The vector channel spectral function at zero spatial momentum is calculated at next-to-leading order in thermal QCD for any quark mass. It corresponds to the imaginary part of the massive quark contribution to the photon polarisation tensor. The spectrum shows a well-defined transport peak in contrast to both the heavy quark limit studied previously, where the low frequency domain is exponentially suppressed at this order, and the naive massless case where it vanishes at leading order and diverges at next-to-leading order. From our general expressions, the massless limit can be taken and we show that no divergences occur if done carefully. Finally, we compare the massless limit to results from lattice simulations.