The sky bled.
It was no ordinary bleeding, no gentle sunset or fading dusk. The heavens had been torn open, a wound of deep crimson tearing through the stars, spilling light that set the city of Veyrenholt aflame with shadow. The Red Moon hung low, swollen and heavy, its reflection pooling in the rain-slicked streets like liquid fire. Lanterns quivered, their flames strangled by the unnatural glow, and the air vibrated with whispers too faint for ears but not for the soul.
In the alleys, shadows twisted unnaturally. Gargoyles perched on rooftops leered with teeth sharper than any sculptor's chisel, their stone eyes reflecting the blood-red sky. The world had bent to the Eclipse. It hung like a threat, silent but omnipotent, pressing down upon every living thing.
Adrian Veyl moved through it all as a man both unseen and intolerably visible. His cloak, black as ash, brushed the wet cobblestones. His boots made no sound, yet he left footprints that glimmered faintly in the scarlet light—marks of his passing, as though the Eclipse itself had acknowledged him.
He was young, almost deceptively so, yet his eyes carried the weight of one who had seen too much, who had tasted the edges of forbidden things and survived. Every step he took was measured, deliberate. His lips curved in a faint, cruel smile, though no warmth resided there. Not yet.
He waited.
The girl came.
She stumbled from the marketplace, her arms clutched around a loaf of bread. Her gait was hurried, careless, her hood slipping back to reveal dark, unkempt hair. She was ordinary—fragile, human—but that fragility was precisely why Adrian found her useful. In her, he saw a vessel: untested, malleable, ripe for the touch of the Eclipse.
"You shouldn't be out here alone," he murmured, voice soft, almost apologetic, yet underlain with authority.
Startled, she spun. "I—I'm not lost!" Her voice trembled, betraying her. "I—I just need to get home…"
Adrian stepped closer, the red moon painting his face in cruel relief. "Home? Do you think there is such a thing tonight? The Eclipse watches. It hungers. It judges. The streets are no longer yours. They belong to it… and to those it chooses."
Fear flared in her eyes, and yet curiosity lingered, stubborn and bright. Adrian's pulse quickened—not from fear, but from the anticipation that comes when one plays a dangerous game.
"You—you talk as if it can hear you," she whispered, clutching the bread tighter.
"Oh, it can," Adrian said, voice low, deliberate. "And it does. Always."
It did not take force. He had learned long ago that manipulation was more exquisite than violence. A glance here, a word there, a hint of safety amidst the suffocating dread—suddenly, resistance becomes temptation, and desire blossoms where fear once grew.
He leaned closer. The girl shivered, instinctively recoiling, then inching forward despite herself. The air around them seemed to pulse, alive. Shadows deepened, quivered, and whispered. Adrian's breath mingled with hers; it carried warmth, danger, promise.
"Do you feel it?" he asked, his lips brushing her hair. "The way the moon watches? The way the city listens? It hungers for truth… and for what we hide."
Her heartbeat thundered. She could not speak. Not because she was incapable, but because her mind was unraveling under the twin weight of the Crimson Moon and his presence.
Adrian's hand found hers, brushing against fingers that trembled. "You fear it," he murmured. "And yet…" His thumb traced her palm. "…you want it."
The first touch awakened something in him. Not merely lust, not merely satisfaction. The pulse beneath his chest flared, searing through his veins, marking him. He gasped, a sudden shiver racing along his spine. He had been waiting for this: the moment when human desire becomes a tool, a bridge between the mortal world and the Eclipse.
He pressed closer. Her breath caught. The street, the alley, the entire city seemed to recede. There was only the two of them, two bodies, two souls vibrating in rhythm with something greater—something monstrous and divine.
He kissed her—not gently, but as one might kiss a key to unlock a forbidden seal. Her resistance melted into tremors of fear and longing, and in that moment, Adrian felt the first pulse of the Eclipse mark awaken within him. A brand invisible but burning, as though molten fire had been poured into his chest.
He pulled back. The girl's lips were parted, eyes wide, and she stared at him in confusion and awe.
"You—you're…" she whispered.
"Forget me," Adrian said, smiling faintly. "By morning, this night will be a dream."
But the city did not forgive.
For the Eclipse was not a mere celestial event—it was an entity, ancient and voracious. The girl began to convulse, her form bending against the laws of human anatomy. Limbs stretched, twisted, skin darkened like burned parchment, and shadows coalesced around her like tendrils. Her screams shattered the silence of the alley, warped into something inhuman, mocking, echoing the laughter of the red moon above.
Adrian stepped back, eyes wide, his heart hammering not from fear, but from awe and calculation. He had known this would happen. He had anticipated it. And yet… the reality surpassed even his imagination.
The girl—no, the creature—rose, towering, unnatural, a mockery of the body she once inhabited. Her eyes glowed with the same red as his mark. The intimacy they had shared, the lust he had coaxed, had fueled her transformation. Desire was no longer pleasure. Desire was evolution.
