The King of Vampires (Isekai)

The Age of Darkness. That is how they called it in the whispers that survived the screams. An era when death walked among the living, cloaked not in shadows but in the visible sores and blackened bodies of the plague-stricken. The Black Death devoured cities, kingdoms, entire bloodlines… but not me. I had already made peace with death centuries before.

It was the year 1348. Europe reeked of decay and burned flesh. Priests preached the end of days while nobles barricaded themselves in castles, only to die coughing blood behind stone walls. No one escaped the pestilence. Not the righteous. Not the damned. But fate… fate always weaves its cruel threads through the darkest fabric.

That night, the rain fell like knives, cold and endless, drowning the groans of the dying in the streets of Florence. I walked among them. Their eyes, glassy and distant, reflected torches and fear—but none dared approach me. My silver hair cascaded over my shoulders, glistening in the rain, my golden eyes glowing faintly beneath the hood of my cloak. I was not a man to them. I was something else. They could feel it in their bones.

A house crumbled near the edge of the district, its timber frame weakened by rot and abandonment. And from inside, I heard it—the sound that pierced through plague, through despair—the desperate cries of children.

I approached the door, broken off its hinges, stepping over rotting straw and mud. The stench of death was unbearable, even for me. But the cries… they pulled me forward. Amid the shadows of the collapsing home, I found them.

Two small figures huddled beside a lifeless woman, her body bloated, black sores blooming across her pale skin. Death claimed her days ago, yet the children remained untouched—fragile, shivering, but alive.

The girl was the first to lift her head. Her eyes, too sharp for her age, glimmered with stubbornness. The boy beside her wept silently, clutching her sleeve as if she alone anchored him to this cruel world.

I knelt, studying them. Their faces bore no signs of the plague. No fevered flush. No bloodied gums or darkening flesh. Impossible. Or… divine intervention.

"What are your names?" My voice, deep and old, filled the room like a storm waiting to break.

The girl straightened her spine despite the dirt clinging to her cheeks. "Selena," she answered, with the defiance of one who had seen too much to fear me.

The boy barely whispered, "Daniel…"

I nodded. "Your mother is gone," I stated, gesturing to the corpse. "But you live. That means you are chosen."

The girl's chin quivered, but she refused to cry. The boy buried his face in her side. Their hearts beat fast, wild with fear and hunger—but untainted. I could hear it. I could feel it. The blood within them pulsed pure.

I reached out, brushing my hand across their foreheads. Warm. Alive. Human… for now.

The plague took families, nations, entire civilizations. But not them. Somehow, they stood immune amid devastation.

I knew that pain. Centuries ago, in another life, I too had lain in a bed of sickness, watching others fade into oblivion, while I remained cursed… or blessed… untouched. That part of my story I never spoke of. Not to them. Not to anyone.

I lifted the children into my arms. They didn't resist. Hunger and grief made them weightless, fragile as glass.

"You belong to me now," I told them. "You will carry my name, my blood, my legacy."

Selena stared at me with wary eyes. "Why?"

I paused, considering the answer. Outside, rain beat against the ruins, drowning the moans of the dying. "Because the world has forgotten what family means. I will remind them."

I carried them through the alleys, through the corpse-ridden streets. No one dared stop me. The soldiers, the priests, the wailing widows—they averted their eyes. Perhaps they sensed what I was. Perhaps they didn't care, too lost in their own misery.

Days passed as I fed them, sheltered them in the abandoned estates of the dead. I taught them how to survive, how to hide, how to fight. Selena's fire grew sharper by the day. Daniel's tears hardened into quiet resolve.

They did not know what I was yet. Not truly. But they would. And when the time came, they would understand. Blood binds more than flesh—it binds fate.

They became mine, not through some ancient ritual, but through the purest contract of all: survival. I protected them, raised them, molded them. They learned the languages of men, the histories of fallen empires, the arts of deception and war.

And as centuries bled into decades, as I drifted into hibernations that lasted years, sometimes entire generations, they remained. Selena and Daniel grew. They aged slower than the others. My blood altered them subtly at first. Resistance to disease. Heightened senses. An unnatural grace.

The world changed. The plague faded. Kingdoms rose and crumbled. Witch hunts ignited across Europe. I saved those I could—women branded as witches, men marked as heretics, children condemned for the sins of their parents. I offered them sanctuary. They offered loyalty.

A pact. A veil beyond mortality. Protection in exchange for devotion.

My servants aged, died, but their bloodlines endured. Descendants whispered my name in secret, passing down the truths others forgot. Across generations, they remembered: Arthur does not forget. Arthur protects. Arthur punishes.

Selena and Daniel remained by my side, transcending time with me. They witnessed crusades, famines, revolutions. They saw me at my most brutal, my most merciful, my most monstrous—and never wavered.

And always, hidden beneath it all, was the unspoken truth: I could hear their hearts. I could feel the subtle shifts within them. If ever they betrayed me, even in thought… they would turn to ash before their treachery could take root.

But they never did.

The world called me many things—demon, savior, tyrant, ghost. But to Selena and Daniel, I was something else entirely.

I was the storm that never dies. The guardian of the forgotten. The reminder that even in darkness, family endures.

And this… this was only the beginning.