"When I opened my eyes, I was chained to a surgical table. And that's when Samantha came."
Her name left his mouth like a curse.
"She began her work—her little experiments.
Grace was born crippled from the waist down, paralyzed since her first breath. But her sickness didn't stop there. It crept slowly upward, bone by bone, muscle by muscle… as though death was climbing her body from her toes to her skull."
Hector's words lingered like a dirge, full of sorrow and horror.
"After that table," he began, voice low, "they bound me to the wall. My wrists cuffed against cold iron, my throat fastened in a leash that burned whenever I tried to summon the smallest spark of power." He faltered, breath catching, and in that pause we understood why metal was always scattered near the places their victims vanished—it was never by accident, but because of his fear.
He drew a long, trembling breath. "You cannot imagine what it means to hang there, day after day, when the only thing you are allowed to wait for is pain." The words were weighted with memory, his tone hollow yet sharp, as if the images still lived before his eyes.
"Believe me, I know how it feels," Liam and I said in the same breath, startled at the unplanned unison. A bitter silence followed, heavy with the realization of how much we had both endured—and how much we had yet to share.
He gave a laugh, thin and broken, at the cruel irony of it all.
"I didn't even know why she was draining me at first," he continued, his gaze dark and distant. "Not until I heard her name in my half-conscious haze—Grace. They were injecting her with my blood. Each dose drew her closer to motion, closer to waking… but it wasn't mercy. It was agony. Every injection made her writhe, her body buckling under the fire coursing through her veins. She would cry out, twist in torment, until they silenced her with sedatives."
His voice cracked. "I was blind to what she endured. All I knew was the torment forced upon me. She would drive a thin needle into my stomach, pushing some alien liquid inside me. It twisted my body, reshaped my blood, compelled it to grow faster, stronger, stranger."
He shut his eyes for a moment, his breath ragged. "My powers swelled. I swallowed them down, caged them within, waiting for the moment I could finally break free. I didn't know when it happened—only that they began to breed something vast inside me. A world of their own, forming in the darkness of my veins."
Then came the day when everything inside me erupted. Fury surged through my veins, unchained and merciless, shattering the leash that was meant to bind my powers. I fled, desperate to escape the ruin I had unleashed, only to return home and find the world had already stolen from me what I loved most. My mother was gone—murdered on the very day I last saw her. And because I wasn't there, the blame fell upon me.
I became a storm of grief and dread, but beneath it burned a certainty. I knew who had done it. Hatred carved itself into my face, and I swore I would not rest until justice was my own.
So I returned. Every soul who had watched me suffer in silence, every coward who never raised a hand in my defense—I found them all, and I silenced them. Yet the man, and Samantha… they had vanished like shadows.
It was on the top floor of the hospital that I first saw her... Grace! She was trembling, but not with fear of me, but the fear of being alone. In her eyes, there was no horror, only wonder—she saw a strange beauty in me, even when I could see nothing in myself but ruin and ash. She never spoke it aloud, but her gaze said everything: she wanted to touch the darkness that consumed me.
So I let her. I slipped through her like a breath, gave her legs the strength to walk again, lifted the pain that chained her. And when her hand found mine, it wasn't just flesh against flesh—it struck a place in me I thought had long since been buried beneath the wreckage of my suffering.
The dark hills you ran through, the whispers that chased you—she knew them too. But unlike them all, she believed that at the end of it all, I would be there to hold her.
I swore vengeance, and yet, somewhere along the way, I found something else. I found her. I possessed her, yes, but she also possessed me. We became halves of a whole that the world could never understand. Her lonely light burned against the hollow night of my existence, and in that fragile radiance, my broken world found its match.
In a world swallowed by darkness, she lit a corner of it," his voice softened, a fragile smile curving his lips. "Here, we built our heaven. A cherry blossom tree, beneath which we would sit for hours, speaking of dreams and forgotten wonders. A stream, endless and pure, carrying the sound of eternity. A tiny cottage, its shelves lined with books, its walls filled with the warmth of her laughter. I gave her everything her heart longed for." His smile lingered, but there was sorrow behind it.
