Empire of the Damned (2024) is a fantasy novel by Jay Kristoff, an internationally bestselling Australian author known for popular fantasy and science fiction series such as the Nevernight Chronicle trilogy and The Illuminae Files. The novel is the second installment in the Empire of the Vampire series, the first installment of which was published in 2021. Empire of the Damned, the second novel in the series, continues the saga of Gabriel de León, a disgraced vampire hunter, as he recounts his perilous quest to protect Dior Lachance, a young woman prophesied to save the world from the tyranny of the vampire bloodlines. Pursued by powerful vampire factions and haunted by his own inner demons, Gabriel embarks on a journey with his newly resurrected vampire sister to find a way to end the world’s endless twilight.

The novel is structured as a frame story, with Gabriel narrating his life to the manipulative vampire historian Jean-François Chastain. This narrative is complicated when Jean-François introduces a second, competing account from Gabriel’s own sister, Celene. Through these conflicting and unreliable testimonies, the novel explores themes of Eternal Life as Moral Corruption, portraying immortality as a force that erodes empathy and fosters cruelty. The story also critiques organized religion and unquestioning belief through the theme of Dogma and the Perversion of Faith, questioning the moral certainty of both holy orders and heretical cults. Finally, by contrasting the treacherous bonds of blood-kin with allegiances forged through shared struggle, the novel argues that True Loyalty Must Be Earned.

This guide refers to the 2025 St. Martin’s Griffin edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, animal cruelty, sexual content, cursing, substance use, child death, death by suicide, rape, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

In the vampire-haunted fortress of Sul Adair, the captured silversaint—the last member of a holy order of vampire hunters—Gabriel de León continues to recount his life story to the vampire historian Jean-François Chastain. The tale resumes immediately after Gabriel rescued the young Dior Lachance—the prophesied Holy Grail whose blood can harm vampires and heal mortals—from being sacrificed by his former brethren, the Silver Order. After slaying his comrades at the San Michon monastery, Gabriel and Dior descend into the valley below. They are confronted by Gabriel’s sister, Celene, who is now a powerful vampire calling herself Liathe. A member of the Esani, a mysterious fifth vampire bloodline, Celene insists that an ancient of her order, Master Jènoah, knows a way to stop the endless night that doesn’t require Dior’s death. Gabriel distrusts Celene after she forced him to drink her blood to save his life, as drinking the blood of a vampire is the first step toward becoming their thrall (a “blood-slave”). He fights his sister, but Dior intervenes and agrees to seek Jènoah at his citadel of Cairnhaem in the Nightstone Mountains, on the condition that Gabriel accompanies them. Their journey is interrupted by Gabriel’s former apprentice, the silversaint Lachlan á Craeg, who informs them that Château Avelène, the home of their friends Aaron de Coste and Baptiste Sa-Ismael, is ablaze.

Insisting they must help their friends, Dior persuades a reluctant Gabriel to travel to Avelène. They arrive to find the city overrun by a band of Dyvok (bear-kin) vampires, a bloodline known for hardened skin and brute strength. Led by Kiara the Wolfmother, daughter of the Dyvok Priori (bloodline leader) Nikita the Blackheart, the Dyvok warriors are capturing children in a caged wagon. A battle erupts as Gabriel, Lachlan, and Dior rush to stop them. Celene joins the fray, revealing her mastery of sanguimancy (blood magic) by killing one of Kiara’s kin. The Terrors—Alba and Aléne Voss, ancient daughters of the Forever King, Fabién Voss—arrive in pursuit of Dior. The combined forces prove overwhelming. As Gabriel, Dior, and their friends flee with the children across a treacherous bridge at Cairnhaem, Celene betrays her brother, letting him plummet into a chasm so she can claim Dior for the Esani. However, Kiara reappears, shattering the bridge and capturing a wounded Dior.

Finding Gabriel’s account incomplete, Jean-François reveals that he’s holding a second prisoner—Celene herself—starved and muzzled, across a magical underground river. Lured by a bottle of blood, Celene agrees to narrate what happened next, claiming Gabriel’s fall was an accident and that she, grievously wounded, was forced to secretly follow Dior by transforming into a tiny, moth-like creature made of her own blood. In Celene’s telling, Dior is taken captive by Kiara and her cousin Kane to the conquered Ossian capital of Dún Maergenn, the seat of Priori Nikita. During an escape attempt, Dior is recaptured, but not before she heals a fatally wounded thrall, Joaquin Marenn, with a touch of her holy blood and inadvertently discovers that her blood also breaks the thrall-bond. 

