Six years later, the Thornwell estate no longer felt like a home.
It felt like something waiting to be disturbed.
Lucien was eight.
He stood alone in the courtyard at dusk, the sky bruised purple above him, hands folded neatly behind his back like the well-mannered child Clara had raised. His shoes were polished. His curls were slightly longer now. His eyes still too old.
The gates screamed open.
They did not knock.
They came in cloaked in ash and iron, twenty of them, hunters carved in sigils, blades dipped in poison brewed for creatures like him. The air thickened with vervain smoke and wolfbane powder. Someone had studied him. Someone had prepared.
Alaric's voice thundered from inside the house. Clara's scream followed.
Lucien did not move.
The leader stepped forward. "The abomination ends tonight."
Lucien tilted his head.
The men expected fangs. They expected glowing eyes. They expected rage.
Instead, he smiled.
A child's smile.
They lunged.
The first blade pierced his shoulder.
It should have slowed him.
It should have burned.
It didn't.
Lucien looked down at the metal lodged in his flesh, curious, as black veins spidered across his skin and then vanished. His heartbeat slowed. Slower. Slower.
Then it stopped.
The courtyard went silent.
A hunter laughed nervously. "He's dead."
Lucien blinked.
And the world snapped.
The air inverted. The torches blew out. Every hunter froze mid-step as if the night itself had gripped their bones.
Lucien's eyes were no longer brown.
They were something else.
Gold. Crimson. Black. Shifting like oil on water.
"You brought iron," he whispered.
His voice layered over itself. Three tones speaking at once.
"You brought poison."
The ground beneath the men softened like wet flesh. Their boots sank ankle-deep into soil that pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat beneath the earth.
"You brought fear."
He lifted his head slowly.
"But you forgot…"
His gaze locked with the leader's.
The man's pupils dilated.
Lucien stepped forward, pulling the blade from his own shoulder with a wet sound. The wound sealed instantly, skin knitting together as if time obeyed him.
"…I can make you feel stronger than me."
The hunters gasped as warmth flooded their veins. Their muscles swelled. Their vision sharpened. The poison in their weapons turned sweet, harmless. Their hearts pounded with intoxicating power.
They felt invincible.
Lucien made sure of it.
One of them laughed hysterically. "He's nothing! He's just a child!"
Lucien nodded.
"Yes," he agreed softly.
Then he dropped to his knees.
He made himself look small.
Fragile.
Afraid.
They roared and rushed him.
That was when he took their minds.
Not with force.
With invitation.
Their thoughts opened like doors, and he walked inside each one. He showed them illusions of triumph—Lucien bleeding, Lucien begging, Lucien dying.
Their confidence swelled.
And as it did, something inside Lucien snapped.
Not anger.
Not fear.
Something colder.
His humanity did not fade like a candle.
It shattered.
The tribrid inside him rose like a thing unchained.
His spine arched violently. Bones cracked. His shadow split into three monstrous silhouettes against the courtyard walls—wolf, vampire, something ancient and winged.
The hunters stopped laughing.
Lucien stood again.
Too still.
Too quiet.
The leader tried to speak.
His mouth filled with soil.
Lucien flicked his fingers gently.
Half the men turned on the others instantly, blades swinging with ecstatic grins, convinced they were cutting down a monster. Steel tore through flesh. Blood sprayed warm and thick. Screams overlapped in confusion as they butchered each other while believing they were victorious.
Lucien walked between them.
Slow.
Calm.
One man dropped to his knees, eyes wide. "What… what are you doing to us?"
Lucien crouched in front of him.
The boy's face was soft.
Innocent.
His eyes were not.
"I'm letting you win," Lucien said.
The man looked down.
His own hands were around his throat.
Squeezing.
Lucien stood as the body dropped.
Two hunters tried to run.
Lucien vanished.
When he reappeared, he wasn't a blur.
He was wrong.
Limbs bending at unnatural angles. Movement too sharp, too animal, too fast for the eye to track. He landed on one hunter's back, small hands gripping his head.
And twisted.
The sound echoed like a tree splitting in winter.
The second hunter swung wildly.
Lucien caught the blade in his bare hand.
Crushed it.
Not bent.
Crushed.
Metal turned to dust between his fingers.
"You smell like fear now," Lucien murmured.
He opened his mouth.
His fangs were longer than they should have been.
He bit.
Not cleanly.
Not politely.
He tore.
Blood coated his chin, warm and metallic. He did not wipe it away.
Across the courtyard, the remaining hunters screamed as their minds fractured. Lucien forced them to see things that were not there—shadows crawling under their skin, teeth growing in their palms, their own reflections smiling back with hollow eyes.
They clawed at themselves.
They begged him to stop.
Lucien did not feel anything.
No guilt.
No mercy.
Only hunger.
A hunter charged him from behind, chanting something ancient.
Lucien didn't turn around.
The man stopped mid-chant.
His eyes rolled white.
He lifted his own dagger slowly.
"Please," the man whimpered.
Lucien tilted his head.
"Be powerful," he whispered.
The dagger drove into the man's own heart.
Silence swallowed the estate.
Twenty bodies lay broken across stone now slick with blood.
The gates creaked in the wind.
Lucien stood in the center of it all, small and drenched in red.
Alaric burst into the courtyard, sword in hand.
He froze.
Clara stumbled behind him.
She saw the bodies.
Then she saw Lucien.
He turned toward them slowly.
For a moment—just a moment—something flickered behind his eyes.
Then it vanished.
The tribrid still coiled inside him, satisfied.
Lucien smiled at them.
His lips were stained.
"They were stronger than me," he said softly.
His voice sounded normal again.
Too normal.
Clara took a trembling step forward. "Lucien… what did you do?"
Lucien looked down at his hands as if noticing the blood for the first time.
"They wanted to kill me," he said simply.
He glanced back at the corpses.
"They almost did."
The wind shifted.
For a heartbeat, behind him, the shadow of something vast unfurled across the courtyard wall.
Then it was gone.
Lucien wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
"I don't feel bad," he said.
That was the most terrifying part.
He didn't.
And somewhere deep inside him, where a child's heart should have been, something ancient purred in approval.