And the moon laughed.
It was not a sound made by air, nor by throat. It resonated within Adrian's mind, a vibration that made his teeth ache, that made the alley sway and twist. He realized with sudden, dizzying clarity that the Crimson Moon itself hungered, and it had chosen him as both its pawn and its witness.
The creature lunged, tendrils of shadow snaking toward him. He dodged instinctively, feeling the pulse of the mark thrumming, synchronizing with the heartbeat of the girl-turned-abomination. She shrieked, a sound that was once human now fully monstrous, echoing the laughter of the moon.
Adrian's pulse raced, yet his mind remained sharp. Lust, fear, anticipation, dread—they were all tools, weapons, instruments of power. He could consume this, harness it, turn it into his advantage. He pressed forward, eyes gleaming, and whispered, "If intimacy awakened you… then intimacy will bind you."
The first contact was chaos. Lips pressed to impossible flesh, hands finding places they should not, Adrian felt the surge of the Eclipse through her. The city seemed to recoil, the cobblestones writhing underfoot, black veins crawling outward, shadows reaching hungrily for the sky.
Power seared through him, a molten river flowing from chest to fingers, from mind to marrow. He saw the city differently, saw the pulse of shadows, the hunger in stone and stone's mimicry of flesh. He saw her mind, fractured, consumed, trembling—yet still tethered to him, still responding to the very lust he had ignited.
It was intoxicating. It was terror.
And he tasted it all.
When he finally pulled away, she collapsed, convulsing, her body melting back into shadow, leaving a black pool on the wet cobblestones. He staggered, chest on fire, lips trembling, eyes wide. The mark pulsed brighter, almost mocking, and Adrian realized that he had not merely survived. He had evolved. The first step on the Eclipse Path had been taken, but at a cost he did not yet understand.
Above, the Crimson Moon glimmered like a predator, its laughter echoing in the streets, in the shadows, in his very mind.
And somewhere, deep within the alleys of Veyrenholt, another whisper began. Not human. Not entirely of this world.
You are marked. You have tasted. You have awakened. And now… the game begins.
Adrian's lips curved in a smile, but his eyes were sharp, calculating, aware. He had awakened power he barely understood. But already, he felt the chains of the Eclipse tightening around his heart.
And the girl—no, the monster—was gone, but her scream lingered, an echo in his mind that would never fade.
The city had changed. He had changed.
And the Crimson Moon… it had not finished laughing.
The city was not asleep.
No—under the Crimson Eclipse, sleep was a luxury denied to all. The lamps of Veyrenholt flickered weakly against the suffocating red glow, like dying fireflies swallowed by night. Behind shuttered windows, men and women whispered, pressed close, afraid to utter aloud the truth that every heart already knew:
That tonight, the world was listening.
And laughing.
Adrian Veyl walked with hurried steps, his cloak drawn tight, though no chill touched him. His chest burned—there, beneath his shirt, the mark pulsed with a feverish rhythm, as though a second heart had been stitched into his flesh. It was not his, and yet it beat within him.
Each throb carried with it a memory. The girl's gasp, her trembling body pressed against him, the way her resistance dissolved into yearning. But it was not pleasure he remembered—it was hunger. A hunger that was not his alone. Something vast, alien, had drunk with him.
The moon.
He felt its gaze upon him now. Heavy, suffocating, as though the crimson eye in the sky leaned closer with each step.
And then he heard it.
Laughter.
Not human. Not kind. The laughter of something ancient and obscene, a laughter that reduced all dignity to mockery. It echoed inside his skull, reverberating with each heartbeat, until he nearly stumbled.
He pressed his hand against a wall to steady himself. The stone was slick, damp—not with rain, but with some foul moisture that seeped between the bricks. When he pulled his palm away, it glistened darkly, as if the city itself was bleeding.
"Is this… punishment?" Adrian muttered, his voice low, hoarse. But even as he asked, he smiled faintly. For part of him—the darkest, truest part—did not fear punishment. It craved recognition.
From behind him came a sound.
A wet sound.
The girl.
Adrian turned slowly, the alley stretching impossibly long behind him, the stones glistening under the crimson light. She no longer stood as a girl.
Her body convulsed, her limbs bending at grotesque angles, as if invisible strings pulled her apart. Her skin tore, not with blood but with shadow, as though darkness itself clawed out of her veins. Her mouth split wider, wider, until it reached her ears, her teeth elongating, curving like shards of broken glass.
But it was her eyes that froze him.
They burned with the same crimson that seared his chest.
For a moment, recognition flickered there—fear, confusion, a silent plea. Then it was gone, drowned beneath a tide of madness.
The intimacy that had moments ago made her human now made her more than human. More, and less.
