Six months.
By now, Greystone House almost felt like a home—almost.
Caelum Sanguine had carved out a space for himself. Not through friendships or loud declarations, but through silence, observation, and the slow, meticulous construction of control.
Most children barely noticed him anymore.
And that, in his eyes, was perfect.
The staff thought he was harmless. Quiet. Cooperative. Slightly withdrawn, perhaps, but polite. He followed schedules. Answered questions. Drank his blood elixir on time. Smiled faintly when spoken to, then disappeared into the library for hours.
They never saw what he was really doing.
What he was becoming.
It started with the elixirs.
Every week, after each feeding, more fragments surfaced — bits of spellwork, rituals, magical memory etched into the blood. The Ministry claimed the elixir was synthetic, magically neutralized. But it wasn't. Not to him.
It spoke to him.
At first, he assumed everyone experienced it. But after subtle questions, quiet eavesdropping, and watching the other hybrids in the feeding room… he realized the truth.
He was the only one.
Vampires were known for stealth, tracking, and a kind of low-grade mental influence—something like a much weaker form of the Imperius Curse. But none of them absorbed knowledge. Not like this. Not through blood.
It was his gift. Or his curse. But either way, it was his alone.
In six months, he had gathered enough fragments to reconstruct three spells completely.
Lumos. Levioso. And—most surprisingly—the Disillusionment Charm.
The first two were foundational. Simple spells, cast so frequently by so many wizards that their impressions echoed through the elixirs like fingerprints.
But the Disillusionment Charm… that one intrigued him.
But it was somehow made sense.
If you could vanish into shadow, wouldn't you do it every chance you got?
Caelum didn't have a wand. The Ministry still denied him one, citing "safety precautions." But he didn't let that stop him. He adapted.
Through muscle memory, visualization, focused will — he coaxed magic from his fingertips. It was unreliable at first, shaky, often fizzled. But slowly… the spells began to respond.
Lumos sparked to life with pressure and breath.
Levioso could lift small objects if he focused hard enough, sometimes without even speaking.
But the Disillusionment Charm—that was his crown jewel.
It didn't work all the time. It drained him faster than the others. But when it did work… the world blurred around him. His body melted into the backdrop like paint running in water. A shimmer. A ripple.
And when he stood in shadow—it became perfect.
He didn't disappear.
He simply… ceased to be noticed.
Last month, he'd tested it for the first time in daylight hours, hiding behind a broken statue near the West Wing stairwell.
Two staff walked past. One glanced in his direction. Frowned. Then looked away.
"Weird. Thought I saw something."
"Probably just magic feedback. That wing's full of wards."
He hadn't even needed to move.
From that day on, he stopped caring about stares and whispers. He knew how to slip by them now—how to become less.
No one noticed when he ghosted down the corridor between curfew hours. Or when he lingered outside the staffroom door. Or when he watched, silent and hidden, as other residents had meltdowns, fights, breakdowns.
He was learning. Not just magic.
But people.
Tonight, he stood in the corner of his room, back pressed against the wall, breathing slowly.
The candle was unlit. The runes on the door glowed faintly blue.
He closed his eyes. Let the magic flow inward.
Intention. Focus. Shadow.
His body shimmered—and vanished.
He opened his eyes.
Nothing of him remained.
Only the dim ripple of air, like heat haze. And even that faded as he stepped backward into the darker edge of the room.
They don't know what I am.
And they won't. Not until I choose to show them.
He stayed there for another hour, invisible and unmoving, just listening to the breathing walls of Greystone House.