OURS: The Hunted Prince

Chapter 4: when Duskmoor Bleeds

*The wards cracked. The Heirs answer.*

_DRAVEN POV_

Duskmoor Castle was built before human kingdoms had names.

Before the first emperor was crowned in bone. Before the first priest lit a pyre to a god who wasn’t us. Before humans learned the word for *war* and decided they liked the taste of it.

They say the first stone was laid when the moon bled red for seven nights.

Not a legend. Not a bedtime story we tell fledglings to make them fear the dark.

The moon *bled*.

I remember it.

The sky split open like a wound. It wept. Thick. Hot. It rained down in sheets that stained the earth black and turned the rivers to rust. For seven nights, nothing grew. Nothing breathed. Nothing *lived* except the things that crawled out of the dark to drink it.

That’s when Father laid the first stone. In blood. With blood. *For* blood.

You can still see it in the mortar. If you press your hand to the wall and close your eyes, you can feel it. Thin veins of crimson, threaded through the obsidian like a heartbeat. They pulse when the wards are tested. They *thrum* when the castle is angry.

And right now, the castle is furious.

It’s carved into the peak of Mount Noctis, where the sky is always twilight.

Not night. Not day.

*Twilight*.

That thin, bleeding edge between light and dark where nothing is safe and everything hunts.

No sun.

The sun tried, once. Ten thousand years ago. It crested the ridge and the mountain *swallowed it*. Left nothing but a smear of gold on the horizon before the blood moon rose and ate it whole.

No stars.

Stars are for other kingdoms. For places that need hope. For people who need to wish.

We don’t wish.

We *take*.

Just a permanent blood moon that never sets.

It hangs there. Swollen. Low. Close enough that you think if you reached out, you could touch it. Close enough that you can see the craters. The scars. The places where Father’s war left it pockmarked and broken.

It looks like an eye.

A lidless, lidless eye that never blinks. That never sleeps. That sees every sin committed under it and *remembers*.

Like a promise: *darkness reigns here*.

Like a threat: *and it always will*.

The walls weren’t built from stone.

Stone shatters. Stone erodes. Stone *forgets*.

The mountain was hollowed out and hardened with blood-forged obsidian.

Not quarried. Not shaped.

*Bled*.

Our father’s blood, spilled into the foundation. Gallon after gallon until the mountain drank it and turned black.

Our mother’s magic, woven into it like thread. Spells older than language. Wards that don’t break, they *bleed*.

The blood of every vampire who swore fealty and died for it. Knights. Lords. Monsters who knelt and meant it. Their throats opened over the foundation so Duskmoor would know their names. So it would *protect* their names.

Black. Glossy. Warm to the touch.

Like skin. Like flesh. Like if you pressed your ear to it, you’d hear a pulse.

Because you would.

The castle breathes.

Slow. Deep. A inhale that takes a century. An exhale that rattles the spires.

It listens.

To every whisper in the halls. To every lie told in the throne room. To every drop of blood spilled on its floors.

It *remembers*.

Every betrayal. Every oath. Every time we failed to protect what was ours.

And right now, it’s remembering something that makes it *rage*.

Four spires tore into the sky.

Not built. *Tore*.

Like claws. Like fangs. Like they were trying to rip the blood moon down and eat it.

One for each Heir.

Mine, the tallest.

*It casts a shadow long enough to swallow the bone forest.* I don’t need to look down. The world comes to me. On its knees, or in pieces.

Lucien’s, twisted like a knife.

It doesn’t stand straight. It *corkscrews* into the sky, balconies jutting out at wrong angles. Places to throw things from. People. Furniture. His own laughter. He likes to hear the sound they make when they hit the ground. He says it’s the only music that’s ever been honest.

Cassius’s, sleek as a blade.

No doors. None. The obsidian is seamless. If you want in, you go *through* the wall. He says locks are for people who fear being left. Cassius was never left. He was *abandoned*. There’s a difference. One you can forgive. The other you burn the world for.

One darker than the rest for the King and Queen.

Father and Mother’s spire.

Empty now.

Cold.

But the obsidian there is darkest. Not black. *Void*. It drinks light. It drank thirty thousand years of their reign and still thirsts. Still *hungers*.

Sometimes, at night, I hear it. A low, keening sound from inside the walls. Like the spire is mourning them. Or like it’s calling them home.

