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For many children, their parents represent the first form of greatness they ever know. They are the reflection of what they believe they might one day become: the measure of strength, of courage, of love. Children grow up looking at them as if they were mountains impossible to climb, but also impossible to ignore.
However, that was not exactly the case for Cedric. He loved his parents, of course he did. He loved his mother with the pure devotion that only a child can feel, and he admired his father with that strange mixture of respect and distance that sometimes exists between children and imposing figures. But if there was someone who truly occupied the highest place in his world, someone who had managed to become the very image of what it meant to be strong... that person was his aunt Carmen.
Carmen was not simply an adult figure in his life. She was something closer to a living legend within the family. His mother’s sister, yes... but also something much greater than that simple bond of blood.
To Cedric, Carmen was a wall: firm, hard, unbreakable. She was the kind of person who seemed to have been carved directly out of stone, someone who did not bend before anything or anyone. Where others hesitated, she acted. Where others felt fear, she devoured it. There was something in her presence that made even the night seem to bend in her favor. And, being a vampire, the night was not simply her ally... it was a natural extension of her existence.
Cedric used to spend a lot of time with her when he was younger. More than many would have considered appropriate, perhaps. Carmen was not the type of woman who took care of children with sweetness or soft words. She did not teach him games or tell him stories before bed. Instead, she showed him the cracks in the world. She taught him what the coven preferred to keep silent, what they considered forbidden for young ears. She spoke to him about power, about survival, about what it truly meant to be strong in a world where weakness was paid for with blood.
And Cedric listened.
He listened with bright eyes, his mind absorbing every word as if it were sacred truth. To him, that was not darkness. It was knowledge. It was preparation for a world that, according to Carmen, never forgave the weak.
For a long time, Cedric believed that one day he would be like her.
He believed the admiration he felt could never break. But statues, even the most imposing ones, can fall from their pedestals.
Everything began with his mother’s death.
The loss opened a void that no one in the family seemed to know how to fill. The house, which had once been alive, became a place far too large for the silence that now inhabited it. His father, Gabriel, grew distant, consumed by his own pain... or perhaps by his own guilt. Cedric did not know for certain. He only knew that the man who was supposed to hold the family together seemed farther away with each passing day.
And in that void, Carmen became more present. More rigid, more venomous.
Cedric understood her hatred. He truly did. He shared part of it. Carmen hated the werewolves, and Cedric had no reason to contradict that feeling. She also despised Gabriel for what she considered an unforgivable cowardice: not avenging his wife’s death, not unleashing a war, not making the werewolves pay for what had happened.
At that point, Cedric even agreed.
His father had remained still. He had allowed the world to keep turning as if nothing had happened.
And that, in the heart of a child full of rage, felt like betrayal.
But everything changed when Carmen crossed a line she should never have touched. When she decided to blame Kieran.
His younger brother.
That moment was like watching a gigantic statue fall from the top of a tower. A perfect image shattering against the ground into a thousand irreparable pieces. Cedric remembered exactly how it felt that day: the heat in his chest, the fury rising like a fire no one could extinguish.
How dared she?
How could she blame a child?
How could she point at Kieran, her own nephew, and say that their mother’s death was his fault?
From that moment on, something inside Cedric broke forever.
Admiration turned into contempt. And contempt, slowly, began to transform into hatred.
Because Cedric could accept many things. He could accept pain, rage, even the thirst for vengeance that Carmen carried inside her. But he would never accept someone blaming Kieran.
Never.
Kieran was his little brother. The most important person in his world.
And if there was one thing Cedric was certain about, it was that he would never be like Carmen. He would never hate his brother. Never.
But Carmen did not stop.
First came the venomous comments, spoken with that cold voice that seemed to enjoy every cruel word. Small attacks disguised as truth. Insults directed at a child who barely understood the weight of what was happening.
Cedric did not tolerate it.
The first time he answered back, he did so in his crow form. A quick, impulsive attack, full of fury. He launched himself at her, pecking at her face and head with brutal insistence. He did not care if he made her bleed, he did not care if she screamed. In that moment, the only thing that mattered was making her stop talking.
But Carmen did not learn.
Then came the hands. One slap, just one. But enough.
She had dared to strike a child. The son of her own sister.
That was all Cedric needed to decide that Carmen also had to learn a lesson.
So he locked her in.
A simple trap, but effective. A room where sunlight poured in strongly for hours. For a vampire of the night, it was an immediate sentence... a torment. Carmen had to crawl beneath a desk, hiding from the light as time moved slowly forward.
Cedric did not consider it an attempt at murder.
To him, it was only a warning. A way of making it clear that no one could touch what he protected.
No one.
But not even that was enough, because Carmen kept attacking Kieran.
And Kieran... never defended himself. That was the problem.
The little vampire seemed convinced that he deserved all that contempt. He believed, with a sadness Cedric hated seeing in his eyes, that he truly had been responsible for his mother’s death. Sometimes he stopped feeding. Sometimes he shut himself away in silence, as if he wanted to disappear.
Cedric did everything he could.
He defended him, he comforted him. He tried to keep him safe.
But even patience has a limit.
