The Sealing — 1423, Hollow Falls
The moon hung low and pale that night, a fading sliver instead of the crimson eye that had watched his birth. Snow whispered across the frozen courtyard of the old Wolfe Manor, softening the thud of boots as a handful of torch-bearing figures dragged their prisoner through the gates.
Lucian Wolfe fought them every step, even weakened as he was from the wolfsbane and vervain running like ice through his veins. His wrists were bound in iron shackles inscribed with blood runes that burned against his skin, but his golden-silver eyes still blazed with fury.
"You think iron will hold me?" Lucian snarled, his voice rough but carrying the weight of a predator. "You'll regret this, Aveline."
At the head of the procession, Aveline Wolfe didn't flinch. Her fur-lined cloak billowed in the winter wind as she forced herself not to meet his gaze. The last time she'd looked into those eyes, she had hesitated—and hesitation was the reason Silas had demanded Lucian's imprisonment.
"You left me no choice," she said at last, her voice quiet but sharp. "You draw the wolves to our door, the witches against our kind. Your power grows wilder with every moonrise. If we don't stop you now, we all burn."
Lucian laughed bitterly. "We? Or just you, afraid that I'll surpass you? You were always afraid of what I could become."
Silas shoved him forward, the sound of the chains clanking against the frost-cracked stones. "Enough of his poison. Let the earth silence him."
They led Lucian into the catacombs beneath the manor: a sprawling labyrinth of damp tunnels carved from black rock. At its heart stood a stone sarcophagus, veined with silver and ringed by candles whose flames guttered as the hybrid approached.
Aveline's heart twisted at the sight of it—she had designed the tomb herself, never imagining she'd use it for her own brother.
Lucian's struggles faltered as they forced him to his knees before the sarcophagus. He looked up at Aveline, his anger fading to something almost pleading.
"Sister… don't do this. I beg you..."
For a heartbeat, her mask slipped. She saw not the dangerous hybrid the world feared, but the boy she had once carried from the river when he was small, the one who always sought her approval.
Her fingers trembled, then tightened again on the silver dagger. "You left me no choice, Lucian," she whispered.
The witches Silas had bargained with began chanting, their voices a low, eerie drone that echoed off the cavern walls. Runes flared to life across the sarcophagus, glowing the same pale silver as the moon.
Lucian's eyes burned brighter as he snarled, the wolf in him rising to the surface. "You can bury me in stone and shadow," he growled, "but you can't kill what was born under the blood moon."
The final chant rang out like a bell, and the earth trembled. Lucian's body stiffened as the magic seized him, pulling him down into the stone coffin. The sarcophagus lid slid into place, sealing with a hollow thud that echoed like a closing door to another world.
The glow of the runes faded. The candles went out. Silence claimed the catacombs.
Above, Aveline closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to fall.
"Forgive me," she whispered to the darkness. "I pray the world never wakes you."
---
Present Day — Hollow Falls
Six hundred years later, the Wolfe Manor was no more than a crumbling ruin on the outskirts of the growing city of Hollow Falls. The catacombs beneath it had long since been forgotten—until a new highway project cut straight through the woods behind the old foundation.
The machines came first: steel teeth biting into frozen soil, their engines grumbling like giants. The workers cursed as the drill jammed against something unyielding deep below.
By dusk, they'd uncovered a slab of stone carved with strange runes none of them could decipher. They thought it was part of an old crypt, something historical but harmless. They were wrong.
That night, while the construction crew packed up, an early winter storm rolled in, bringing a hard rain that seeped into the cracks they'd made. Water dripped into the chamber below, pooling around the sarcophagus.
The runes on the lid flickered—just faintly, like dying embers remembering their fire.
---
The Unearthing
Two nights later, a small team returned to excavate the crypt. One of them, a young archaeologist named Mara Quinn, knelt beside the uncovered coffin with a flashlight in one hand and her phone in the other.
"Looks medieval," she murmured. "Maybe older. Definitely not in any of the local records."
Her partner, Theo, frowned as his gloved fingers brushed the lid. "You feel that? It's… warm. Shouldn't be."
Before Mara could answer, a crack shot across the stone lid, spider-webbing outward in jagged lines. The ground beneath their feet trembled.
The air grew heavy, as if the chamber itself was holding its breath.
"Step back," Theo said, voice tight.
The crack widened. A thin wisp of mist curled from within as the smell of earth and old blood seeped into the air. Then—suddenly—the lid shifted, grinding open just enough to let out a burst of icy air that snuffed out the work lights one by one.
In the flickering dark, Mara heard it first: a slow, deliberate inhale, as though something long-dormant was tasting the air of the living world again.
A hand shot out of the coffin—pale as moonlight, veined with shadows—and clamped onto the edge of the sarcophagus.
Golden-silver eyes blinked open in the darkness.
Lucian Wolfe sat up, the chains falling from his wrists like brittle twigs. His gaze swept the chamber, settling on the two stunned humans as if they were little more than prey.
"The world has forgotten my name," he said, his voice rough from centuries of silence, yet carrying a terrible calm.
"Time to remind it."
Mara stumbled backward, her flashlight trembling in her grip. Theo didn't move—he couldn't. Those eyes held him frozen in place, a wolf's hunger and a vampire's cold cunning in one unholy stare.
Lucian stepped out of the sarcophagus, bare feet silent on the stone floor. The storm outside howled like an old friend calling him home.
Above them, the city of Hollow Falls slept, unaware that something older than their legends had risen again.
|-| To Be Continued |-|