The child was born beneath a sky that bled.
A crimson moon hung low, its light casting an unholy glow across the jagged peaks of the Wyrmspire Mountains. Snow fell in thick, silent waves, muffling the screams that echoed from the ruins of Daggervale Abbey. Inside, the once-sacred stone was soaked with blood—some old, dried black into the mortar, some warm and fresh and glistening.
Elira Nyxen, the last heir of an ancient vampire bloodline, lay twisted in pain on the cracked stone floor. Her eyes—silver shot through with violet—flickered with dying fire. She had been hunted, betrayed, bled nearly dry. Yet she clung to life for one reason.
The child.
He emerged into the world not with a cry, but with silence.
The midwife—an outcast witch loyal to Elira—caught the child with trembling hands. Blood coated his skin, but none of it seemed to touch his breath. He stared up at her, silent and still. Too still.
"Is he—?" Elira rasped, lifting her head.
The midwife bent close, pressing her ear to his chest.
A heartbeat.
And then—his eyes opened.
One burned a deep, infernal crimson, pulsing like coals in the dark. The other shimmered silver like moonlight on a blade. The midwife recoiled.
"Goddess protect us… he's both."
Elira forced a weak, bitter smile. "He is everything they fear."
The wind howled outside. A second sound rose behind it—distant, chilling.
A wolf's howl. Long, low, and answered by others.
"They've come," the midwife whispered.
Elira tried to rise but fell back with a gasp. "Take him."
"They'll kill me if they find me with—"
"Take him, Morran!" the vampire screamed with her last strength. "You swore!"
The midwife hesitated only a second longer before wrapping the newborn in dark furs. His tiny face was still emotionless, but his eyes glowed with an eerie sentience.
"What is his name?" Morran asked.
Elira's eyes glazed as her life slipped away. She touched her son's cheek with blood-stained fingers.
"Varek… Varek Nyxen."
Then she died.
A gust of wind blew open the shattered doors of the abbey.
The child blinked.
Sixteen Years Later
The forest was alive with violence.
The moon, full and swollen with a reddish hue, illuminated the blood-streaked clearing below. Bodies lay scattered like broken dolls—fangs bared in death, claws frozen mid-slash.
And in the center stood a lone figure, tall, bare-chested, steam rising from his skin.
Varek.
Now no longer a babe, but a weapon born of contradiction. He was carved from pain and muscle, with dark, shoulder-length hair matted with blood—most of it not his. His crimson-silver eyes blazed in the moonlight, and his breathing was slow. Calm. Too calm.
Around him, the werewolves' hunting party was in pieces.
Twelve elite hunters. Gone in minutes.
His body bore slashes that would've crippled any man, but they were closing already—muscle knitting back together, flesh steaming as it sealed. He flexed his claws, licking blood from his fingers.
A growl stirred from the trees.
One remained.
A beast, nearly seven feet tall in hybrid form, snarled from the treeline—hesitant now.
"You were the bold one," Varek said, his voice low, gravel and silk.
The wolf lunged.
In a blur of motion, Varek met him mid-air. Claws clashed. Blood sprayed. Bone cracked.
They landed in a heap, but Varek rose—dripping, breathing heavy but unbroken.
The wolf didn't rise.
Varek stood over the corpse, eyes flickering. Rage, yes—but something else beneath it. Loneliness. Sadness. Disgust.
He spat.
"You could have run."
Later, beneath the shadow of a broken tree, he washed in a stream.
The water ran red.
He looked at his reflection—inhuman, beautiful, wrong.
His face still bore the sharp angularity of his vampire bloodline, but the jaw was broader, stronger. The faint points of fangs rested behind parted lips. But it was the eyes that betrayed him—no glamour could hide that dichotomy.
A part of him longed to gouge one out.
He closed them instead.
That night, he returned to the sanctuary deep within the Wyrmspire caverns. A place shielded from both vampire scryers and werewolf trackers. An old hermit witch named Brytha awaited him there—a woman who had raised him in secrecy after Morran died.
"You disobeyed me again," Brytha said without turning from her fire.
"They were hunting children," Varek muttered.
"So you slaughtered an entire pack."
Varek threw down a silver ring. It clattered across the stones.
"Beta insignia," he said. "They were sanctioned."
Brytha sighed. "This war is older than you. It will outlive you if you keep charging into it with your cock and claws swinging."
Varek leaned against the wall, suddenly tired. "I dream of her again."
Brytha turned. Her face softened slightly. "The woman with storm-colored eyes?"
He nodded. "She's real. I know it."
"You're mating-dreaming," she said. "Rare in hybrids, but not impossible. You're coming of age. The blood calls."
"It's more than that," Varek said. "There's something… else. Like she's calling to me."
Brytha said nothing.
She knew the signs. Destiny was stirring. And fate, when it tangled with lust and prophecy, was never merciful.
Elsewhere…
She rode beneath the blood moon, her white wolf mount padding silently through the trees.
Selene Vireux—General of the Shadowfang Pack—moved like a blade through the dark.
She had dreamed, too.
Of crimson eyes.
Of teeth on skin.
Of desire that made her wake wet and shaking with something between fear and need.
She had dismissed it for months.
But tonight, she felt him.
Somewhere, near.
She dismounted, fingers flexing. Her claws grew with a thought.
"Varek," she whispered.
Not knowing how she knew his name.
Only that it would change everything.