No traditional roof.

The keep is crowned with living gargoyle stone, lacquered in vitreous enamel.

They’re not statues. Not decoration. Not art.

They *live*.

Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. We stopped counting after the first war.

Curled around the spires like sleeping cats. Perched on buttresses with wings folded over their faces. Hanging upside down from arches, claws hooked into the obsidian, tails twitching in their sleep.

They shine like wet oil. Like spilled ink. Like the void given teeth and claws and a *taste* for intruders.

They sleep until the wards scream.

Until the castle *bleeds*.

Then they wake.

All of them. At once.

Stone grinding on stone. Wings unfurling with the sound of tearing shrouds. Eyes opening — not eyes, *pits* — glowing the same rust-red as the moon at dawn.

Then they *hunt*.

And nothing they hunt survives long enough to scream.

Dawn in Duskmoor didn’t mean sunlight.

It meant the blood moon dulled to rust.

From arterial red — the color of a fresh kill, of Father’s rage — to old coin. To dried flake. To the color of blood that’s been sitting too long and started to turn.

It was the closest thing we had to morning.

The closest thing we had to *peace*.

I stood at my oriel, watching it, when the keep screamed.

Not a sound.

Duskmoor doesn’t scream with sound. Sound is for humans. For things that need to announce their pain.

A feeling.

Stone to bone.

It started in the floor.

A vibration. Low. Deep. Like the mountain was growling in its sleep. Like something vast and ancient had rolled over and found an intruder in its bed.

It traveled up my legs. Into my spine. Into my teeth. Into the hollow pit in my chest that never stopped gnawing.

The wards.

They weren’t broken. Not yet.

If they were broken, we’d already be at war. The gargoyles would be in the sky. The mountain would be *bleeding*.

But they were *cracked*.

Hairline fractures. Spiderweb lines in the magic. In the blood. In the *law*.

Something had touched them.

Not a vampire. We know the taste of our own.

Not a witch. Mother would have felt it. Even from the human realm, she’d have felt it and burned the world to answer.

Not human. Humans can’t touch the wards. They’d turn to ash before they got close.

Something *other*.

Something wrong. Something *old* enough to know how to make a mountain bleed without breaking it.

War is coming.

The thought wasn’t mine.

It was the castle’s.

It was in the air. In the obsidian. In the blood moon that flickered, just for a second, like a dying heart skipping a beat.

And it is coming with something dangerous if not handled carefully.

Not dangerous like a blade. Not dangerous like an army.

Dangerous like a plague. Like a promise. Like a sin that won’t stay buried.

The blood moon was still rust when the blood raven hit the oriel.

It didn’t fly. It didn’t glide. It didn’t *soar*.

It *fell*.

Straight down. Like it had been shot from the sky. Like it had been *thrown* by a hand big enough to blot out the moon.

It slammed into the glass.

The glass didn’t break. It couldn’t. The oriel was forged in the same fire as the walls. In the same blood. In the same *rage*.

The raven left a smear.

Black. Not feathers. Not ink.

*Blood*.

Thick. Cold. Old.

It dropped black parchment.

Sealed with wax the color of a fresh bruise. Purple. Black. The color of something that hurts just to look at.

One word.

*Nyth.*

The blood raven is what we vampires use as a secret message.

You don’t send a blood raven for gossip. You don’t send it for dinner invitations. You don’t send it for war.

War gets a horn. War gets a banner. War gets a *thousand* screams.

You use a blood raven when conveying a very top and dangerous message.

When the message itself is a weapon. When reading it is a death sentence. When the sender won’t live long enough to see if it was received.

It is seen as a sign of danger.

When a blood raven comes, someone is already dead.

Usually the sender.

Sometimes the receiver.

Always *someone*.

They are also called “whispers.”

Because that’s all you get.

One word. One name. One death sentence.

No explanation. No context. No *why*.

Just *where*.

And *where* is enough.

Lucien was at my door before the echo died.

I didn’t hear him come. I never do.

One second, the room was empty. The next, he was leaning against the doorframe, grinning like a madman at a funeral.

But it wasn’t his usual grin.

Not the *“I’m going to set something on fire and laugh while it burns”* grin.

Not the *“I’m going to break something beautiful just to hear the sound”* grin.

This was a dangerous smile.

The kind that didn’t reach his eyes.

The kind that meant someone was going to die screaming and he was going to *watch*.

