My Immortal Hunger

Prologue — 985 B.C. For as long as Lucius Daciano could remember, his life had been ordered and fair. His father had treated him with justice even when his stepmother schemed, and in return the old man had given Lucius a name that weighed heavy and proud in their valley: apărător al nevinovatului — Defender of the Innocent. He had honor, the loyalty of his people, and the steady love of a wife. The one emptiness left in his chest was the absence of a true brother and the mother he had never known. “Care to share your thoughts, brother?” Victor’s voice cut across the fields and drew Lucius from his reverie. Victor rode at his side, the younger brother who had once been a playmate and companion. The boy who once showed him secret paths and dared him into mischief had, over the years, hardened into something else: always watching, always calculating. The easy affection between them had narrowed to suspicion and rivalry. “’Tis nothing of consequence,” Lucius said, forcing his attention back to the road. “We should stop for the night. Do you not agree?” Victor shaded his eyes and looked toward the horizon. Clouds were gathering, a low, distant rumble of thunder. “Aye. Send scouts,” he said. “There is a storm coming. I do not wish to sleep in rain and mud after today.” Lucius obeyed, sending two riders to pick through the trees for shelter. Mihai, Lucius’s second, fell in beside him and muttered under his breath. “What does His Royal Pain-in-the-Ass think he’ll find here?” Mihai grumbled. “Careful, Mihai,” Lucius said. “He will be your lord someday.” The words tasted sour; he knew his men resented the idea. Victor’s temper and pride sat ill with their simple lives. A scout returned with news of a settlement tucked below a slope: a handful of cottages, a low hall, smoke already rising from central chimneys. Victor’s smile split his face. “There is always a place to sleep,” he said, and lashed his horse into a trot. They rode into the village beneath a sky grown bruised with rain. The chief’s hall opened to them — simple benches, a long table, bowls of stewed meat and ale. Torches sputtered along the rafters. For a while, the meal was warm, the kindling of laughter honest. But a chill walked alongside Victor like a shadow. Lucius noticed it first in the way Victor’s eyes lingered on the chief’s daughter. She was a young woman — no older than eighteen — with a hesitant smile and the kind of trust that makes ordinary folk good and vulnerable. She moved through the hall bringing more cups, unaware of the gaze that tracked her like a hawk. Victor’s hand brushed her arm as she passed. A small thing. Someone else might have missed it. Not Lucius. Not tonight. “Leave her be,” Lucius said under his breath when Victor’s touch turned to a grip, and the girl’s step faltered. Victor turned, charm like a polished blade. “She need not fear me,” he murmured, voice smooth as honey. “If her presence offends you, chief, I will gladly pay for a night’s comfort.” Color drained from the old man’s face. He rose to protect his child. The mood in the hall shifted; hands went to hilts. Lucius moved between them, calling for calm. “Brother,” he said quietly, “this is not our quarrel. We sought shelter, not blood. Let her go.” Victor’s smile thinned. “I want warmth tonight,” he said, and his arm tightened. The girl clung to herself, eyes wide. The chief stepped forward, voice low and furious. “Hands off my child. We are not strangers to fighting, but we will not see our daughters taken.” Victor’s reply was a cold laugh. “Then die,” he snapped — and in the next instant the blade flashed. What followed was not a battle so much as a single, deliberate slaughter. Steel bit flesh. The chief fell with his hands outstretched. Men who had scarce a moment before been laughing or shouting collapsed beside the central hearth. Screams tore the rafters. The smell of iron filled Lucius’s nostrils — thicker, hotter than any sweat had ever been. He watched his sword drip and for the first time in his life the sight made him nauseous. He let it fall from his hand as if it were plague. Victor knelt among the dead as if arranging trophies, wiping his blade on the dress of the girl he had desired. “A waste,” he said softly, as if insulted by their usefulness. The hall had plunged into a stunned silence when a cry cleaved the air: high, keening, a sound that stopped every breathing heart. A woman in a dark cloak burst through the doors, dragging herself to the body of the chief. She cradled him with a desperate tenderness, then looked up, eyes ablaze with grief that had hardened into something far colder: justice. “Ye shall pay,” she said. The words were a vow wrapped in winter. Victor’s men scoffed. The laughter died on their lips as the woman raised a hand. The sound that followed was not of blades or fists but of men dropping as if struck by lightning — a chorus of choking, guttural cries. Smoke curled from Victor’s hand; his sword clattered from his loosened grip. One by one, his followers crumpled to the floor. Lucius gripped the edge of a bench, stomach heaving. He could not see the force that swept through them, only the writhing bodies and the woman’s terrible calm. When she reached the brothers, her gaze