to Eleazar. She hadn't guessed they were married...

"The townspeople saw me up by the well," Eleazar muttered as his past self dissipated along with the brooch. Even though they chased me away, the damage had already been done. My Venom had contaminated the drinking water, and naturally, I was blamed. It was my Venom after all; the existence of it was the real problem, not the person who had poisoned everyone."

Daphne stepped forward and peered into the well. The dark water below bubbled slightly, and an eerie steam rose and coiled around the edges of the well. "What happens now?"

"Now, I flee. I leave the humans at the mercy of my Venom."

"You didn't do anything wrong. You should have stayed and defended yourself."

"To deaf ears?" Daphne didn't respond because she knew he was right. "I was a criminal in the townspeople's eyes - my first offence being my mere existence. I was not going to stick around and argue my right to live when they already had their minds made up.

"It's truly a shame it was painted in this light. Vampire Venom is such a beautiful substance when used by my kind." Eleazar looked down at the water, which had momentarily shifted to orange. "I didn't stay gone. My family and I knew we had to return when Diantha made her announcement."