“Nyth City,” he said.

His voice was soft. Too soft.

Lucien is never soft.

His eyes were empty.

No chaos. No laughter. No *Lucien*.

Just void.

The same void as Father’s spire. The same void as the space between stars.

That’s how I knew it was bad.

Lucien without laughter is like a sword without an edge. It means he’s not playing. It means he’s not *performing*.

It means he’s *hunting*.

Cassius grinned from the shadows.

He was already there.

He’d been there the whole time. In the corner. In the dark. Where the blood moon’s rust-light didn’t reach.

I should have smelled the blood.

He was already bloody.

Knuckles split. Fresh. The skin torn and weeping.

Shirt torn. A long rip from collar to navel, like something had tried to claw his heart out.

A smear of red on his cheekbone like war paint.

Not his blood.

He never bleeds his own unless he wants to.

“Finally,” he said.

His voice was soft. Almost reverent.

Like he’d been waiting. Like he’d been *praying* for this.

Like thirty thousand years of *“we are mateless”* had been a prison and someone just gave him the key.

“They finally did it.”

I didn’t speak.

There was nothing to say.

The wards cracked. The blood raven came. Nyth was written in blood.

That was law.

That was *enough*.

I just walked.

Past Lucien and his empty eyes. Past Cassius and his bloody grin. Through the door.

My boots didn’t make a sound on the obsidian. The castle swallowed it. The castle was *listening*.

Nyth City has to be burned.

I concluded.

Not decided. Not chose. Not *thought*.

Concluded.

Like a math problem. Like a sentence. Like a law of nature.

Nyth + wards + blood raven = ash.

It’s not vengeance. Vengeance is personal. Vengeance is *hot*.

This was cold. This was *clean*.

It’s not rage. Rage is messy. Rage *misses*.

It’s *balance*.

The Treaty is written in blood. Ours. Theirs. Everyone’s.

The Treaty says: *You do not break the mountain. You do not wake the gargoyles. You do not make Duskmoor bleed.*

They made Duskmoor bleed.

So now they *burn*.

That’s the law. That’s the only language the world understands.

At first, we thought it was just a bastard trying to gain attention.

We get them every century.

Fools with a little power and a lot of ego. Bastards who think spilling blood in our territory will make us notice them. Make us *acknowledge* them. Make us *come down from the mountain*.

They paint sigils in blood. They leave bodies on the borders. They scream our names into the night like that means something.

Trying to gain *our* attention.

Like we’re gods. Like we’re *prizes*.

We usually ignore it.

*Let the regional clans bleed him out for sport.*

The Ardeans. The Volkov. The Mirov bloodline.

They rule the territories for us. They keep the peace for us. They *feed* for us.

And they’re bored.

So we let them have him. Let them hunt him. Let them tear him apart over weeks and send us his heart in a box with a *“thank you for the game”* note.

That’s the way of things.

That’s the *balance*.

But then he started killing innocent people.

Not vampires. Not warriors. Not people who chose the dark.

*Innocents*.

Humans. Children. The kind that don’t know we exist. The kind that Mother built Duskmoor Global to *protect*.

That is the worst.

The worst at Duskmoor is killing innocents.

We are monsters. We know it. We *own* it.

We are kings. We rule because no one else *can*.

We are death. We end things. That’s our *purpose*.

But we do not butcher the helpless.

We do not slaughter for sport.

We do not tolerate it.

There are lines. Even for us. *Especially* for us.

Because if we cross them, we’re not kings.

We’re *feral*.

And feral things get put down.

When Duskmoor bleeds, the Heirs answer.

Let them pray.

Because we’re coming for them.

---

*A/N: DUSKMOOR LORE DROP 👑 The Heirs are MOVING.*

*⚠️ TW: Implied mass violence, war, blood, castle as living entity, death*

*Nyth City just triggered the wards. Not for attention. For killing innocents.*

*That’s the worst. The one line Duskmoor doesn’t cross.*

*Lucien’s unhinged, Cassius is already bloody, and Draven? Silent. Deadly. Final word.*

*The blood raven came. The gargoyles are waking. The blood moon is fresh.*

*Comment “RIP NYTH CITY” if you know what’s about to happen.*

*Ep 5 is the dungeon rescue 👀 Vote for who gets to Zane first!*

*- Ezinne 🦊*