That limit came the day Kieran appeared in his room with a bruise on his hand. The marks of fingernails were visible on his skin, imprinted with a violence that left no room for doubt.
Cedric saw it.
And something inside him broke completely.
When Kieran was at school, Cedric was always the one who took him and the one who picked him up. It was his routine, his way of making sure nothing happened to him.
That day he returned to the mansion earlier than usual. And he saw Carmen coming down the stairs.
There were other vampires present. Witnesses watching from different corners of the house. But Cedric was no longer thinking about consequences.
He moved fast, too fast.
He pushed her.
It was not a dramatic or exaggerated gesture. Just a precise movement, filled with a calm that was more frightening than fury.
Carmen’s body fell.
The mansion’s staircase was long, almost endless, and her body rolled down it, hitting each stone edge. The sound of the impacts echoed in the air: bones cracking, flesh striking the structure, her head finally hitting the base.
A vampire does not die from a fall.
Cedric knew that.
That was why he did not stop. And that was why he smiled.
Because in that moment he no longer cared, because he no longer felt admiration, because nothing remained of the boy who had once wanted to be like his aunt.
This time, however, he could not escape punishment. He was taken directly to his father’s office.
Gabriel was waiting behind the desk, with that heavy presence that filled the entire room. The silence stretched for a few seconds before he finally spoke.
—Why did you do it?—
His voice was not a shout. It was something worse: a mixture of disappointment, exhaustion, and a contained anger that was barely holding itself together.
Cedric looked at him without lowering his head. There was no fear in his eyes. No regret, only a strange calm.
—You should know.—
He added nothing more.
There was no need.
Because, for Cedric, the answer was far too obvious.
Leaves fell from the trees with the slowness of something that had no hurry to reach the ground. The wind pushed them, made them spin, rise a little and then descend again, as if they were trapped in a silent dance that only autumn understood. Some brushed against the school fence, others swirled along the sidewalk, and many ended up piling near the edge of the street, forming small golden and reddish whirlwinds that the wind broke apart again and again.
The day at the elementary school had ended several minutes earlier. The children’s voices that had once filled the place had almost completely faded. The shouting, the laughter, the hurried goodbyes... all of that had slowly disappeared, as if someone had turned down the volume of the world.
Few children remained.
Very few.
The last ones waited for their parents sitting on the benches near the entrance or standing by the gate, watching the street with that mixture of patience and impatience that only children know. Some played absentmindedly with stones or sticks, others talked among themselves while the minutes passed.
And then there was Kieran.
Standing by the curb, with his backpack hanging from his shoulders, far too large for his small body. His hands held one of the straps tightly, as if clinging to something might prevent the uneasiness growing in his chest from expanding further.
Cedric always arrived first.
Always.
It was not an exaggeration or an idealized memory. It was a constant truth. Cedric usually appeared even before the last bell rang, leaning against the fence or sitting on the same curb, waiting with that calm expression that made it seem like the whole world could wait if he decided it should.
But today he was not there, today there was no sign of him.
At first Kieran did not think much of it. The minutes passed, yes, but it was still early. Maybe Cedric had been delayed a little, maybe he had needed to do something before coming. But time kept moving forward.
One child left.
Then another.
A mother arrived running to pick up her daughter.
A car appeared, stopped, and took two siblings away as they laughed while climbing into the back seat.
The space in front of the school began to empty.
And Cedric still had not appeared.
Kieran’s mind began to move too fast, as if someone had opened a door inside his head and let all the thoughts rush in at once.
What if something had happened to him?
The idea appeared first as a whisper, then as a possibility. Then as a fear. His stomach tightened.
He did not want to think about that, he did not want to. But the images began to form anyway: Cedric hurt, Cedric lost, Cedric... disappearing from his life just like other people had done before.
No
No
He did not want to lose him too.
The mere idea made him feel a cold emptiness in his chest. A feeling far too familiar for someone so young. Loss had already touched his life before, and the memory of that pain was still there, hidden somewhere deep inside his heart.
He would not endure it again.
Maybe he was exaggerating. Yes... surely he was exaggerating.
Maybe Cedric had simply gotten distracted with something, maybe someone had stopped him to talk, maybe he was helping with something inside the mansion. Or maybe he had simply miscalculated the time.
It could happen. Anyone could be late.
But even so, his eyes began to burn.
Kieran tried to stay strong. He did not want to cry in front of the few children who still remained nearby. He did not want to seem weak, did not want to give them another reason to look at him with pity or curiosity.
But it was difficult.
His eyes had become bright, glassy. Tears threatened to fall even as he tried to hold them back. His hands trembled slightly as he gripped the strap of his backpack. If one more minute passed... he would not be able to stop himself. He would end up crying right there.
It was then that a black car stopped nearby.
Kieran recognized it immediately.
It was not Cedric’s car. Cedric was not even old enough to drive, so imagining him behind the wheel would have been ridiculous.
No. That car belonged to someone else.
Someone who almost never came.
His father.
Gabriel rarely left his office. In fact, he almost never did. Most of the time he seemed to live locked inside that place, surrounded by papers, decisions, and silences that neither of his children could break through.
