(2025)
The moon hung low like a bloodstained coin in the night sky, partially veiled by thick city smog and clouds that moved too slow to matter. In the upper heights of the Draxen estate—far above the glinting skyline and the heartbeat of civilization—an ancient hunger stirred in Luxien's bones like something coiled and breathing in the dark.
The dining hall had been untouched by modernity. No steel, no glass. Just stone, obsidian-black and etched with sigils of an age long buried. Thick candle flames danced in sconces high along the curved walls, their flickering light casting shadows like writhing spirits on the floor. The air smelled of incense—sweet myrrh and iron.
And blood.
Luxien stood before the long black table, clad in a robe of velvet midnight, trimmed with old war-torn symbols now only remembered by ghosts. His gloves were off. His left hand veined in black, fingers slightly gnarled where the rot had climbed higher. He flexed it slowly as if testing the limits of his own decay.
Across the hall, kneeling in a perfect line before the dais, were three mortals—two women and a man—dressed in silks of crimson and ivory, their bodies washed, oiled, and adorned in golden cuffs. Their necks were bared. Their eyes were glazed over with the trance of vampire glamour, but faint tremors betrayed the fear beneath their serenity.
Matthew stood a few paces behind the captives, quiet and composed. He didn't flinch at the scent in the air. He had seen worse nights.
"Begin," Luxien said simply.
The first woman was guided to her feet by Matthew with a wordless nod. She moved like a doll, like something that had forgotten how to say no.
Luxien sat in the high-backed chair at the head of the table, carved with thorns and wings, and beckoned her forward with a slight curl of his finger.
Her pulse beat too loud.
Her blood called to him like a whisper made of music, tempting, pulsing, alive.
But it wasn't enough.
Not anymore.
Luxien reached forward and brushed her hair aside, revealing the soft curve of her throat. He inhaled deeply—not out of need, but instinct. The scent was clean. Frightened. Human.
He sank his fangs into her skin with surgical precision.
Warmth flooded his mouth, thick and rich like spiced wine. Her body shuddered against him as the trance deepened. He drank. A minute passed. Then two.
And still, it did not satisfy.
He drank deeper.
The old part of him—the monster—roused like a beast long denied. Not just hunger now. Fury. Emptiness. A chasm where peace should have been. He tore away with a sharp breath, leaving her unconscious in Matthew's arms.
"Next," Luxien said, his voice darker now, laced with a hoarse edge.
The man stepped forward, bare-chested and trembling. Luxien didn't wait. He lunged with unnatural speed, grabbed the man by the shoulders, and bit down savagely.
This time, the man screamed. Not from the bite—but from the raw violence in it.
The blood hit Luxien's tongue and something inside cracked.
He needed more.
He deserved more.
Centuries of control—centuries of reigning himself in—slipped like a crumbling wall, and for a moment, he forgot he was ever anything other than a predator.
He threw the body to the side when it went limp. Unconscious. Maybe dead. He didn't check. He didn't care.
The third—a younger woman with wide, dark eyes—was already sobbing softly before Matthew even approached. Glamour couldn't hold against that kind of instinctive fear.
Luxien rose from his seat slowly, his eyes now glowing faintly crimson in the dim light.
She backed away, even as her feet tried to obey the compulsion.
"Please…" she whispered.
It was the first real voice he'd heard all night.
Something in that word—so small, so human—punched through the fog of his rage. He froze, a breath caught in his chest. The girl was crying, her lips trembling, hands clutched to her chest like she knew she wouldn't leave this room.
Luxien turned his head slightly. The candlelight revealed the full extent of the rot crawling up his forearm now, tendrils of dark magic twisting around bone like ivy on a tomb.
He could kill her.
He should.
But the taste in his mouth was wrong. All of it. Every drop.
Empty.
Lifeless.
Not hers.
Not the soul his blood recognized.
He stepped back.
"Take her away," he murmured.
Matthew didn't question it. He moved quickly, lifting the girl and vanishing into the hall with only a faint gust of wind in his wake.
Luxien remained standing, chest heaving once, then stilling.
The hunger wasn't gone.
Just pushed back.
Like a tide waiting to drown everything again.
He walked to the window, brushing blood off his mouth with the back of his rotting hand. His reflection stared back—hollow-eyed, fading.
Then, suddenly, he felt it.
A jolt. A pull. A tremor through the marrow of his bones.
Like the world had just exhaled after holding its breath for too long.
His fingers clenched on the windowsill.
Somewhere…
She stirred.
Not just in memory.
