Disclaimer: For better or worse, I have written a few vampire stories in my life. Sadly, the stroke of genius that is Vampire Knight is not one of them.

Prologue

"How did Kaname die?"

Kaien Cross looked up from the paperwork on his desk to where his vampire daughter, a skinny five-foot second-year (1) with thick auburn locks engulfing her tiny frame from her head to her waist, stood with her hands latched behind her back in the middle of the study. He took off his reading glasses and stared at her quizzically.

"What are you talking about, Yuuki? Your brother is alive and well. I just talked to him this morning, didn't you hear?"

Yuuki sighed, wishing her father would realize she was sixteen and no longer that gullible. "My real brother. The Kaname my parents gave birth to. I just found out about him. He died when I was little, right? But just his spirit. His body is still out there, holding the Kaname I know, right?"

Kaien sighed too, and put his glasses on his desk atop the scheduling for Cross Academy's first academic year since the war between the hunters and the vampires had begun. "Who told you? Was it Zero?"

"No," Yuuki said, her face turning slightly red from the lie. Kaien gazed at her knowingly, and she approached, leaning on her hands on the desktop.

"Is it possible to destroy a soul?" she asked quietly, forever unprepared to hear the answer. "To bring a complete end to a consciousness, an existence, a person—just snuff it out so it never shines again?"

Kaien Cross stared into his lap sadly, unwilling to tell his daughter of the possibility that her beloved brother was truly just…gone.

"Tell me what happened."

He raised his big caramel eyes to her and sat forward seriously. "To vampires, the blood and the soul are one entity, because the soul lives in the blood and you can collect both if you bleed someone dry. Kuran Rido kidnapped your brother and devoured his blood when you were only two years old. He drank every drop in his body, and replaced it with the blood of an ancestor of yours who had been dead for over four centuries—the grandfather of all vampires, the very first of your race." Kaien leaned over so his face was a mere six inches from his child's. "He did it to resurrect the most powerful vampire in existence, someone whom he could use because he, like any master vampire, had full power over his creations. But you and Kaname were able to run free when your father pushed him to the very limits of his life a couple years later, forcing him to flee so he could regenerate over the next ten years."

"What about the real Kaname? The one who was devoured?"

"I believe you freed him when you destroyed his captor, Yuuki. The man drank his soul, so it might have morphed with his as their blood would have. But when you killed Rido, you freed your brother from that miserable darkness…gave his spirit back to the Earth, where it belongs."

"So you don't think his soul is just…gone? Destroyed?"

"I don't think your soul can die, Yuuki."

Seeing through his lie, Yuuki stood in silence for a moment, gazing at Kaien sorrowfully, before whispering,

"Is it a power I have, as a pureblood? The power to destroy someone like that, to kill their soul by bleeding them dry?"

Kaien reached across the desk and rested his hand atop hers. "Yuuki, listen to me. It's not about what our abilities are; it's about how we use them. And you, darling, are nothing but pure. I don't want you to ever doubt yourself because of your vampire heritage. Now go get ready for school in the morning."

Blinking back tears, Yuuki pushed past Zero as he entered the study and hurried to her room, where she could cry in silence. The Chairman could say what he wished, but she knew the truth: her brother was gone. Not captured, not freed. Just…gone.

Yet she refused, with all her being, to believe it.

--

1. In Japan, high school consists of grades 10-12, so a second year would be a junior, or grade 11.