The adrenaline of the hunt evaporated as quickly as the morning mist over the Vltava River. As Elara led Sam back to the hidden stone cellar of an abandoned estate outside Prague, the "Rebirth Fever" took hold.
This was the final purge. Sam's body was a furnace, burning away the last cellular memories of being human. He collapsed onto the cot, his skin shimmering with a cold sweat that smelled of ozone and old copper.
"Elara..." he gasped, his eyes rolling back. "The city... I can hear it."
Even miles away, the heartbeat of Prague was a torture. He could hear the grinding of tram wheels, the distant chatter of tourists on Charles Bridge, and the frantic, buzzing energy of thousands of human lives. It was too much. His brain was trying to process a world it was no longer allowed to touch.
Then, the hallucinations began.
In his mind, he wasn't in a damp cellar in Czechia. He was back in the sun-drenched gardens of his childhood home. He saw his mother leaning over a balcony, her face blurred by a golden light that now felt like a physical weight on his chest. He tried to reach out to her, to tell her he was just late for dinner, but his hands were no longer hands—they were claws made of shadow.
"Sam, stay with me!" Elara's voice pierced through the vision. She was holding him down as his muscles seized. "It's a lie. The sun is a lie now. Don't go into the light."
"It's so warm there," Sam moaned, tears of blood leaking from his closed eyes. "I just want to go home. Please, let me go home."
"This is home now," Elara whispered, her voice breaking.
In the vision, the garden began to wither. The flowers turned to ash, and the golden sun turned into a cold, pale moon. He saw his own reflection in a garden pond—the golden eyes, the predatory stillness. He watched as the "human Sam" stepped away from the water and vanished into the trees.
It was a psychic funeral.
The tribal, driving rhythm of the song in his head reached a fever pitch, a final roar of "Like Animals" before the silence took over. With one last, violent convulsion, Sam's body went still. The heat vanished. He was as cold as the stone he lay upon.
He opened his eyes. The hallucinations were gone. The memory of the sun was now just a factual data point, stripped of its warmth. He looked at Elara, and for the first time, he didn't look like a boy who was scared.
He looked like a King of the Night, ready to reign.
"The fever is gone," he said, his voice flat and terrifyingly calm. "And so is he.