Kieran lifted his gaze when the driver’s door opened.
It was Gabriel.
And he did not look like usual.
His hair was messy, as if he had run his hands through it several times without noticing. The glasses he wore seemed to slide constantly down the bridge of his nose, and beneath them deep dark circles marked his face, making him look more exhausted than Kieran remembered ever seeing him.
Gabriel said nothing.
Not an explanation, not even asking how he was.
He only walked to the back door of the car and opened it.
—Get in.—
That was all.
One single word.
In that moment, crying would not have been so bad. Everything would have been easier if Cedric had been there, even without saying anything.
But Cedric was not there. And that made everything feel more fragile.
Kieran got into the car quickly. He did not want to stay outside any longer than necessary. He did not want to ask if his aunt Carmen had spoken to his father again about him, about the blame, about the idea that everything that had happened was his fault.
He did not want to hear any of that.
So he simply sat down.
He hugged his backpack against his chest as if it were a shield. His hands were damp with sweat and his throat stung as if he were holding back a cry that was too big.
He wanted to ask where Cedric was.
He needed to. But he did not do it, he remained silent.
He watched his father climb into the driver’s seat and start the car. The engine purred softly as they began to move down the street.
The silence inside the vehicle was heavy.
Uncomfortable.
At every traffic light, at every brief stop in traffic, Gabriel turned his head slightly to look at him. It was not a subtle gesture. It was obvious that he wanted to say something. But each time he seemed about to speak, he stopped.
As if the words were getting stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat. Finally, when the mansion was already close, Gabriel spoke.
—How was school?—
The question caught Kieran by surprise. It was something so simple. And at the same time so strange.
His father... was asking him that?
Kieran lowered his gaze to his hands. He began to play with his fingers nervously.
—Good...—
The answer came out small. Almost shy.
The silence returned for a few more seconds. But this time Kieran gathered courage. He felt that if he did not ask now, he never would.
—And Cedric?... He didn’t come pick me up from school.—
The air inside the car seemed to grow denser.
Gabriel took a moment before answering.
—He’s grounded.—
The car stopped right in front of the mansion.
Gabriel got out first and then opened the back door to help Kieran out, also taking his backpack without asking. The building in front of them had always had something somber about it, something that made it feel more like an ancient structure than a home.
But that night it felt even heavier.
Darker.
They entered.
Inside the mansion there were several vampires. Some were gathered in small groups, speaking in low voices. The murmurs blended together, forming a kind of uneasy buzzing.
Several of them looked at them when they entered.
Kieran did not understand what was happening. His father had said Cedric was grounded.
Had his brother done something bad?
The only “bad” things Cedric had done lately had been defending him from Carmen. Pecking at her face when he was in crow form. Locking her in a room full of sunlight. Arguing with her until insults filled the corridors.
That thought fit into his mind like a puzzle piece finally finding its place.
He remembered the bruises on his arm, remembered the nails marked on his skin. Something inside his head clicked.
Gabriel, who had been watching him closely, extended a hand toward him, as if he wanted to touch his shoulder.
But Kieran was already running.
—Kieran!—
His father’s voice echoed behind him.
He did not stop.
He ran up the stairs with the natural speed of a vampire, his quick steps echoing through the hallways. His mind repeated a single word again and again.
Punishment.
There were two types of punishments.
He knew that well. He had learned it over the years, with the same certainty with which one learns to recognize the sound of a door opening or the weight of a silence that lasts too long. The first one hurt, yes. But it was a simple pain.
The second... the second was different.
He knew what that could mean. Vampires who hurt others were judged. Imprisoned. Exiled.
Had his father sent Cedric away?
Panic tightened his chest as he ran through the hallway until he reached the door of his brother’s room.
He threw it open.
And stopped.
Cedric was there.
Lying on his bed, his arms crossed behind his head. His expression was clearly furious, as if he had been trapped in his own anger for hours. He lifted his gaze when he heard the door open so abruptly.
For a moment, Kieran’s world stopped.
He had imagined too much, exaggerated. He had been afraid of nothing. Of course his father would not send Cedric away. They were his children, after all, even if he barely spoke to them anymore... Kieran wanted to believe that he still loved them.
Right?
—Ki...—
Cedric’s voice stopped when he saw his face.
And then Kieran cried.
The tears came all at once, without him being able to stop them. A deep cry, full of all the fear he had been holding inside.
Cedric immediately got up and crossed the room in a few quick steps.
—Hey!... Don’t cry! I’m sorry…—
His clumsy hands tried to wipe the tears from his brother’s face.
—You didn’t come for me!... I thought something had happened to you!—
The protest came out between sobs, mixing anger and relief.
—I’m sorry, I’m sorry... it wasn’t my intention.—
It was obvious Cedric had done something. Something related to Carmen, but in that moment, Kieran did not care.
He had no space in his head to think about punishments, arguments, or whatever had happened inside the mansion. All that mattered was that Cedric was there. That he had not lost him.
So, without thinking any further, Kieran clung to him and hid his face in his chest, hugging him with all the strength he had.
As if letting go meant risking losing him too.