He walked the keep after sunset, barefoot on cold stone, each step a hollow echo. Once, these corridors had breathed with voices—servants carrying trays, guards laughing at dice, his mother's soft hum trailing down stairwells. Now silence ruled, and it was not still.
It shifted. It pressed. It seemed to breathe louder than he did.
In the great hall, the banners still hung. Their colors dulled to shadows, their edges chewed by moths. Yet when moonlight swept across them, the figures stitched there seemed to stir. Knights frozen mid-charge, kings lifting crowns, gods standing with palms outstretched.
Rhael stopped beneath one—the god of mercy, hand raised in benediction. The threads caught silver light. His mouth felt dry.
"Do you mock me?" His voice broke the stillness, thin and rasped. "Or do you pity me?"
The woven eyes stared down, glimmering faintly as if amused.
He turned away with a bitter laugh. "If mercy exists, it would have let me die."
The silence pressed harder. He imagined the threads whispering. "Not mercy. Not for you."
At first, he thought the soldier's blood had been enough. That one life had stilled the gnawing forever. For a time, it did.
But hunger returned.
It was no ordinary ache—it twisted deeper than his belly, coiling through his marrow, scraping along bone. He pressed fists against his ribs, gasping, but it only grew sharper.
And with hunger came voices.
In the kitchens, sitting before the dead hearth, he heard Therain the healer. 'Every day he must drink the draught. Miss a single day, and the balance breaks.'
Rhael's lips twitched into a smile that was almost a snarl. "There is no draught anymore, old man. Only this." His tongue ran along cracked lips, tasting the ghost of blood.
In his bed, lying where once he had coughed himself into exhaustion, he heard his mother. Serenya's lullabies, warped by memory, words blurred into groans.
He pressed a pillow against his ears. "Stop. Please, stop. I don't want your songs anymore." His voice cracked into a laugh. "I don't need them. I don't need you."
And in the armory, when his shadow fell across his father's breastplate, he heard Baron Caelen's voice rumble. "You will outlast us, boy. You suffer too much to waste it by dying early."
Rhael pressed both hands to the steel, forehead against cold metal. "I outlasted you, father." His breath fogged the cuirass. "But what did you make of me?"
The breastplate answered nothing. Only his own breath echoed, uneven, like the panting of another creature.
He began to answer them more often. Sometimes in whispers. Sometimes aloud. Sometimes laughing so hard his ribs ached though no air left his lungs.
One night, he carried a rusted dagger into the kitchens. He lit no candle.
Not to die. That he had tried already. Death had fled him.
He only wanted to know.
He pressed steel to his forearm. Drew it slow. Skin parted, neat as fabric cut by shears.
He waited for pain. There was none. Only knowing that this should hurt. Pain is a blessing to know that one is alive— now, he was also cursed fo not feel pain.
Blood welled. But instead of falling, the drops shivered, then crept backward. Crimson threads wove themselves into muscle, binding sinew.
His breath hitched. "Stop," he whispered.
The blood obeyed. It slowed, then stilled, leaving the wound open, trembling at its edges.
A shiver of triumph ran through him. He was not a prisoner of this body. He was its master.
He lifted his hand. "Close."
The skin sealed with a sound like wet cloth torn and stitched. Not smooth, not gentle—the flesh crawled shut, angry at being commanded, but obeying nonetheless.
Rhael's lips stretched into a smile. It faltered. Laughter burst instead, high, broken, spilling into the dark.
He pressed his hand to his head as the laughter shook him. His nails split skin. When he pulled away, his scalp was slick with blood. He saw his nails—longer, sharper, like hooked iron.
The blood already crept back into the cuts. The flesh sealed beneath his fingers.
He bent forward, shoulders quaking. The laughter turned into sobbing. Or perhaps the sobbing turned into laughter. He could not tell.
Nights blurred. He stopped counting.
He tested himself more. Veins crawling under his skin when he willed them. Bones thickening until his fists could crack oak tables. Muscles straining, tightening, snapping chains left on the wall.
He slit his throat once before the mirror. Watched the gash gape, dark and endless—then seal with a shudder, leaving his voice ragged but unbroken.
The body dulled agony until even the idea of pain grew faint, like a story half-remembered.
He sat in the armory once, dagger still wet in hand, whispering to the silence: "Was pain ever real? Or was it only a lie? A tale told to keep men weak?"
The silence answered with his own ragged laughter.
When the hunger grew unbearable, he left the keep.
The village below sagged beneath moss and rain. Thatched roofs torn open. Doors swung on rusted hinges. The streets glistened with puddles, yet no footsteps but his marked them.
Still, he swore he heard movement. A creak of a shutter. A step in mud just out of sight.
He searched. In one hut, a chair lay overturned, hearth dead with ash.
"Where are you?" His voice cracked. "Where did you all go?"
The silence swelled. His hunger sharpened.
In another hut, a cradle rocked though no wind touched it. His breath caught. He reached out, hand trembling. The cloth inside seemed to rise and fall, faint, like the breath of an infant.
"Child?" His voice trembled. "Are you—?"
He pulled the blanket back. Dust rose in a gray cloud. Only dust.
His hands clenched the edge of the cradle until wood splintered. His lips pulled back, teeth bared.
"Why do you haunt me?" His voice was a rasp. "Why do you not let me rest?"
The cradle creaked once more, then stilled.
The silence laughed at him.
He found a cracked silver mirror in a fallen house. He had not looked at himself in weeks.