fixed on Victor with a focus that made his bravado crumble. “Didst thou murder my husband and child?” she asked. Victor’s reply was shameless. “I did.” “And thou, apărător?” she asked Lucius. There was no accusation in the word; only the sorrow of someone who had watched innocence die while a supposed protector stood by. “There was nothing I could do,” Lucius managed. The confession lodged in his throat like a stone. Her face softened for the smallest breath, then settled into iron. “Victor ‘Dhār,” she said, naming him as one names a plague, “thy thirst has made thee a beast. For taking my family, I curse thee to hunger for nothing but blood. Thy life shall know no dawn.” She turned to Lucius, her eyes finding the guilty weight in his. “And for thee, apărător, the peace thou once knew shall be torn from thee. Love shall not rest in thy arms; it will wither and fade. Guilt shall be thy cloak.” She raised her hands to the low sky, and fire answered. Heat licked the rafters; light crawled along the floorboards like living things. When the conflagration swallowed itself and fell away, the hall and the village had been stripped as if a wind had passed through history and taken them clean. The huts, the smoke, the voices — gone. Only the bodies remained, scattered in the cold aftermath. Weeks bled into one another after that night. At first, the world tried to return to its small, stubborn rhythms: fields were plowed, ale brewed, hearths tended. Then the cattle began to die — discovered in the morning, emptied of blood, their bodies like skins. Panic threaded through the valley. People disappeared. Mothers barred doors. Lucius felt the ripple of the curse in every corner of his life: his father’s approval thinned to scorn; his people’s loyalty frayed under Victor’s rule. Victor changed as if a hunger had settled into his bones. He offered the community a choice — bend the knee, feed him, or face slaughter. Those who whispered against him were dragged into the night. Those who stood up were slain where they stood. Lucius tried to expose his brother, to drag the truth into the sun, but Victor’s power had a new edge: the villagers who opposed him were cut down before any blade could be raised in reprisal. Men Lucius had trained now answered to Victor or fell silent forever; the old bonds of kinship and duty dissolved in blood. If there was to be an end to this madness, Lucius realized, it would come from the woman who had cursed them. He haunted the places of rumor and shadow for months, following hearsay and the faintest scent of smoke until the name of the witch settled in his mouth like a prayer: Fiona — fire priestess, outcast, avenger. When at last he found her, she stood before a ring of scorched stone and ash, eyes reflecting embers. “Lucius Daciano,” she said, voice like dry leaves, “why do you come?” He dropped to his knees before her, not from fear but from the weight of what he had failed to protect. “I beg you,” he said. “Undo his curse. I will give you my life if need be — spare my people. My brother has become a beast. I cannot end him.” Fiona’s gaze measured him as one might test iron. A cold smile touched her lips. “Your life is not the thing I desire,” she said. “Everything that has come to pass has its root in your hands as much as his. If you crave vengeance, I can grant you power — the gift of equal darkness.” Lucius wanted to pull back, to refuse, but images of blood and his father’s dying eyes sharpened his resolve. “If the world must be saved, I will give myself,” he said. “Teach me how to stop him.” Fiona’s expression did not soften. “There is no undoing what the heart has done,” she warned. “But I can make you as he is: stronger, hungering, alien to men. Any who drink your blood will be bound to you — and any who die beneath your protection will rise as what you are.” She let the truth settle on him like winter. “You will become the walking dead. Your heart will still, and you will feed on human blood to keep the beast in check. Only should you find one who loves you with a pure, unbroken heart will your heart beat again — and their blood will sustain you.” Lucius sat on the cold stone and considered the price: eternal night in exchange for the chance to end Victor’s reign. He saw the faces of those he had failed — the chief, the girl, his people — and the decision hardened like steel in his chest. Without another thought he rose. “Aye,” he said. Fiona placed a single palm over his heart. The world narrowed to the chant of her voice and the rasp of wind through dying embers. “Thou shalt crave the blood of men, And loathing shall creep o’er thy face; Light shall be withheld from thine eyes, And all nourishment to thy tongue shall taste as blood. Alien shalt thou be to thy fellow men, These things shall be until the end of time. By the four fires — Ril, Yut, Sar, and Lod — I, Fiona, place this curse upon thee, and seal it with blood.” The spell closed around him like an iron glove. Lucius felt warmth drain from his chest, felt the steady beat slow, then falter. He did not fall, but the world reproved itself into a new night: a life without dawn, a hunger without end, and a promise that only love — if it could be found — might one day bring him back into the light.