The story of Myncha

Pixels, Pages and Pastel Colors

Myncha was the kind of student professors remembered for the right reasons: front row, color-coded notes, the first hand in the air and the last one out of the library. She loved to learn the way other people loved to travel, and she could lose an entire Sunday to a single book without noticing the sun go down.

When she wasn't studying, she lived in her own bright little universe. Long gaming nights with a controller in her lap and a headset with cat ears; anime marathons under a blanket covered in stars; a shelf of plushies that kept growing every semester. Her wardrobe looked like a candy shop: pastel hoodies, rainbow stockings, sneakers in every color, and twin tails that bounced when she laughed. She was sweet, a little shy, and perfectly happy in the small world she had built for herself.

Her roommate, Kiki, was the only person who truly shared that world: a math lover with round glasses, a messy bun and a T-shirt for every equation. They studied side by side until midnight, argued about anime endings over instant noodles, and turned their tiny dorm room into a fortress of notebooks, consoles and snacks. Friday nights were theirs. While the rest of the campus went out, the two of them stayed in, and Myncha told herself she didn't mind. But every time she watched two strangers fall in love on a crowded street in some romance anime, she wondered, quietly, whether something like that could ever happen to her.

The Night She Chose to Live

One night, after finishing the last episode of a series and finding the dorm silent and empty, Myncha realized she was tired of watching life happen to other people. She wanted to go out, to make friends, to dance, to fall in love. She wanted a life that didn't fit on a screen.

So she decided to change. She folded her pastel hoodies into a drawer, set her cat-ear headset on the shelf with her plushies, and stood in front of the mirror in a simple black dress with bare shoulders and a velvet choker. Kiki, surprised and a little proud, helped her with her makeup between nervous jokes, and offered to come along. But Myncha insisted on going alone. If she was going to become someone new, she wanted to take that first step on her own. For the first time, she walked out into the night not as the shy girl hiding in her dorm room, but as a young woman ready to meet the world.

Her steps led her to The Basement, a crowded, pulsing club full of music and strangers. That night, on the dance floor, her gaze locked onto a stranger, and she was struck by the undeniable lightning of love at first sight.

They danced for hours, lost in each other’s rhythm, until the suffocating heat of the club drove them out into the cool, whispering woods to admire the moon. Beneath the silver canopy, the boy began to flirt, his breath warm against her skin. But just as they leaned in to share what would have been Myncha’s very first kiss, the shadows tore open.

A vampire patriarch of immense, suffocating power, flanked by two of his dark ladies, ambushed them. With brutal, terrifying speed, they slaughtered the boy, devouring him before Myncha's horrified eyes. Yet, when the master vampire turned his gaze to Myncha, he paused. Moved by a twisted sense of pity for her pure, arresting beauty, he chose not to end her life. Instead, he tore into her flesh and remade her.

The Shattered Dawn

Myncha awoke the next morning alone in the dirt, her mind a fractured blur of confusion and terror. As she stumbled into the open, the rising sun struck her skin—but it didn't burn. Instead, it cast an eerie, diamond-like reflection, slowly calcifying her flesh into rigid, fragile crystal. Realizing the sunlight was turning her to stone, she scrambled desperately back into the deep shadows of the trees.

Hoping against hope, she searched the blood-stained clearing for the boy. There was nothing left of him but a pair of car keys glinting in the dirt. Shaking, she took his car and drove back to her university campus, a sanctuary that now felt entirely alien.

The Hunger Awakes

Locking herself in her dorm bathroom, Myncha finally dared to look in the mirror. Trembling hands pulled back her collar to reveal the definitive, terrifying truth: twin puncture wounds carved into her neck. Panic seized her, closely followed by a hollow, agonizing ache deep within her chest. It was an insatiable, monstrous hunger for blood.

Terrified of what she might do, she locked herself away in her bedroom. Kiki watched her with growing alarm, entirely unable to comprehend Myncha's sudden, erratic behavior or the feral desperation in her eyes. To protect the campus from the monster she was becoming, Myncha skipped her classes, barricaded behind closed doors.

The Sigil and the Sire

By afternoon, driven by a desperate need for answers, Myncha risked the shadows to slip into the university’s archives. Burying herself in the dust of ancient, forbidden texts, she desperately researched the lore of the undead.

Then, she found it. Hidden within the pages of an old text was an illustration matching the exact crest she had seen engraved on the pendant worn by the master vampire.

Armed with a name and a clue, Myncha's fear crystallized into burning purpose. This was no longer just a nightmare to survive—it was the beginning of a dark odyssey. She would leave her old life behind and venture into the shadows of Exius to hunt down her master, the sire who stole her humanity.

