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The night Kieran died, he didn’t scream.
That was what haunted Cedric for years.
Mason did scream. He screamed Kieran’s name until his throat tore open, fangs bared, the beast howling from the depths of his chest while blood soaked into the moss of the forest. He screamed like an animal having its heart ripped out with bare hands.
But Kieran didn’t.
Seconds before, his chocolate colored eyes, far too human for such a cruel world, shone with quiet resolve. He knew what was going to happen. He accepted it.
He took a step forward.
—NO.—
It wasn’t a whisper. It was a firm, desperate cry, born of love rather than fear. He placed himself between the werewolf and his already dying body, knowing full well that preventing the tragedy meant becoming it.
Cedric hadn’t even finished transforming when his younger brother’s body crossed the space between life and death. The weapon was still vibrating in the air. Black wings, unfinished, cursed, cut through the night like broken shadows, like a failed miracle.
The impact was blunt. Unnatural.
There were no last words.
No farewell.
Kieran fell.
His knees touched the ground first. Then the rest of his body, light, fragile, as if life had already abandoned him before the impact.
His eyes searched for Mason for a single second.
There was no reproach in them, no fear. Only infinite sadness... and a faint, painful smile, like an apology.
He chose to die rather than allow the world Mason had shown him, less dark, less dead, to disappear forever.
And then... nothing.
Cedric dropped to his knees with a sound that belonged to no living being. Something inside him shattered beyond repair.
—I... I just wanted to save you...—
He whispered to the unmoving body as ashes began to rise with the night wind.
—I always wanted to save you...—
Mason didn’t attack.
That was worse.
He stood there, trembling, covered in someone else’s blood, his golden eyes slowly dimming as something in his chest collapsed and never rose again. He didn’t look at Cedric. He didn’t look at the world. He looked at Kieran... as if waiting for him to breathe again, for it all to be a joke, just another nightmare.
But Kieran Callisto was already dead.
And to everyone’s misfortune, there was no divine punishment. No justice, no vengeance.
Only the sentence of living with guilt.
Cedric understood something that night, far too late: he had killed the only thing he had sworn to protect. After his mother, he had failed once more. And he found no comfort in knowing Mason had lost too, because they had both lost at the same time.
The years healed nothing. They only taught Callisto Manor how to keep silent.
The walls no longer whispered with laughter; they seemed to hold their breath. The lamps burned with a sickly light, as if even fire were tired. The vampires moved slowly, with impeccable manners, avoiding looking too long toward the center of the emptiness that had once had a name.
That night, the main door opened.
Cedric entered without announcing himself. In his arms he carried a child, a human child, small, far too small.
He was six... maybe seven years old. The age when horror is not yet understood, but is remembered forever. His brown hair fell messily over a disturbingly familiar forehead. Pale skin. Warm. Painfully alive.
He was identical to Kieran as a child.
But he wasn’t him.
—Let me go!—
The boy sobbed, his voice broken.
—I want my parents!—
The child didn’t understand why the world had suddenly stopped feeling safe. Until recently, it had only been a shadow, a feeling at his back when entering school, a gaze that wasn’t there when he turned around. He had told his parents, and they had smiled with gentle concern, promising to watch closely, promising everything was fine.
For a while, it was.
Then he stopped feeling that presence. He laughed again. He trusted again.
The most human mistake.
That day he only had to take a box of cookies to his grandmother’s house. Three houses away, nothing more. The neighborhood was quiet; everyone knew him. His mother kissed his forehead before closing the door. He ran off happily, even waved at a neighbor putting away his lawn mower, thought about his grandmother’s hugs.
But when he arrived, the house was dark.
The silence fell suddenly, unnaturally. When he raised his hand to knock... claws grabbed him.
He tried to scream. But he wasn’t fast enough. The cookies scattered across the ground.
He woke up inside a black car. Dark windows, soft seats, luxury without comfort.
He wanted to go back to his parents.
But the man in front of him scolded him for not wearing his seatbelt, as if they had known each other all their lives. He spoke with twisted gentleness, with an emotion that was terrifying. He called him by a name that wasn’t his. He smiled like someone who had recovered something lost.
Cedric held him tighter, oblivious to the scratches, the bites, the blood staining his arms. On his face was something worse than madness.
There was happiness.
—Shhh...—
He murmured with a tenderness that froze the blood of everyone present.
—You’re home now, brother. There’s no need to cry, Kieran. You’re where you always should have been.—
—I’M NOT YOUR BROTHER! THAT’S NOT MY NAME! MY NAME IS—!—
The words died before they were born.
—THAT IS NOT YOUR NAME!—
Silence.
The boy looked at him, eyes overflowing with terror.
—I... I’m not your brother...—
He said it in a thread of a voice, searching for exits, kind faces, anything to pull him out of that place.
—Yes, you are.—
Cedric replied softly.
—You just don’t remember yet.—
The vampires watched. Some whispered, others couldn’t look away. No one moved, no one defended the innocent, no one wanted to be the next to die.
