The walk back from the carpentry shop usually took Kennedy twenty minutes. Today, it felt like an eternity. The filth of the Western roads seemed thicker, the air heavier, as if the very atmosphere of Fluxton were trying to lung-bind him.
I should have been harder on him, Kennedy thought, his boots dragging through the soot. I should have burned those dreams of vengeance before they took root. I watched him feed that fire for years, thinking I could dampen the flames with logic. What a fool I was.
He had seen the Mark on Ezekiel's chest. That jagged, abyssal Brand wasn't just ink; it was a leash. Every turn in the road brought him closer to the small, leaning shack they called home, and every step felt like he was walking toward his own execution.
He pushed the door open. The familiar scent of sawdust and old stew wafted out, but the silence that met him was deafening.
"Ezekiel? I'm ho—"
The words died in his throat. His knees hit the floor with a hollow thud. The bedding was rumpled, the few scattered belongings Ezekiel owned were gone, and the space felt cold. Not just cold—hollow.
"No..." he whispered, his voice cracking. He crawled across the floorboards, his fingers grazing the indentation where his son had laid just hours before. "Ezekiel... what have they done to you?"
He slumped against the wall, hot tears carving tracks through the grime on his face. "I'm a pathetic man. A coward playing at being a father." He struck the floorboards, the wood groaning under his fist. "I couldn't save Sarah from the soldiers. I couldn't save my wife from the dark. And now, I've let my son walk straight into the lion's mouth because I was too weak to stop him."
He sat there in the dimming light, a broken man in a room full of ghosts.
Hours bled into one another. Outside, the bustle of Fluxton continued—the sounds of gears grinding and vampires snarling over scraps—but Kennedy remained in the dark.
At the carpentry shop, his absence was noted with quiet murmurs. In the West, friendship was a fragile thing, a luxury few could afford. They liked Kennedy; they respected his craft. but in a town where the Abyssal Gang held the keys to the afterlife, no one was going to risk their neck to comfort a man whose son had been "recruited." To offer sympathy was to invite scrutiny. In Fluxton, the wise watched their neighbors from a distance; the foolish ended up in the vats.
Kennedy didn't blame them. He knew the rules. He had lived by them for forty-eight years.
He looked at his trembling hands. In the North, among the Royals and the High Nobles, a vampire could expect to see four hundred years of history. Their blood was thick with ancient magic, their bodies sustained by the finest essences. But here in the West? For the dregs like Kennedy, life was a cruel sprint. Most of his kind were lucky to hit one hundred and twenty before their hearts gave out from the stress and the rot.
Kennedy was only forty-eight, but looking at his reflection in a shard of broken glass, he saw a man of eighty. The grey in his hair and the deep lines around his eyes were the map of a life spent in the shadows of giants.
Memories of Sarah
His mind drifted back to the years when the house wasn't so quiet.
Before the Shadow War, before the Abyssal Gang took the throne, there was Sarah. She hadn't been a delicate flower; she was a force of nature. They had worked side-by-side in the shop, their rhythm so perfect that the other carpenters used to stop and watch.
'How did a man like you land a woman like that?' they'd ask him during the mid-day break.
'I didn't find her,' Kennedy would always answer with a small, rare smile. 'She found me.'
He hadn't been a warrior or a charmer. He was a quiet, withdrawn young man who lived for the grain of the wood and the sharpeness of a chisel. He had been dirty, smelled of pine resin, and had no future beyond the next paycheck. Yet, she had chosen him over men like Thane Emberlin—the shop owner who had wealth, influence, and the favor of the elites.
She had seen something in him. A goodness, perhaps. A steadiness.
And I failed her, he thought, his stomach cramping with a sudden, violent hunger. I let her die, and now I've lost the only thing she left behind.
He looked at the corner of the room where a small pile of grey, stringy meat and a cup of dim bioluminescent blood sat. His body convulsed with the need to feed, but his grief was absolute. He didn't move. He just rolled onto his side on the cold floor, the hunger spiking like a fever.
"Please," he whispered into the empty room, his voice barely audible over the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls. "Ezekiel... just come back. Don't let them turn you into one of them."