The Lake Cathedral

Driven by a desperate impulse, Myncha snatched the ancient text from the university archives and fled into the blinding daytime. To shield her fragile flesh from the calcifying rays of the sun, she wrapped herself in a sweeping black mantle taken from Kiki's wardrobe—a dark shroud against the crystal curse. Before cutting ties with her old life completely, she stopped at a local coffee shop, sipping her favorite drink one last time as a final, bittersweet farewell to her humanity.

Returning to the haunted woods, she noticed the stolen book reacting to the dense canopy. As she stepped deeper into the trees, a strange, volatile magic erupted from the pages, emitting bright, pulsing sparks that intensified with every step she took.

Following the guiding light of the book, Myncha emerged at the edge of a hidden, mist-shrouded lake. In the dead center sat an ancient, decaying cathedral. Shadowy, dark beings glided across the water and into the ruins. Stepping into the gloom, Myncha followed them. Though the dark entities immediately sensed her presence, they did not attack; they remained eerily still, recognizing the raw, newborn vampire essence coursing through her veins. Acknowledging one of their own, the silent beings parted, revealing a hidden, downward path into the deep, subterranean crypts of the cathedral.

The Mirror of Fate

At the end of the secret descent, Myncha found herself in a chamber dominated by an enormous, peculiar mirror etched with ancient, glowing markings. But it wasn't the mirror that made her breath catch—it was what lay directly in front of it.

Resting on the stone floor was a torn strap of a black leather jacket. Bryan’s jacket.

The horrifying realization washed over her: Bryan hadn't just been a random victim in the woods. He had been brought alive into this very building before his disappearance. Though a tremor of doubt rippled through her, Myncha knew she had absolutely nothing left to lose.

She stepped squarely in front of the glass. Instead of showing her face, her reflection shifted, warping into a magical, winding path that mirrored the very woods she had just left behind. According to the glowing text of the book in her hands, this was the Mirror of Fate—a threshold between worlds.

As Myncha boldly stepped forward, passing straight through the glass into the unknown, the ancient book slipped from her fingers. Immune to the mirror's shifting reality, the text was left behind, clattering onto the stone floor of the human world as the gateway sealed behind her.

The Echo of a Bygone Realm

The space within the Mirror of Fate did not merely lead to another room; it dissolved into a howling cosmic rift. Myncha fell through a localized wormhole, a celestial bridge tearing through the fabric of time and space that tethered the modern human woods to something far older.

When her feet finally slammed into solid ground, the air tasted entirely different—thick with the static hum of ambient, unfiltered magic.

Myncha looked around and realized she was still in the woods, yet everything had shifted. This was the realm of Exius. Geographically, the terrain mirrored the Earth she knew, but the world had been violently rolled back into the distant past. There were no distant highway hums, no city lights breaking the horizon, and no modern structures. Instead, ancient, towering fauna glowed with faint, bioluminescent essence, and the night sky bled with celestial colors unknown to human science. She was standing in an archaic, magical past, bound to her own timeline only by the cosmic tear hidden within these woods.

The Reanimated Terror

Drawing the stolen black mantle tightly around her shoulders, Myncha picked a direction and pushed deeper into the primeval wilds of Exius. Her immediate goal was to escape the oppressive, glowing canopy, climb to a high vantage point, and look for any landmark to orient herself in this archaic world.

She knew she wasn’t alone. The shadows felt heavy, and the skittering of unseen things echoed in the undergrowth. But before she could find a path out of the dense thicket, the air turned ice-cold, smelling strongly of ozone and ancient decay.

Directly ahead, the trail widened into a grim clearing. Blocking her path lay a massive, scattered heap of bleached bones—the forgotten remains of a prehistoric apex predator.

Suddenly, the earth trembled. Defying gravity, the massive ribcage, spine, and heavy limbs began to rattle and lift into the air. Green, volatile magic sparked violently between the joints, acting as spectral tendons as the skeleton snapped together before her eyes. A towering, multi-limbed skeletal beast materialized, its hollow eye sockets burning with dark emerald fire.

The monster threw its head back, unleashing a hollow, bone-chilling roar that rippled the fog and vibrated directly in Myncha’s chest.

* * *

The beast lunged with terrifying speed, slamming a massive skeletal claw down exactly where Myncha stood. In her human life, the blow would have crushed her instantly. But her newborn vampire essence sparked in a flash of pure adrenaline.

Instinct overrode her terror. Myncha didn't just dodge—she blurred. Her movement was blindingly fast, leaving a momentary cyan-and-purple trail as she executed a high-velocity dash across the dirt. The beast’s claw shattered the earth, sending rocks and glowing moss flying.

