They call this city the desert, but they are wrong. The true desert was my mortal life—parched earth, barren of power, where a woman's worth was measured by the children she could bear and the work her hands could do. I remember the feel of sun-scorched soil, the hunger that gnawed at my belly, the way men looked at my young body and saw a resource to be drained. They thought they owned me. They thought my cunt was their property. Tonight, I hunted one of their descendants. A banker. Arrogant. Entitled. I let him believe he was the predator, leading me to his sterile penthouse. The terror in his eyes when my shadow swallowed the room… that was the true vintage. I didn't just take his blood; I took the illusion of control his entire bloodline has wielded for centuries. I left him trembling, alive but barren of that precious certainty. That is the only fertility that matters now. The sowing of dread. The reaping of power.