My Blood Legacy: Reincarnated as a Vampire-Chapter 521: EXTRA - The Eternity of Ethan Smith

Thousands of years. That was the estimated duration of his penance… if time still held any meaning in that crimson abyss, where even the concepts of "yesterday" and "tomorrow" were swallowed by screams, fire, and constantly rotting flesh.

Ethan Smith — once an emperor, born with the royal blood of the Western Kingdom — had, in ages past, been a hero of legends. A symbol of hope for his people. A warrior clad in glory and pride.

Until the day he betrayed Dante.

It was during an expedition into one of the forbidden Dungeons, where the true danger lay not only in the dark creatures that lurked within, but in the hearts of men. Ethan, seduced by the promise of absolute power, tried to take by force what was never his to claim. He nearly killed his own father. Stabbed his sister without hesitation. And in the end, he tried to dethrone Dante — the one who had trusted him. A mistake that sealed his fate.

The last thing he saw in life was Dante's calm, ironic gaze. There was no fury in those eyes. No rage. Just contempt. A deathly silence that spoke louder than a thousand words: You are far less than you ever believed yourself to be.

Death did not come swiftly.

It was cruel.

But in the end… Ethan deserved it.

What he didn't expect was that death would merely be the prologue to true hell.

When he opened his eyes — if those things could still be called eyes — he was a pulsating sphere of flesh. No limbs. No face. Just raw, suffocated consciousness. An existence reduced to its barest element: pure agony.

"Well, look what we've got here! The Infernal King's new toy has arrived!" cackled a grotesque demon, its body a mass of writhing muscle, twin flames burning in place of eyes.

Without ceremony, the demon grabbed him and launched him with a kick that ripped through the air. Ethan bounced across the searing ground — a living stone floor that moved as if it had a will of its own, a surface designed only to cause pain.

He felt everything.

Every impact.

Every twist in his very essence.

As if his soul were being torn apart and rebuilt again and again, non-existent nerves screaming in spiritual torment.

He was the ball.

Literally.

For a hundred years — or maybe a thousand, for in that place time made no sense — his soul was kicked, crushed, hurled, stomped on. The demons of the second circle played games with him like he was a cheap toy. And each laugh that echoed across the torture field was like a serrated blade slicing what remained of Ethan's shredded sanity.

The humiliation never ceased. Once treated as royalty, he was now nothing more than a formless lump at the feet of laughing, merciless demons.

With every new "game," he begged in silence to disappear. To die for real. To be erased from existence.

But death was a luxury.

A privilege Dante would never allow.

And this… was only the beginning.

One day — or what felt like a day in that eternity of pain — his consciousness was ripped from the infernal field without warning. No transition. No explanation. It was as if he had been yanked from a boiling sea and violently slammed against a cold, unyielding rock.

He opened his eyes — not physical eyes, but perception — and found himself standing before a mirror.

But it wasn't an ordinary mirror.

The surface was liquid, alive, like mercury pulsing with heartbeats that seemed to echo the screams of distant souls. It was like staring into an ocean of inescapable truths. And then, the voice came.

Cold. Impartial. As sharp as Dante's silence before the execution.

"Now... let's see who you truly are."

Ethan tried to pull back, but he had no body. Tried to look away, but there were no eyelids to shut. He was trapped. Forced. Bound in the presence of that mirror, which carved into his very being like fingers stripping flesh from bare bone.

The reflection formed.

At first, he saw himself as he remembered: the warrior, the emperor, the hero sung of in ancient chants. Tall, proud, clad in golden armor, eyes gleaming with ambition.

But the image shook.

It twisted.

And then… the truth emerged.

His real face.

There was no nobility. No glory.

The image now showed a man hunched by envy, eyes sunken and wet with greed. A crooked smile, dripping with deceit. Hands stained with blood — his sister's, his father's, his allies'. The eyes... they darted. Always darted. As if even the reflection was ashamed to meet its own gaze.

And then, behind him, in the mirror, appeared Dante.

Silent. Unshakable. A colossus of light and shadow, radiating a presence so overwhelming that even the mirror seemed to groan beneath the weight of his existence.

Always taller. Always brighter.

And Ethan's reflection spoke.

Not with words formed by lips, but with the cruel clarity that only the soul can understand.

"You envied him. Because you will never be like him."

