The headache was a rhythmic pounding, like a smith's hammer against an anvil. Gwaine opened his eyes, the cold stone floor of the silver-barred cell pressing against his cheek. He was still in the hunters' base, the air thick with the scent of ozone and old blood.
He sat up slowly, his movements hindered by the heavy silver shackles around his wrists. He looked around the dim chamber, his mind racing. He had been a prisoner for centuries; he would not spend another eternity in a cage, especially one built by the very mortals he was meant to protect.
My wounds healed during the spar, he thought, staring at his forearm where the skin was now unblemished. Has my power returned?
Hope flickered in his chest, but he quickly suppressed it. He was still breathing. He still felt the chill of the room. Most importantly, he hadn't burned when the sun hit him in Oakhaven. He was still tethered to this mortal coil.
Perhaps a fraction remains, he mused. A fragment of the First Abomination.
To test it, he bit his lower lip hard. He felt the sharp sting, the iron taste of blood blooming in his mouth. He waited. A drop fell to the stone floor, dark and solitary. The wound did not close. It stayed open, weeping. He tried to summon the shadows, to vanish into the corners of the cell. Nothing. He tried to hear the heartbeats of the guards in the hall. Silence.
Frustration boiled into a white-hot rage. He was the descendant of Cain, the deal-maker of Lucifer, and he was being held by a few sticks of silver. With a guttural roar of disgust, he slammed his bound arms against the stone floor.
CRACK.
The floor didn't break—the shackles did. The heavy silver links shattered like glass, shards flying across the cell. Gwaine stared at his hands, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. The healing was gone, but it had been replaced. His muscles felt dense, humming with a raw, vibrating energy. Super strength.
He didn't waste a second. He grabbed the silver bars of the cell door. The metal hissed against his skin, burning him, but he ignored the pain. With a primal heave, he twisted the bars, snapping them out of their stone sockets as if they were wet clay.
He stepped out into the hallway, but he was deep within the hunters' fortress. He had no choice: he would have to bleed his way out.
As he turned a corner, three hunters appeared, their crossbows leveled. Gwaine lunged, intending to crush their skulls with his new strength, but as his fist traveled through the air, the "weight" in his arms vanished. He felt light—unnaturally light.
The hunters fired.
Gwaine didn't think; he moved. The world slowed to a crawl. He saw the bolts suspended in the air, rotating slowly. He didn't have his strength anymore, but he was moving at the speed of sound. He wove between the projectiles, a blur of shadow. Before the hunters could even blink, Gwaine was behind them. He delivered three precise, non-lethal strikes to their necks. They collapsed in a heap, unconscious before they hit the ground.
"Unstable," Gwaine whispered, leaning against the wall.
He could feel it now—a violent storm inside his chest. The dark, ancient essence of the Vampire and the searing, holy Light of the Angel blood were not mixing; they were at war. Like two starving wolves in a cage, they fought for dominance.
He encountered a dozen more hunters as he navigated the labyrinthine base. His powers shifted like a flickering candle. One moment he was throwing a hunter across the room; the next, he was dodging blades with preternatural grace. He was a whirlwind of shifting abilities, a "Hybrid" in the truest, most chaotic sense.
Finally, he saw it: the heavy oak door leading to the surface. But guarding it was Kignar.
The hunter stood with his sword drawn, his face a mask of betrayal. "You monster," Kignar spat.
Gwaine let out a long, weary sigh, his head bowed. The weight of his centuries, his sins, and his current exhaustion seemed to settle on his shoulders. "Maybe I am," he said softly.
When he lifted his head, his eyes had changed. They were no longer black; they were a dark, bloody red, glowing with a hellish luminescence.
He vanished into a blur of speed. Kignar reacted with the instincts of a master, swinging his silver blade in a protective arc. Steel met supernatural skin. They clashed in the narrow hall, a dance of blades and shadows.
"I am fighting the same war you are!" Gwaine roared, parrying a strike with his bare forearm. "The darkness is coming for everyone! Don't stand in my way!"
"A monster is a monster!" Kignar countered, his sword-work flawless. He managed to catch Gwaine with a heavy hilt-strike to the chest, sending the vampire stumbling back.
Gwaine hit the floor, his strength failing, his speed sluggish. The darkness was retreating, and he felt the cold hand of defeat reaching for him. Is this it? he thought. The end of the first?
Then, he remembered the interrogator's word. Hybrid.
If he was both, he had to use both. He didn't just have the blood of Cain; he had the blood of the Heavens. He closed his eyes and, instead of reaching for his rage, he reached for the burning fire the priest had injected into him.
Gwaine stood up slowly. When his eyelids flickered open, the red was gone. His eyes were a piercing, glowing light blue—the terrifyingly pure color of an Angel.
Kignar froze, his sword trembling. The air in the hallway grew warm, smelling of ozone and lightning.
"Why don't you see for yourself?" Gwaine's voice was no longer a rasp; it was a choir of echoes.
He moved—not with speed, but with a presence that seemed to be everywhere at once. He grabbed Kignar's head, forcing the hunter to look directly into those celestial, blue eyes.
Kignar let out a blood-curdling scream. He wasn't seeing Gwaine anymore. He was seeing the beginning and the end. He was seeing the raw, unfiltered truth of the cosmos. The hunter collapsed to the floor, clutching his head, his mind reeling from the psychic weight of the light.
Gwaine didn't look back. He threw open the door and ran. He pushed his body until he was miles away from the base, deep in the safety of the woods. As he fell against a tree, the light faded. The red faded. He was just Gwaine again—hollow, exhausted, and powerless. The two forces within him had spent themselves, retreating deep into his marrow to recover.
A week later, inside the hunters' base, the third man—Albertson, leader of the 4th Branch—entered Kignar's infirmary.
The base was in shambles. Men had broken ribs, shattered limbs, and concussions. But as Albertson looked at his reports, his brow furrowed. No one was dead. The "monster" had spared every single one of them.
He sat by Kignar's bed. The hunter was still shaking, his hands hovering over his eyes as if trying to block out a sun that wasn't there.
"Kignar," Albertson said quietly. "You've been staring at the walls for seven days. Tell me... when you looked into his eyes... what did you really see?"
Kignar slowly lowered his hands. His eyes were bloodshot, filled with a terrifying awe.
"I didn't see a vampire," Kignar whispered, his voice trembling. "I saw... the war. The eternal fight between the dark and the light. And Albertson... I think the light is just as terrifying as the dark."