The Sacred Core is the very life force of all vampires, connecting them intimately through a spiritual interdependency that permeates flesh and soul. Every vampire across the globe is interconnected by this etheric web that enhances supernatural abilities, bloodlust, and immortality.
The Sacred Core first sparks to life when the spirit of Amel—whose mortal life was genetically enhanced by the Bravennans (an alien species) and whose etheric form sustained those genetic enhancements on a spiritual plane of existence—fuses with Akasha’s blood at the point of her death. In other words, when a spirit containing corporeal traces of Bravennan genetic enhancements made upon earthling DNA combines with the DNA of a human at the point of death, that rare act creates the life force of vampirism. And that life force comes to be called the Sacred Core.
This fusion creates two transformations: the spirit becomes the Sacred Core, and the mortal becomes the Sacred Core’s vampire host, both intrinsically connected. In the same way that the mortal Lestat remains mostly intact after his transformation into a vampire, the spirit of Amel remains mostly intact after his transformation into the Sacred Core, only now he is intimately connected with Akasha, and she is his first vampire host. The two bodies are changed in some ways, yet they remain the same in many other ways.
After the fusion, Amel’s consciousness is generally suppressed under the consciousness of the host vampire. Akasha does all the conscious thinking and feeling, while Amel behaves more like her subconscious instinct and autonomic reflexes, healing her wounds, giving her immortality, and driving her bloodlust.
In one sense, the interconnection between the Sacred Core and the entire vampire race can be compared to a massively intricate web that stretches out in every direction: each vampire is a point of connectedness in the web, like a star in relation to nearby stars as well as in relation to the center of the universe. Amel is that center. And because Akasha carries him for thousands of years, she, too, is the center of vampire existence. If Akasha is harmed, the wounds of that harm will spread throughout the connective net, hurting the weakest vampires gravely, but the stronger vampires minimally. An example of this is when the Elder exposes Akasha and Enkil to the sunlight. Normally, the sun would immolate a vampire, but because the passage of time has strengthened their blood, the sun only bronzes their skin; yet through the interconnection with the Sacred Core, the immolating effect of the sun passes from Akasha to her fledglings—bronzing vampires of relatively equal age, charring younger vampires and burning to death the youngest and weakest.
Another example is when Mekare decapitates Akasha. As the blood drains from Akasha’s severed head, all vampires in existence feel their own mortality equally threatened. If Mekare never consumed Akasha’s brain, every vampire would have been destroyed. But when she consumes Akasha’s brain and heart, she takes into herself Amel and his Sacred Core, making herself the new carrier host of all vampire existence.
The Sacred Core appears in The Queen of the Damned (1988), Prince Lestat (2014), and Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016). For more perspectives on the Sacred Core in the Vampire Chronicles, read the Alphabettery entries Akasha, Amel, Lestat de Lioncourt, and Mekare.