In the process of feeding, a vampire possesses the ability to pass its nature on to its victim, like a sort of spiritual seeding. Every vampire while feeding enters a state of moderately heightened spiritual attunement to which their victims are exposed through direct contact, and this exposure begins to prepare the human for the transition to vampire via the gradual formation of the soul sac unique to the species. The sac, which exists in the same plane as the soul, effectively compensates for its loosening connection to the body and prevents the shinigami from sensing when the connection is weakest, when death would normally occur. After the brief window of weakness the connection gradually becomes stronger again, making the separation of the soul from the body of a mature vampire a more arduous task than the separation from a vampire of merely a few decades.
      This change, though never immediate, can occur under one of several circumstances, all of which require a feeding to occur. First, a vampire may turn its victim after a succession of feedings, in which the victim’s soul is gradually encased in the singular spiritual sac while they are still alive. Younger vampires must engage in multiple feedings to achieve a live turn, and mature vampires may only need as little as three for the same result; it is also rumored that vampires of a sufficient age may be able to turn a victim in a single feeding, but this rumor is unconfirmed.
      The other two methods share the common factor of the victim’s physical death. In the more common case, a vampire can turn its victim by feeding just before the human’s death, its own spiritual aura combined with the trauma of death amplifying the seeding effect to the point that only the single feeding is required—although in most instances of this case the human has been the subject of at least one prior feeding. In the absence of another vampire, however, an infected human will only turn if they have been fed upon sufficiently for the shock of dying to serve as sufficient impetus, and in this alternative scenario the human was typically one or two feedings away from turning anyway.
      Once the soul is completely encased, the fledgling vampire will experience the same torment described above, but the harsh effects are softened to a degree by the gradual turning process, and dying partially prepares the vampire to endure the ensuing pain. Because of this difference, the survival rate of turned vampires is much higher than that of the natural vampire, and it is commonly viewed with some small measure of contempt or disdain which manifests on a social level. Natural vampires, who are rarely found living in the modern era, hold higher stations in the vampiric social strata than turned vampires, almost without exception. Additionally, born vampires—humans who are the offspring of at least one vampire, and who go through their transitionary ordeals during adolescence—typically hold themselves in higher regard than turned vampires, though this social stigma has long been under dispute.
      One final change that accompanied the vampire’s shift to the ‘supernatural’ spectrum was the ability to employ forces known as magic, forces which humans have the capacity to merely sense....