Lucian:
Blood calls louder than the control tonight.
The moon hangs low and swollen, a lantern of bone behind black clouds. Its light spills silver across the forest floor, sharpening every root and stone until the world looks carved from knives. I slip between the trees like smoke, boots soundless on damp earth, hunger curling hot and angry through my veins.
It’s been too long since I’ve fed.
Not in the casual way the others indulge, a polite sip from willing veins, from chalices filled from the reserve in the cellar. No—my hunger is older, uglier. It whispers in a voice that belongs to grave soil and forgotten gods. It tells me to take.
I let it.
The night answers, a pulse beneath the ground, a thousand small hearts quickening as I pass. A fox freezes mid-step, senses me, bolts. Th