The figure staring back was pale, skin waxen, veins shadowing beneath. His eyes glimmered faintly, one gray, one dark as night's heart. His lips cracked, bloodied, curled into something like a grin.
"Who are you?" Rhael whispered.
The reflection tilted its head. The lips moved—but slower, out of step with his own.
Rhael's hand shot out. The mirror shattered. Shards clattered to the floor, slicing his palm. He hissed—then watched the cuts vanish before the glass even stilled.
He opened his hand. Perfect again. Always perfect.
"No," he whispered, voice shaking with fury. "Not perfect. Wrong."
---
Every morning, the sun rose.
Once, he climbed the tower to watch it. The marshes turned silver. Mountains burned violet at their peaks. Beauty carved the horizon in colors he could not touch.
He reached instinctively into the beam.
The light kissed his arm. For a heartbeat, warmth spread like hope. Then claws dug in. Flesh sizzled, veins shrieked, smoke rose from his skin.
He yanked back, gasping, cradling the wound. Flesh healed in seconds, but the memory of fire lingered, deeper than flesh.
He pressed his brow against the cold stone. Whispered, over and over: "I want to live. I want to live. I want to live."
The silence answered only with his hollow breath.
The pull of that warmth grew unbearable. Rhael pressed deeper into the marsh until the ground softened beneath his boots, sucking at his steps like it wanted him buried. The mist thinned, and beyond it, a firelight glowed against the trees. A camp.
He crouched, pulse hammering, his lips parting though no breath escaped. The scent was maddening—iron, salt, warmth. Blood, close enough to taste.
Two men sat by the flames, cloaks thrown back, their laughter breaking the silence of the night. They gnawed at roasted hare, grease shining on their beards. Beside them, a third figure lay half-asleep, chin tucked to his chest, hand limp on his blade.
Rhael's throat convulsed. He pressed his palm against it, as if to dam the gnawing emptiness inside. But it was no use. His body moved without thought, slipping through shadow. The firelight painted his pale skin copper for an instant before mist swallowed him again.
One of the men froze. He glanced over his shoulder.
"Did you hear—"
A blur broke the words. Rhael's hand clamped over his mouth, dragging him back into the dark. The man's eyes bulged, struggling, but the sound never came. Teeth tore through flesh before the thought of fear could reach his heart.
The taste—hot, flooding, dizzying—lit every nerve. It was not meat, not drink, not air. It was everything. His body shuddered as strength bled into his veins, every ache melting into fire.
The second man shot to his feet, blade drawn.
"Flerken?" His voice cracked. "Where in the—"
Rhael stepped from the mist, lips slick, eyes glowing faintly red in the firelight. For a heartbeat, the hunter and hunted stared at one another.
Then steel flashed.
The man's strike was clumsy with fear. Rhael swayed aside and seized his wrist. Bone cracked beneath his grip. The sword dropped into the mud. The man screamed—only for the scream to end in a wet gurgle as Rhael's mouth found his throat.
The third one woke too late. He stumbled up, face pale in the firelight, sword shaking in both hands. But Rhael was already on him. The man's cut sliced empty air before fangs sank into his chest. His legs kicked weakly against the dirt, then slowed, then stilled.
Silence fell.
The fire popped, throwing sparks upward like fleeing souls. Rhael knelt among the bodies, chest heaving, blood painting his chin. His fingers trembled as he touched his face, touched the wound where hunger had once lived. It was gone—emptied, filled, reborn. Strength rippled beneath his skin, strength so foreign it frightened him.
And yet… There was no guilt. No shame. Only the haunting realization that he could never return.
The night air shifted. A voice stirred at the edge of his mind, faint as wind through a graveyard.
This is what you are, child.
He stilled, eyes darting to the shadows. No figure stood there. The voice was inside, carried in the blood now flowing in his veins.
Feed or wither. Kill or be consumed. Death is already a mercy for him.
Rhael pressed his hands against his ears, but the whisper coiled tighter, a chain around his thoughts.
He fled the camp before dawn, leaving only fire for he devoured even the bones of the fallen. His veins still burned with stolen life, every heartbeat reminding him of what he had done. He did not stop running until trees broke apart and a meadow opened before him.
The horizon was beginning to pale.
At first, he welcomed the light. After so many nights of fog and death, the dawn seemed a promise—a cleansing. He stood at the meadow's edge and lifted his face to the horizon.
The first beam of sunlight touched him.
Agony erupted.
It was as though his skin had been set alight. Smoke curled from his flesh, blistering in patches. He fell to his knees, clawing at himself, his scream ripping through the waking woods. Every instinct shrieked for shadow, for cover.
Rhael crawled back, dragging himself into the treeline. The moment shade wrapped him, the burning ebbed to a sick throb. His breath rattled, his chest heaving as if he had been flayed.
He lay there, shivering, staring at the golden light that now seemed more monstrous than the night. His hand reached out, and where the beam touched, skin sizzled, blackening like charred paper.
He yanked it back, cradling it to his chest.
The truth was plain. Whatever he had become—whatever the hunger had carved him into—he no longer belonged to the sun.
The meadow before him was bright, alive with birdsong, dew sparkling like jewels on the grass. But to him it was barred by fire. He was chained to shadow, bound to the night.
And in that knowledge, a strange calm settled over him.
He was no longer drowning in weakness. His body held strength beyond the men he had killed. His lungs did not fail him, his limbs no longer trembled. He was whole, for the first time since birth.
But the price was written in the blood on his lips, and in the seared flesh of his hand.
The night had claimed him. And it would never let him go.