2025-11-13 21:16:27The warm glow of the dining room surrounded them as the family gathered around the table. Plates were set with care: roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, fresh vegetables, and a small pitcher of juice.
For Diego, it was more than a meal, it was a ceremony of normalcy he had never known, centuries of rigid structure and cruelty forgotten for a moment. Claire dug in eagerly, her little hands moving quickly between bites. Mara smiled, watching her daughter, then looked at Diego. “So, Claire, how was school today?” “School was cool,” Claire replied, a bright smile lighting her small face. “But… my teacher, Mrs. Mira, gave me lots of homework.” She glanced at Diego with expectant eyes. “Uncle Liam, can you help me with my homework later?” Diego hesitated, caught between uncertainty and instinct. The idea of interacting with a human child, of guiding her, was foreign. Yet… there was a warmth in her voice, an openness he hadn’t heard in centuries. Slowly, he nodded. “Okay,” he said, his voice hoarse, unfamiliar even to himself, but firm. Claire’s face lit up. She dug into her meal with renewed energy, humming happily as she took small bites between peeks at Diego. Thomas, seated at the head of the table, regarded Diego carefully. “Looking at you… you must be around seventeen years old. At your age, school should be your priority.” Diego swallowed, the words stirring something in his mind. Seventeen… that’s human age. For vampires like us, our age is… much longer. Right now, I am one hundred thousand years old, the youngest in my family, yet here, I am seen as a seventeen-year-old teenage boy. He let the thought settle silently, unspoken, cataloging the strange, brief life he was being given. I can understand, you don’t remember much… only your name. But if you're among kids your age, maybe… maybe your memory will come back. Mara nodded toward Thomas, her voice soft but decisive. “Yes, Dean… Thomas is right. Don’t you want to go to school?” Diego thought for a moment, the concept foreign, alien even. School. He had never gone to school in the way humans did. He had been home-schooled within the vast, lonely halls of the Monaghan estate, trained in etiquette, history, politics, and… restraint. Socializing with peers had been a lesson in observation, not participation. Yet now, the idea sparked a small thrill within him. To be among others like himself, even if only in body, pretending age, pretending normalcy, could awaken something lost, something buried beneath centuries of walls. “Yes,” he said finally, voice quiet but certain. Thomas and Mara exchanged a glance, relief and hope in their eyes. “Then we’ll figure it out,” Mara said. “Step by step.” Claire clapped her hands softly. “Yes! Uncle Liam will help me with homework and maybe… we can play after?” Diego allowed a small smile to tug at his lips. Play… I haven’t done that in centuries. The table filled with laughter after that, small stories about Claire’s school, Thomas’s grumbles about work, and Mara’s light teasing about him always forgetting to bring the groceries home. Even Diego found himself listening, absorbing the rhythm of their voices. It felt strange,foreign, but comforting. When dinner ended, Claire leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Mommy, Uncle Liam eats like he’s shy,” she whispered, thinking Diego couldn’t hear. “You think he doesn’t like chicken?” Mara stifled a laugh, glancing at him. Diego caught her eyes and looked away quickly, unsure how to respond. Thomas smiled, standing to gather the dishes. “He’s probably just getting used to your mom’s cooking,” he said lightly. “It’s powerful stuff.” Mara gave him a playful glare as she swatted his arm with a napkin, and laughter filled the room once again. For Diego, the moment lingered longer than it should have. He didn’t fully understand why, perhaps it was the warmth, or the feeling of belonging. But something inside him shifted. For the first time, he wasn’t a weapon or a prisoner or a legacy. He was just someone, sitting at a table, sharing a meal. Outside, however, the night thickened. The wind pressed against the windows like a whisper, carrying with it a faint trace of danger. Far away, in the unseen corners of the city, a presence moved, searching, closing in. And though Diego didn’t know it yet, the taste of family would soon be tested by the taste for blood.