"What I could not give, I stole from your world and placed it in her hands. For a while, we were happy. But happiness is never left unbroken. One day, when I was thirteen, I slipped into a shop to gather meat. That was when I felt the blow to my head."
His face drained of color. "It was Samantha. She had found me. She wanted Grace, and it didn't take her very long to understand that I was the key to the world Grace is hiding in—the world I created."
He spun around in anger.
"She filled my veins with the blood of many, until I no longer knew who I was. Only one thought anchored me to myself—that I must survive for Grace, or else lose my mind entirely. Then came the injections of something far worse, something that turned my body into a vessel of hunger. I began to crave human flesh. I was no longer a boy, but a shadow, a cloud of smoke black and thick as death itself. Samantha offered me children to feed upon. My hunger was not mine to master. Only after feeding would I feel whole again, and all this time she locked me behind metal bars to keep me from running."
His fingers raked across his skull as though trying to tear the memory out. "And then you came. For the first time, blood reacted. The portal stretched wide, tearing open the air itself—but it was not the only thing that opened. My muscles twisted, my bones split and cracked. Grace was there, watching me from the edge of the portal gate, not knowing what her mother had done. She tried to hold me, tried to pull me back—but when the portal closed, it dragged her away, tearing her from my grasp."
His voice trembled, grief sharpening every word. "You were still small then, so it didn't last. The portal devoured her, pulling her back into its abyss. Samantha fed you, over and over, strengthening you. She kept you waiting for you to grow old enough. And every day, she poisoned me with your blood. Every day, the same torment, the same breaking. But Grace had asked one thing of me—that I never harm her mother, I promised. I loved her too much to betray that wish… even though it destroyed me."
As you grew up, your blood had a stronger impact, until finally, she decided that it wasn't enough; she doubled the dose she was giving you, and collected your blood thrice a day.
And then—her ambition curdled into madness. She resolved to clone you."
Hector's eyes narrowed, as though peering not at Liam, but into the very marrow of memory.
"But before she could succeed, you intervened. The act was brutal, excruciating—yet in that agony, I understood. You locked the door she had clawed so long to open. That wound, that distance, reshaped us.
I can't tell how it felt to reunite with her; she clung to me on this very ground where you stand now!
You should have seen her, she was shivering as if she had lost me to death, and I've clawed my way back to her from the grave!
What we shared hardened into love. I built her a palace, and in its shadowed halls we found joy again. We believed—foolishly—that nothing could pull us apart."
He shut his eyes, his head bowing with a grief that seemed older than time itself.
"Until a few months ago. She found a way to pry the portal open once more. And with it, she began to hunt for you."
His gaze lifted, heavy yet calm. "If I must put it simply—I helped you." He smiled faintly, and before I could respond, he raised a hand.
"No need for fear. I won't kill you. You will live here, hidden where she will never reach you. I will drape you in every comfort. Isn't that what you've always craved, Liam? To vanish from her grasp? Do not think I don't understand that hunger. I know it well. I craved it long before you experienced it. I, too, longed for a world untouched by monsters in men's skin." His voice carried a softness so serene it became cruel.
"And if I refuse to stay?" Liam asked, though his tone carried no expectation of mercy.
"I don't believe I asked." Hector's eyes widened, almost childlike in their innocence.
"What unfolds here belongs to me. Not you. Hearts are cursed to ache and to want, Liam—but when have they ever been granted what they beg for?" His sorrow curdled, sharpening into menace.
"You came here of your own will. That was bold. But boldness does not grant escape. None who has crossed this threshold has ever left this place."
Then he smiled—a smile that seared itself into me, gnawing, burning, unrelenting. And in that moment, the truth hollowed me out: my poor brother had been drawn into a trap from which there was no return.