Before the monster could recover, Myncha closed the distance. Her muscles coiled with an unnatural, explosive power she didn't fully comprehend. She leaped forward, her nails sharpening into diamond-hard points as she unleashed a furious flurry of claw slashes against the creature’s dense forelimbs. Sparks flew as her nails scraped against the calcified bone, chipping away at the emerald magic binding them together.

* * *

Enraged by her counter-attack, the reanimated terror swung its massive, heavy skeletal tail in a sweeping 360-degree arc to crush her. Trapped in the open with no time to slide away, Myncha felt the ambient starlight filter through the canopy, interacting strangely with her curse.

Instinctively, she crossed her forearms to brace for impact. The partial starlight triggered a rapid, localized calcification—her skin instantly hardened into an impenetrable, glittering diamond shield. When the massive bone tail slammed into her, a loud, metallic clang echoed through the woods. The force threw her backward, but her crystal armor absorbed the brunt of the damage, leaving her completely unbroken.

Realizing she couldn't win a battle of brute force on the ground, Myncha went on the offensive. As the beast lunged a third time, jaws snapping, she used her explosive leg strength to launch herself vertically into the air.

Her stolen black mantle billowed behind her like a shroud as she sailed clean over the monster’s head, grabbing a thick, ancient tree branch above. Swinging with perfect momentum, she hovered in the air for a fraction of a second, her crimson eyes locking onto her target below.

* * *

With a fierce cry of absolute resolve, Myncha launched herself off the branch, diving straight down at the beast's head.

The monster raised its claws to catch her, but she twisted mid-air, slipping through its skeletal grasp. She landed squarely on the creature's neck, digging her diamond claws deep into the vertebrae to anchor herself. The beast thrashed violently, tearing down trees and whipping through the fog in a desperate attempt to shake her off.

Holding on through sheer force of will, Myncha gathered every ounce of her youthful vampiric strength into her fist. She struck downward, driving a devastating, heavy punch directly into the top of the monster's skull.

The impact was cataclysmic. A shockwave of green magic detonated outward, shattering the emerald bonds holding the creature together. Cracks webbed across the massive skull before it exploded into a cloud of fine white dust. The rest of the towering skeleton instantly collapsed, sending a cascade of lifeless, bleached bones clattering harmlessly into the stained dirt.

Myncha dropped to her feet in the center of the clearing, panting heavily. The explosive exertion of using her raw, unrefined vampire powers had burned through her reserves instantly. Her newborn metabolism spiked, and a sudden, agonizing ache flared deep within her chest—an insatiable, monstrous demand for fuel. She was starving, and her sanity was already beginning to slip.

The Feral Feast

Breathing heavily, Myncha stood over the shattered remnants of the beast. The explosive exertion of the fight had spiked her newborn metabolism, and a sudden, agonizing ache flared deep within her chest. She was starving, her body violently demanding fuel to sustain her new vampiric strength.

Pressing onward through the winding trails to escape the clearing, the ethereal beauty of the forest quickly gave way to a gruesome reality. Just a short distance ahead, she stumbled upon a pack of smaller, wretched scavengers huddled in a frantic feeding frenzy. They were devouring a human who had only moments ago succumbed to catastrophic wounds inflicted by the creatures. Blood-slicked and completely consumed by their meal, the monsters briefly glanced up at Myncha. Sensing the dark, dominant vampire essence humming within her, they dismissed her as a fellow predator and returned to their feast.

But staring at the fresh, crimson life spilling onto the forest floor, something violently snapped inside Myncha. The intense hunger from her recent battle completely drowned out her sanity. No longer able to contain the monstrous thirst, she dropped to the earth.

Losing all control, Myncha joined the creatures, tearing into the human body to quench the burning ache in her soul. Yet, even as the hot blood brought a terrible, primal satisfaction to her physical senses, an existential panic gripped her mind. She was trapped in an internal nightmare, unable to believe the horrific act she was committing.

Choking back a sob, tears streaming down her face, she violently forced herself to stand, tearing herself away from the body. Horror quickly morphed into a desperate, chaotic grief. Refusing to let these vile scavengers continue to desecrate what was left of a human life, Myncha turned her terrifying strength upon them—mercilessly slaughtering the small monsters until the clearing fell dead silent.

When the fury subsided, Myncha collapsed into the stained dirt. Trembling uncontrollably, she fell to her knees and made the sign of the cross. Weeping bitter tears into the quiet of the woods, she lifted her face to the heavens and begged God for forgiveness for her unforgivable sin, praying fiercely that He might grant eternal rest to the soul of the fallen stranger.