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PRESSURE LINES
The first scream did not come from the mansion.It came from a district Dominic had written off years ago, too narrow, too old, too inconvenient to control properly. A place where blood moved hand to hand instead of through accounts.It was brief.Cut short.And it never reached the authorities.In the underworld, a new marker pulsed once on Lewis’s map, then dimmed.“Contain,” Lewis said without looking up.The response came immediately. Routes adjusted. Two feral packs shifted course, flowing around the disruption instead of toward it.Pressure, not collapse.He watched the city respond the way a living thing does when it realizes it’s wounded, tightening, compensating, trying to protect vital organs.“Dominic will feel that one,” a voice said nearby.Lewis didn’t answer. He already knew.At the Monaghan mansion, the music continued.That, more than anything, unsettled Diego now.It had lost its rhythm, not in tempo, but in intent. The sound pressed too hard against the walls, as i
REDIRECTED
The city felt darker.Not because the lights had gone out, streetlamps still burned, windows still glowed, but because something else had dimmed. A background hum most people never noticed had thinned, leaving behind a quiet that didn’t belong to night.It was the kind of silence that made instincts itch.----At the far end of the city, in a modest house that had no idea it sat on the edge of something vast, the Evans family felt it without knowing why.Claire hadn’t been herself all day.She startled at small sounds. Paused mid-step as if listening to someone who wasn’t there. Her laughter, once uncontrollable, once bright, had vanished into long stretches of thoughtfulness that scared her parents more than any outburst could have.Mara watched her from the kitchen doorway, heart tightening.“She keeps saying his name in her sleep,” she murmured. “Uncle Liam’s.”Thomas nodded slowly, his concern heavier now that the truth had a shape.Diego.They knew the name now. Knew that the boy
THE WEIGHT OF Silence
The music grew louder.That was the second lie.Violins surged, cellos deepened, the rhythm swelling as though sound itself could stitch authority back into the air. Servants moved with renewed urgency, hands steady but eyes too alert, smiles held just a breath too long.Dominic wanted noise.Noise meant control.Diego felt the opposite happen.The city pulled again, harder this time. Not closer. Deeper. Signals collapsed inward, not in panic, but in obedience to something else. Routes Dominic had built to loop back into themselves were no longer looping.They were being redirected.Lewis wasn’t cutting power.He was rewriting pathways.Diego opened his eyes.Across the hall, Raphael had shifted closer to Vesna without appearing to move. Aurelian no longer bothered to hide his interest; his gaze tracked the exits, the ceiling, the guards, counting, measuring.Dominic lifted his glass again.“Tonight,” he said, voice smooth and resonant, “reminds us why we gather. Why bloodlines endur
WHEN THE ROOM STARTS LISTENING
Dominic hadn't returned and that alone unsettled the room more than any alarm ever could.Minutes passed, measured, polite minutes, while the quartet continued to play and servants moved around as if nothing had shifted. But the illusion had thinned. Vampires no longer spoke in clusters. Conversations fractured into pairs, then fell into silence. Eyes tracked exits. Senses stretched outward, probing for reassurance that did not come.Diego remained where he was.Still. Visible. Watching.The city pressed harder against his awareness now, no longer a current but a pull, the smell of blood vampering all around, he could feel it. This wasn’t brute disruption. It was surgical. He understood that instinctively.Someone knew the outcome of Dominic’s power.Aurelian moved first.Not away from the tension, toward it.He drifted through the room with casual confidence, murmuring just enough to be heard.“Blood couriers rerouted.” “Enforcers not answering.” “Safehouses going dark without a tr
FAULT LINES BENEATH SILK
The music never stopped.That was the first thing Diego noticed.Even as the room subtly changed, postures tightening, voices lowering, glances lasting a fraction too long, the string quartet continued its measured rhythm. A lie dressed as elegance.Dominic stood unmoved at the centre of it all, speaking softly with an elder from the Baltic bloodline. His expression was calm, indulgent.Controlled.But Diego felt it.A tremor, not in the floor, but in the city.Not hunger. Not fear.Movement.It brushed against his senses like a cold current slipping under a locked door.Someone laughed too loudly near the west windows. Someone else stopped drinking.A servant crossed the hall, then abruptly turned back, whispering something urgent to a guard. The guard nodded once and did not return to his post.Diego’s fingers curled slowly.Something was happening outside Dominic’s design.Aurelian Kade leaned near a marble balustrade, watching the room as if it were a theatre. His earlier amusemen
THE UNDERWORLD MOVES
The underworld didn't have walls as usual, but it certainly had its rules. Lewis found himself standing in a place that was somehow nowhere and everywhere at once. And he was proud. A private network, stitched together with encrypted channels, secret blood ties, and old pacts that never touched the physical world. Screens just floated there, unframed, and voices carried without making a sound. This was where the night truly spoke to itself.Lewis already knew about the party. "You don't gather like that unless you're afraid." Around him were the fera vampires, already preparing to hunt, their faces showed men hungry for blood."The Monaghan signal went out too far," someone murmured. "Old families, new deals… It's all too neat."Lewis gave a single nod. "He wants the city to seem peaceful," he replied. "So, we'll make peace incredibly expensive." He made a subtle gesture, and the city unfurled before him, not as streets and buildings, but as a living map of flows: the routes of blo
