Sorcha's great pride

Sorcha's chaotic blood burned in Dracula's veins like liquid fire, an unholy fusion of ancient undeath and unleashed elemental magic. The pain of his forced "evolution" remained unabated, but now he was imbued with a raw, intoxicating power. He no longer felt himself fading; he felt himself reborn in a tempest of fury and shadows.

The first change was visible and terrifying. The shadows that had always accompanied him, that were an extension of his being, solidified and writhed behind him. With a sound like silk rending in a storm, two immense wings of tangible darkness, their edges gleaming with a faint crimson glow—an echo of Sorcha's blood—unfurled, each feather a blade of hardened night. They were not ethereal; they had weight, presence, and a power that pulled at the muscles in his back with a newfound strength.

Dracula roared, a sound that was part ancient predator and part the crackling of a chaotic storm. With primal instinct, he flapped his shadow wings. He rose from the ground with astonishing speed, leaving Sorcha and the nearby Punishers gasping. The air swirled around him as he ascended over the makeshift battlefield, a nightmarish figure silhouetted against the sick moon and the greenish glow of Cthulhu on the sea horizon.

From above, he saw the deadly dance of the Ancient One-controlled Blood Faeries decimating the base's defenses. His once formidable speed was now almost a blink of an eye. He dove, a blur of darkness and fury. The first Blood Faerie didn't even see him coming; the impact of Dracula's blow, now charged with earth-shattering force, sent her flying, turning into a shower of corrupted essence before she hit the ground.

Faster, he thought, a wild exultation rising within him. Harder.

He landed in the middle of a group of Fae, his movements a lethal symphony. Each swipe of his now longer and sharper claws ripped the Fae creatures in half, their ethereal bodies rending with ease. Where once he had needed precision and cunning, now he dominated with sheer raw power.

Then, he felt a new impulse, a new weapon forming within him. Sorcha's blood, liquid Chaos, mingled with his own ancestral vitae, boiling, seeking an outlet. Instinctively, he reached out toward a Blood Fae bearing down on him, and from his fingertips, or perhaps from a self-inflicted wound in his palm, a torrent of dark, glistening blood spurted. It wasn't a simple spurt; it was a pressurized, hissing burst that solidified in the air into a myriad of razor-sharp shards.

The blasts of blood struck the Fairy with explosive force. The creature shrieked as its head was neatly severed from its body, its form dissolving instantly.

Dracula stared at his own hand with a mixture of awe and dark satisfaction. Blood as a weapon, he thought. The essence of my being, turned into projectiles of death.

With this new and terrible ability, he became a whirlwind of destruction. His shadow wings carried him from one point to another across the battlefield with dizzying speed, dodging attacks and positioning himself for deadly angles. His blows shattered the Fairies, and the blasts of solidified blood decapitated and dismembered with horrifying efficiency.

From the makeshift command center, Aria watched through a gap in the defenses, her face a mixture of awe and profound terror. The emerald and golden light around them seemed to flicker against the stark, chaotic darkness radiating from Dracula. "By the Old Ones..." she whispered. "He has become... something else."

Merlin, at his side, wore a grave expression. "Chaos is a powerful catalyst, but unpredictable. He has gained power, yes, but at what cost to his soul... and to us?"

Sorcha of the Crimson Hand, though weakened by the offered blood, watched Dracula with a strange mixture of possessive pride and fear. Her blood, her magic, now flowed through the Prince of the Night, magnified, unleashed. She had unleashed a force that not even she could control.

Dracula, in the heat of battle, was barely aware of these reactions. He was consumed by power, by fury, by the need to annihilate. For the first time in centuries, he felt truly alive in his undeath, an apex predator at the top of a new and terrifying food chain. The Blood Fairies, once a formidable threat, were now little more than bloody playthings for his new form.

The tide of the local battle, in the sector where Dracula fought, was beginning to turn. But the global war had barely begun, and the evolution of the world's oldest vampire was just another unpredictable factor in a conflict already saturated with horrors Cosmic and desperate alliances. Dawn, when it came, would find a changed world, and a Dracula reborn in darkness and Chaos.