But in life.
The curse is breaking, he thought, as his cracked lips curved into something resembling a smile. She's returned.
——
—And then, nothing.
No sound. No pain. No ceiling lights.
Faya floated in the space between breath and death, wrapped in a strange, gentle quiet. The kind of quiet that didn't belong to hospitals or rooms full of worried parents. This was the silence of old places, of echoes buried deep beneath the skin. She couldn't feel her body, not fully, but something in her mind drifted just enough to realize she wasn't truly asleep—nor awake.
It began with the scent of figs.
Warm earth. Blooming herbs. Grass crushed beneath bare feet.
She stood barefoot in a garden. Not the apartment garden her mother planted herbs in, no—this one was wild, expansive, infinite. Leaves fluttered in a wind that didn't touch her, and the air tasted of something nostalgic.
A memory.
Not hers. But hers, somehow.
The sky overhead was bruised with the coming of dusk, orange and gray bleeding into each other like paint left to run. She turned in place slowly, her hands trembling as they grazed the tips of lavender bushes and fig trees heavy with fruit. The soft soil between her toes felt too real.
And yet—there was fear blooming in her chest. Not because she didn't know where she was. But because she did.
She stepped forward, drawn by a sound she couldn't name. The trees rustled louder. Smoke rose faintly in the distance. There were whispers on the wind. Names she couldn't quite hear. Screams buried in the hush.
Then came his presence.
It pressed into the dream like a shadow just behind her shoulder. She turned, heart slamming against her ribs. But the man was always just out of reach.
His face... distorted.
Like her mind was trying to remember something the dream refused to show her. She could feel him, though—his coldness like a familiar ache. The heavy silence that followed him. The eyes that watched her in every dream. Silver. Burning.
She stepped closer toward the place where the dream grew darker. There were ashes in the air now. The scent of burning homes, burning lives. A village in flames flickered into view in the horizon—a blur of destruction she didn't understand but mourned anyway.
"Maya," someone whispered behind her.
She turned sharply—no one was there.
"Maya," it came again, softer this time, inside her head. The name struck her like lightning through her spine.
Who is that?
But even as the question formed, part of her already knew.
She pressed her palm to her chest, and for a brief moment, it felt like two hearts beat inside her.
And somewhere in the storm of memory and dream, she saw him again. A man stepping out of smoke and shadow. His figure tall, his coat trailing behind him like night stitched into cloth. His hand reached toward her—
But before she could see his face, it cracked like glass. Shattered. Gone.
Her body jolted.
---
Across the city, miles away in his gothic tower of silence, Luxien Draxen snapped upright from where he'd leaned against the cool windowpane. His breath stilled, not because he needed to breathe, but because something ancient stirred beneath his ribs.
A pulse. A pull. Like something had just woken up.
The taste of her soul lingered in the air again. Not full. Not clear. But present.
Not Maya.
Not yet.
But her. The girl who carried that soul like a hidden jewel waiting to be found.
His blood simmered under his skin. It had never done that before. Not even during the height of his power.
He didn't hesitate. He turned toward the door of the hall and called, "Matthew."
The advisor reappeared in seconds, composed as always, though the faint tremble in his brow betrayed the urgency of the summon.
"She's here," Luxien said, voice low and certain. "Alive."
Matthew blinked. "You felt it?"
"I know it."
"She would have been reborn years ago, my Lord. We've searched the entire—"
"You searched like men," Luxien snapped softly, stepping forward. "This is not a task for logic or maps. This is a matter of blood. Of essence."
He passed Matthew with the elegance of a shadow, descending the steps toward the inner sanctum of the estate. The walls pulsed faintly with ancient sigils, responding to the sudden surge in his presence.
He stopped at the foot of the staircase, turning slightly. "Widen the reach. Look in every hospital, every shelter. Focus on the dying. On those slipping between."
Matthew tilted his head. "You think she's sick?"
"I know she is." Luxien's voice dropped into a near growl. "The curse never lets her return whole. It weakens her—so I'll be forced to watch her die again before I can bring her back."
"Then what shall I do once we find her?"
Luxien's eyes flared faintly crimson in the dimness. "Bring her to me. Alive. Conscious, if possible. And gently, Matthew."
His voice was velvet over a blade. "This time, I won't have her scream my name in fear."
Matthew bowed low. "As you command, my Lord."
With a blink, he vanished into motion—gone before the candle beside him flickered.
Luxien remained, his decayed hand hidden in his coat, the hunger still humming in his bones. But the ache had shifted.