At Dún Maergenn, Dior is imprisoned with other “valuables,” including her friend Baptiste, and learns that Aaron de Coste was not killed but turned into a vampire thrall and is being brutally tortured. Presented to the Dyvok court, ruled by Nikita and his powerful older sister Lilidh the Heartless, Dior’s healing ability is demonstrated when she saves a servant girl named Worm, who is secretly the city’s rightful heir, Reyne á Maergenn. Lilidh forces Dior to drink her blood twice, believing it brings her one step from thralldom—she doesn’t realize Dior is immune to the pull of vampire blood. Playing the part of a besotted thrall, Dior forms a secret conspiracy with Reyne and her loyal swordmaids, planning to liberate all the Dyvok thralls by mixing her blood into their rations and assassinating the Dyvok leaders.

Meanwhile, Gabriel is rescued from the chasm by the duskdancer Phoebe á Dünnsair—from a race of powerful shapeshifters that can take the form of wild animals such as bears, wolves, and lions. Gravely wounded, he is taken to the duskdancer homeland in the Highlands to be healed by Phoebe’s aunt, a seer named Cinna á Dúnnsair. There, Gabriel learns the Dyvok have been secretly harvesting duskdancer blood, drinking it from golden vials to gain immense strength—the secret to their string of recent successful conquests. Enraged by this betrayal of a long-held truce, the Highland clans agree to march on Dún Maergenn. They are joined by Lachlan and the remnants of the Silver Order, who have tracked Gabriel across the country. The allied army lays siege to the city, their attack commencing at dawn. Dior and Reyne’s plot is exposed when they are betrayed by Isla á Cuinn, Joaquin’s beloved, who has been Nikita’s agent all along. As the battle rages, Celene reveals their trump card: Joaquin, freed from his bond, has successfully spiked the thralls’ morning liquor rations with Dior’s blood, causing the city’s mortal defenders to turn on their masters. With the tide turned, the battle moves inside the fortress walls.

The climax unfolds in a series of brutal confrontations. On the city walls, a vengeful Baptiste kills Nikita with help from Lachlan, freeing Aaron from his thralldom. At the city gates, Gabriel, Phoebe, and Celene face the Terrors, who have arrived with a Voss army. Gabriel, tormented by psychic illusions of his dead family, gives in to a blood rage and, with Celene’s help, destroys both ancient vampires. However, Fabién Voss, speaking through a foulblood (a mindless, decaying, zombie-like foot soldier), reveals that Celene murdered their father, the Esani elder Wulfric, to steal his power. 

Inside the dún, Dior and Reyne battle Lilidh in a secret crypt beneath the Sepulcher of the Mothermaid. They discover the final verses of the Grail prophecy, which reveal that the Redeemer himself created the five original vampire bloodlines with his dying curse. Reyne is mortally wounded, but Dior manages to kill Lilidh by stabbing her through her heartless chest with a sword coated in holy blood. As she cradles Reyne, Dior’s neck is snapped by Lilidh, who rises, undead, because she has no heart to destroy. Lilidh is finally killed by her own wolf, Prince, who was freed from his bond when he bit Dior. Gabriel arrives in the crypt to find Dior dead. Enraged at Celene for her lies and her role in Dior’s death, he attacks his sister.

Back in the present, Gabriel attacks Celene in her cell, and the two are violently separated by Chastain’s guards. After Gabriel is removed, Celene reveals the story’s end to Jean-François. In the crypt, the spilled blood of Lilidh and Prince awakened Mother Maryn, the ancient Esani Priori, from her century-long slumber. Above, Dior is laid to rest in the Mothermaid’s empty sarcophagus. As the book closes, Dior Lachance opens her eyes in her tomb. In an epilogue, Joaquin Marenn reveals he’s pretending to be in thrall to Jean-François but is working with Gabriel. The final line, spoken by the captive silversaint to his secret ally, is a call to arms: “For the Grail” (711).