The sentence tore through his essence like ground glass forced down his throat. It shredded his mind. Corrupted the last fragments of pride still clinging to his soul.

The mirror didn't stop. It showed forgotten memories. Denied thoughts. It showed Ethan sabotaging his comrades out of fear of being overshadowed. It showed him manipulating his sister, lying to his father, and praying silently for Dante's death every night.

It showed that he always knew.

That he was never a hero.

He was only… less.

What began as shame mutated into pure terror. An existential panic that clawed at the edges of his consciousness like ravenous beasts.

And he screamed.

Or at least… he tried.

Because there was no mouth. No vocal cords. Only a soul screaming in despair, locked within a prison called consciousness.

But the mirror would not let him look away.

There were no eyelids to shut. No eyes to close. No body to shield himself. Only Ethan — raw, naked, exposed — standing before the cruelest reflection of all: the one called truth.

And the reflection only smiled.

Then, one day… everything stopped.

The tortures ceased, as if someone had blown out a candle in the heart of Hell. The screams, once constant, became distant murmurs. The stench of burnt flesh, sulfur, and despair gave way to absolute silence — a silence so heavy it felt like it screamed from the inside.

Ethan — or what remained of him — felt something he hadn't in centuries: the absence of pain.

No more kicks.No more mirrors.No more flames.

Just… emptiness.

And then… he appeared.

Dante.

Immaculate. Untouched by the millennia that had devoured Ethan's sanity. His dark cloak flowed, though there was no wind. His eyes — the same eyes that had killed him — were exactly as he remembered. Calm. Absolute. Unfathomable.

Like stars watching the universe crumble… without ever blinking.

Ethan tried to kneel.

But he had no legs.

He tried to bow.

But there was no spine.

He tried to speak, to beg, to weep, to scream…

But his soul — even after all this time — still trembled before him. Still small. Still pathetic. A twisted shadow in the presence of the one who had not only destroyed his body, but shattered his pride, his legacy, his name.

Dante looked at him the way one might look at a pebble forgotten on a path. Not with anger. Not even with disgust.

Just… acknowledgment.As if Ethan was nothing more than a speck of dust at the bottom of a glass.

"You still exist," he said, his voice low, yet carrying the weight of a hundred universes. "Curious."

There was no sarcasm. No cruelty.

Just fact.

And Ethan felt the despair return — a pathetic urge to justify himself. To say he was sorry. That if he had another chance, he'd do everything differently. That the ambition, the pride, the fear… were human flaws. That he had learned.

But Dante never asked for explanations.

He didn't want to hear them.

"It's not out of hatred," he said, with the calm of someone passing judgment without emotion. "It's simply… justice."

Then, he turned.

And walked away.

No ceremony.

No warning.

Not another word.

And when Dante vanished, he took even the silence with him.

And eternity began again.

Stronger.

More painful.

More empty.

Today, Ethan is a living statue at the heart of the Garden of Contempt.

Motionless. Eternal. Rooted into cursed soil made of ground bones and memories that never die. His body, carved from black stone, pulses with a spectral energy — a cruel reminder that though he cannot move, he still feels.

The tears never stop.

But they are not ordinary tears.

They are cursed crystals, hot as freshly-forged iron, that drip from his petrified eyes and fall onto the profane ground. Each drop, upon hitting the earth, births a grotesque flower. Translucent petals that whisper. That scream. That beg.

The flowers have faces.

Faces he recognizes.

People he betrayed.

Used.

Forgotten.

And every scream from those flowers is an accusation that never fades.

Once every thousand years, a curious soul visits him.

Lost souls.

Condemned spirits.

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Creatures deformed by time.

They approach in silence.

They look upon him as one might look at a tragic work of art.

They judge.

They laugh.

They spit.

And then, they move on.

Ethan cannot move a single muscle.

He cannot blink.

He cannot turn his head.

But he feels it all.

The mockery.

The abandonment.

The shame that burns more than fire.

The pain that doesn't bleed, but corrodes from within.

And above all… the emptiness.

The emptiness of having been someone.

And being nothing now.

Not a man.

Not a hero.

Not even a villain worth remembering.

Just a monument to ruin.

And in rare moments, when the silence stretches between the visits and the screaming flowers fall quiet for the briefest instant…

He feels something strange.

He misses.

He misses being anything other than this.