The cemetery clearance had come in an hour, and Edwin stared at it. Such an innocent little thing. So life-changing. If he went to the cemetery now, he would forever lose the ability to use even the simplest of mana healing procedures.

A single shadow. He could make it a big one, hide it in his own. Then he could go alone to the Asylum of Blood. There was no point in dragging Harry, Daniel, and the kids with him. The desert was a harsh and unforgiving place. And children are so much more prone to sicknesses than adults.

Wandermere was not a bad town. It had a clinic. The apartment was prepaid for the next three months. Surely, Edwin won’t even take that long. But, with the shadow came his new liability.

Condensed mana. It was still something people experimented with. So far, it had a wide use in agriculture. Something about the mana making the plants grow faster.

The principle of basic mana transfusions should apply. The mana would have to be of the same type as the recipient’s. That meant that Edwin will have to lug around a chest with different compartments for the different mana types.

Well, they did have a carriage. And if he wanted to avoid getting his hands dirty, how could he change anything? So far, Thorold Hafnon’s plan didn’t involve death. And it came with the backing of the Hafnon family, the richest in the Surian Theocracy. Perhaps even in the world.

Edwin grabbed the sheet of paper, took his cloak and hat, and went out in the crisp winter day. Now that he was a vampire, the sunlight heated his skin a bit too much for comfort. Soon, he was losing his cloak and taking off his hat. When he got to the cemetery, he was drenched in sweat.

If he could barely make it across town here, during winter on a cloudy day, how was he going to make it through the desert? He panted, exhausted and feeling like his blood was on fire. For Hadrian, it would have been much worse. Suddenly, Edwin appreciated all the times the vampire went in the sunset or sunrise after a feeding.

The healer rested on a snow-covered grave and breathed in and out. He ran a hand over his sweaty forehead and narrowed his eyes when droplets were forming on his fingers.

Ok, it was time to bend the rules of nature. But he had to be careful, for if he was not, he was going to usher a winter that stayed for a century. He dug his hand inside the hard soil and managed to break a chunk of the frozen earth.

This was a grave sin. Not only will his mana become poisonous by the act, but, if anyone found out, he would be hunted. This was something only Liches did, and no Lich was allowed to become a Boliarin.

But the principle had to be the same. A small chunk of a dead man’s soil, big as a fist and soaked in the person’s soul. He began to eat and felt cooler soon. He heard something resembling a wail, and he looked around.

Wiping the dirt from his face, he moved around and saw a woman crying over a child sized grave. The soil was still fresh and there was no snow on top of it. Edwin went and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“These darn healers!” Screamed the woman. She looked back towards Edwin, and, when she saw his crimson eyes, sucked in a breath. “You stay away from me!”

“I won’t hurt you,” tried Edwin. She backed away until her back was against the tombstone. “What happened here?”

The woman hiccuped and, when Edwin made no move to snatch at her, pointed at a bell that was hanging by the tombstone.

“My child is alive, I told the healers! He breathes. And what did they do? They stuck him in a coffin!” Her wailing resumed. Edwin looked around and saw a shovel. He pushed her out of the way and began to dig.

The dirt he had eaten kept him cool as he dug. How many hours could someone survive before their oxygen ran out in such a closed space as a coffin? One, two? Why did the healers place a child there!

And why had he eaten the darn dirt? Now, he would need to depend on non-mana treatment. What if the child had a fever? What if he was contagious? Vampires didn’t have an immune system, darn it all!

The shovel hit on wood and Edwin broke the sides of it and opened the lid. What he found was a half-eaten corpse. He turned towards the woman, confused, only to get a shovel in the face.

A wraith? They were lifelike enough. Edwin fell down in the grave with the boy and felt dirt fall down on him. He tried to get up, but was hit again. Darkness overcome him as more dirt piled on top of him.

When Edwin comes to, he was happy he no longer needed to breathe. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He was lying face-first into the corpse of the child and could feel its bones jutting into his side.

Furthermore, he was buried alive. The healer tried not to panic, but he found that he was losing the grip of his sanity. There was only one thing that could save him now. He touched the corpse and began pouring mana inside its bones.

A bony hand twitched and began to move. The child managed to shift itself from below Edwin like a mole and to begin to dig upwards. At some point, Edwin felt something like a ball falling on him. Not a ball, a skull, he realized.

The child was falling apart before him. With much effort, Edwin got up and began to dig upwards as good as he could. His fingernails were a bloody mess in minutes, but he kept digging.

A ray of sunlight fell through a hole and Edwin desperately dug towards it. When his head poked through the soil, the healer took a large gulp of air, even if he didn’t need it.

Who had sent the wraith? Had Hafnon betrayed them? These questions swam around Edwin’s mind as he kept trying to get himself free. When he did manage to get out of the grave, the wraith was no longer there, but there was a note by a shovel.

Let us play again sometime, newbie,

Sebastian Black.