Adrian staggered back, his breath shallow. His mind reeled, but not with fear—no, fear was too simple. He was overcome by something more complex, something Dostoevsky himself might have called the ecstasy of damnation.
He whispered, almost reverently: "So this is what the Eclipse births…"
The girl—no, the creature—laughed.
Not her laugh. Not human. The sound was a parody of intimacy, a broken mimicry of the gasps she had given him before. Each laugh seemed to mock what they had shared, to turn passion into grotesquerie.
She lunged.
Adrian twisted away, his cloak snapping like a wing. His hand brushed the dagger at his side, though he knew steel was useless against what she had become. Still, instinct made him draw it.
She moved like liquid shadow, her body stretching, reforming. Each time she struck the ground, the stones hissed, dark tendrils sprouting in her wake. She was not merely changed—she was becoming.
Adrian's thoughts spun, fevered.
Is this their fate? he wondered. Every kiss, every embrace, every stolen moment of pleasure beneath the Eclipse—does it carve the human soul away until only this remains? And if so… then what of me?
His chest burned hotter, the mark searing like iron pressed to skin. He gasped, his knees nearly buckling. Visions rushed upon him:
• Lovers entwined beneath crimson skies, their bodies glowing, their eyes hollow.
• Orgies in cathedral ruins, the cries of ecstasy mingling with screams.
• Men and women tearing each other apart even as they kissed.
• And above all, the moon, always the moon, watching, laughing, feeding.
He pressed his palm hard against his chest, teeth clenched, his body trembling. "I am not… like them," he hissed. Yet even as he spoke, he doubted.
The creature shrieked, its jaw distending, its limbs elongating. Its hunger was not for flesh, Adrian realized—it was for him. For the mark upon his chest.
It desired what he had stolen.
And in that moment, Adrian understood: monsters of the Eclipse were not random. They were echoes of intimacy twisted into hunger, human desire curdled into something unspeakable. They grew stronger with every taste, every indulgence.
Lust was not merely corruption. It was evolution.
The girl—this creature—was not dying. She was becoming more dangerous with each second, her form unraveling and reforming like a cocoon splitting to birth something higher, hungrier. Her laugh deepened, took on cadence, until it nearly matched the laughter of the moon above.
The moon laughed with her.
Adrian backed away, his mind feverish. I awakened her. My touch, my kiss, my embrace—I was the spark. If this is what becomes of her… what will become of me?
His breath quickened, and yet his lips curved into a smile. Yes, the thought horrified him—but it also thrilled him. He felt the weight of chains, but chains made of gold, shining and terrible.
For in the girl's monstrous form, in her grotesque hunger, he saw a mirror of himself.
And he desired it.
The battle was inevitable. She lunged, tendrils of shadow whipping around him. He rolled aside, his dagger slashing, cutting through nothing but smoke and laughter. Each failed strike only deepened his certainty: she was no longer flesh—she was the embodiment of what they had shared, desire turned monstrous.
Her hand—if it could still be called a hand—brushed his face, cold and wet, and he felt a surge of power burn within him. His chest blazed with crimson light, and for a heartbeat, he saw through her eyes.
He saw Adrian.
Not as he was—but as the Eclipse saw him. A vessel. A seed. A plaything for the moon's amusement.
And the moon laughed.
Adrian staggered back, his breath ragged, dagger trembling in his grip. His thoughts raced. I cannot kill her. I cannot fight what she is becoming. But perhaps… perhaps I can take from her again.
His lips curved in a smile both mad and brilliant. He whispered, "If intimacy awakened her, then intimacy will bind her."
The creature screeched, its jaws snapping. But Adrian did not retreat. He stepped forward, his hand seizing her chin, forcing her grotesque face toward his. Her teeth grazed his flesh, cutting shallow lines across his skin, but he did not falter.
He kissed her.
And in that kiss, the world shattered.
Power surged. The mark upon his chest flared, crimson light spilling through his shirt, etching symbols into his skin. The creature convulsed, writhing in ecstasy and agony. The alley shook, the stones splitting, black veins crawling outward as though the city itself responded.
Adrian felt it all: her hunger, her madness, her loss of self. He drank it, devoured it, even as she devoured him. Their kiss was not passion—it was consumption.
He tore himself away, panting, his lips stained with shadow. The creature collapsed, its body twisting violently before dissolving into a pool of black ichor.
Adrian staggered, his vision swimming. His mark pulsed brighter now, and he knew—he had taken something from her. A fragment of power. A gift of the Eclipse.
And yet, even as strength coursed through him, he heard it again.
The laughter.
Louder, nearer. The moon itself trembled, its crimson light pouring like blood across the city.
And then the voice, deep and resonant, filled his mind once more:
You take. You consume. You climb. But every step is mine.
Adrian fell to his knees, clutching his chest, his body trembling with both ecstasy and horror.
Above, the moon laughed.
And the laughter did not stop.