Questioning Cedric Callisto was no longer an option.
From the top of the stairs, the noise drew Gabriel. He looked older, more tired, more broken. But his voice still carried weight.
—Cedric. This is madness. Where did you get this child?—
His only son was raising corpses of the past like promises. Gabriel knew, it had worsened since Kieran’s death. And yet, he had allowed the silence to stretch too long.
Cedric lifted his gaze. His eyes did not beg, they commanded.
—He’s back. You didn’t believe me. But this time... this time we can do it right.—
He smiled. A twisted, trembling smile.
—He’s here.—
—Give him back, Cedric... he doesn’t belong here!—
Gabriel’s voice cut through the air, heavy with authority, echoing through every shadow of the Manor.
Cedric’s smile died.
—No. Look at him. LOOK AT HIM!—
Gabriel sighed and stepped down one stair. And then he saw him.
The hair. The mole on his cheek. The way he trembled, exactly the same.
The world cracked.
It wasn’t Kieran. But it was too similar. More alive. More colorful. Wearing clothes Kieran would never have worn, childish bracelets, clumsy scrapes on his legs covered with colorful bandages. Signs of a different mother, who somewhere must be looking for him.
And yet...
His trembling hands took the boy’s face. The mole beneath his fingers burned like an old wound that never healed. The child was soaked in tears and pure fear.
Gabriel said nothing. He stepped away.
And the Manor accepted the sin.
The child screamed once more, his hope in pieces. His voice hit the walls... and was swallowed by silence.
No one followed him.
No one saved him.
Gabriel did not look back. He followed his eldest son.
Erasing his memory was the easiest part.
Not because it didn’t hurt, but because memories give way quickly when torn out with enough force. The hard part wasn’t breaking the mind, it was breaking it just enough.
Bending the body.
Polishing the fear.
Shaping the person until he fit.
Ancient spells tore through human memories: warm dreams, parents’ voices, nameless laughter, the certainty of belonging somewhere. Every word spoken was an open wound.
The child screamed until his voice broke and became a hoarse, animal sound.
Cedric was there the entire time. He held him when he trembled, restrained him when he tried to flee. He whispered lies with poisonous tenderness, as if they were promises.
They had never turned a child before. Vampires were created older, with minds already hardened, bodies prepared to endure the change. Adolescents, perhaps. But never children. Never something so soft. Never something so alive.
But this time, it had to be done. Just this once.
They told him he had always been a vampire. That the Manor was his home, that Cedric was his older brother, that Gabriel was his father. They told him his mother had died.
His entire life was rewritten and molded, like brittle clay in unfamiliar hands, until it lost the shape of what it once was.
The child screamed for months. Not only from the headaches splitting his mind in two, but from confusion that had no words. He cried until there were no tears left, called out names that no longer meant anything.
Then... he stopped.
When his blood was transformed, the entire night trembled. Not because of the ritual, it was ancient and correct, but because something older, something that predated them all, recognized the mistake.
The world knew a boundary had been crossed.
But Cedric didn’t listen.
He never listens when he believes he’s right.
And so, between lies spoken with love and silences accepted out of cowardice, something was born that should never have existed.
Years had passed. Kieran watered the flowers in front of Callisto Manor with the automatic patience of someone repeating a learned gesture. The water fell in steady streams, dark, soaking into the black soil.
The forest rose before him, dense, ancient, breathing like a sleeping animal. Leaves fell slowly, one after another, marking the passage of something that had no hurry.
That day Cedric had told him not to take too long with the flowers; he was trapped in Coven duties, forced to attend to heir matters that could not wait. But from the entrance, his father watched him in silence, with a vigilance that seeped into the bone, that settled on his soul with a weight more terrifying than any order, still, patient, born of fear.
—Just a few minutes—
He warned.
—You know it’s not safe to be outside.—
Kieran sighed without turning around.
—I’m not a child—
He said.
—I’m twenty. Someday you and Cedric will have to let me breathe.—
Gabriel hesitated. Then he stepped closer and rested a hand on his shoulder, with a weary tenderness.
—Alright. But don’t take too long.—
His father’s presence withdrew, and with it, the constant watchfulness. The relief was brief, almost guilty.
Silence wrapped around him. The forest creaked softly. The water kept falling, everything seemed fine.
Then... something moved.
Between the trees, golden eyes gleamed in the darkness, fixed on him, returning his gaze with an intensity that pierced the skin.
Kieran’s heart clenched without warning, as if an invisible hand had closed around it from within. Each breath became an effort; the air turned thick, sticky, almost impossible to swallow. An ancient fear crawled up his spine, freezing the marrow of his bones, a fear without a name, without a face, rising from memories he had never lived.
—...Hello?—
The word slipped out, fragile, out of place.
The forest did not answer.
But inside his chest, something opened.
A pain that did not belong to him.
His hands trembled. Water spilled onto the earth without him noticing.
In the darkness, the wolf watched.
Motionless.
Patient.
Waiting.
Because some souls, even broken ones... always recognize each other.