> Instrumental Music Suggestion (Author's Thought):
🎵 "Elegy" by Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy — a slow, mournful piece with ethereal vocals and strings, perfect for Lucian's emotional descent.
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Lucian stood at the tall arched window, his hands pressed against the cold stone, watching the forest smolder under the fading twilight. The sky was heavy, bruised in shades of violet and ash, as if mourning something unnamed. Below, the world moved with quiet, meaningless order—servants scurrying through the manor, birds shifting on dead branches—but he felt removed from it all. Detached. Drowning.
The scent still lingered.
Not blood—not Mara's. He hadn't touched her, hadn't tasted her—though she had offered herself like a desperate prayer. No, it was something older. Something buried deep inside the stone walls of his sanctuary. A scent that refused to die.
Kyrell.
It haunted him like a song he couldn't stop hearing. The boy's presence, once fleeting, now felt etched into every breath Lucian took. A whisper in the corridors. A shiver down his spine. A hunger that had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with memory.
Lucian closed his eyes and saw him again—the forest boy, pale and glowing beneath moonlight, trembling beneath his gaze like prey refusing to run. He had touched Lucian without knowing the weight of it. And now? Now, Lucian was unraveling.
> I should have killed him, he thought bitterly.
Or at least stayed away.
But he had done neither. He had watched Kyrell, even sought him. He had stood on rooftops and beneath shadows, drawn back again and again like a moth desperate to burn.
A soft knock pulled him from his thoughts.
"Enter," he said, his voice rough from disuse.
It was Lira, one of the elder council's trusted watchers. She bowed quickly, never meeting his eyes.
"My Lord," she said carefully. "You've received another petition. The lower nobles grow restless. They believe your absence from the councils is... a sign."
Lucian turned his head slightly. "A sign of what?"
She hesitated. "Weakness. Obsession. They whisper of… decay."
His lips curved into something cruel. "Let them whisper."
"But—"
"If they're brave enough, they can bring their daggers and challenge me face to face. Otherwise, they can rot with their cowardice."
Lira bowed again and quickly exited, but Lucian's chest ached. The walls were closing in now—not just with the council's suspicions, but with something deeper. Himself.
Even alone, he didn't feel alone. Every breath felt watched. Every shadow stretched like it remembered Kyrell's shape.
> Who are you, boy?
Why do you cling to me like a curse I welcomed?
Down the hall, the mirror flickered.
Lucian turned sharply.
No reflection. Just the echo of footsteps that hadn't been made. Just the ghost of a dream that hadn't ended.
Kyrell was alive—Lucian was certain of it.
And wherever he was, he was calling.