But as the moon rose higher over Fluxton, Kennedy knew that the boy who had left this room was already gone. Whether he returned as a hero or a monster was no longer in his father's hands. It was in the hands of the Abyss.
________________
Inside the manor, the air in Raphael's private dining hall was thick with the scent of vintage marrow and the low hum of bioluminescent lamps. Raphael sat at the head of the obsidian table, twirling a crystal flute of glowing blood. Across from him, Darion and Jay sat in a silence that was less about respect and more about survival.
Raphael's voice broke the quiet, cold and sharp as a winter frost.
"The Devil's Flames are a corpse that hasn't realized it's stopped breathing yet," Raphael mused, watching the light dance in his glass. "Patrick is a poet playing at being a warlord. He gave his commanders everything they craved—territory, blood, autonomy. He thought it would buy him loyalty. Instead, he just fattened the wolves that are now tearing out his throat."
Raphael chuckled, a dry, raspy sound. "He's a figurehead now. A prisoner in his own reinforced cellar, kept alive only because his subordinates need a face to put on their banners. I almost pity the fool."
"And Gunther?" Darion asked, leaning forward, his brow furrowed in skepticism. "He's a snake from Wilson, Raphael. What's to stop him from taking our intel back to the pack? A vampire's loyalty usually ends where his hunger begins."
Raphael snapped his fingers, the sound echoing like a pistol shot. "Gunther is a parasite, Darion. He knows that if he crosses me, I won't just kill him—I'll make his death last a century. Besides, the men I have 'assisting' him have their Marks. Their souls are tethered to my will. Disobedience isn't an option for them."
He leaned back, a predatory gleam in his eyes. "Gunther's ambition is almost charming. One hundred soldiers, three rival commanders, and a dying King to topple. He's willing to burn Wilson to the ground just to sit on the ashes. If he'd been born in Fluxton, I'd have made him a god of war. Instead, he's just a very useful tool."
"He's a lunatic," Jay muttered, scratching at the scar on his neck. "The war with the Shadows nearly hollowed us out. Now he wants to jump into another meat grinder? It's suicide."
"Is it?" Darion countered, eyes flashing. "Remember when we were nothing? Thane called us 'locusts' for dreaming of the Dark Kings' seats. Now we own the air he breathes. Never underestimate a man with nothing to lose and a sharp enough knife."
Raphael slammed his glass onto the table. The bioluminescent liquid splashed like neon ink.
"I want Wilson," Raphael declared, his voice dropping an octave. "I'm done being the king of a graveyard. Fluxton was enough for a younger version of me, but things have changed."
His mind briefly flickered to the courtyard—to the boy with the orange fire in his veins. Seeing Ezekiel's raw, unpolished savagery had poked a sleeping giant in Raphael's chest.
"We lost too much to Vanessa and her Shadow Faction," Raphael growled. "Our ranks are thin. If we don't absorb the Devil's Flames, someone else will. A stronger gang from the North will swoop in, take Wilson, and then look at Fluxton as a dessert. We expand, or we get swallowed. There is no middle ground."
His gaze swept over his brothers, heavy and demanding. "If either of you thinks this is 'stupidity,' feel free to challenge me. I'd love to see if your spines have grown as thick as your tongues."
Silence followed. Jay looked at the table; Darion simply nodded.
"Good," Raphael whispered. "Gunther is the weakest link in Wilson. The other commanders will overlook him. That is when we strike. I'm counting on you both. Failure will be met with... creative consequences."
The Price of Silence
Outside, in the dirt and the dark, Ezekiel was a hollow shell.
Every breath felt like inhaling crushed glass. He lay in the corner of the compound, the stones leeching the last of his warmth. Ten years. The math was a slow-motion execution. He had traded a decade of sunrises and quiet moments for two minutes of violence.
He could feel his life force thinning, like a veil being pulled too tight. The guards watched from the shadows, their snickers sounding like the clicking of insects. To them, he was a toy that had stopped squeaking.
'Ezekiel, get up.' The Voice in his head was no longer a whisper; it was a command, vibrating with a frantic edge. 'You are bleeding out of your soul. If you don't heal now, the dark will claim you before the moon sets.'
Ezekiel didn't move. The word claim echoed in his mind.
Raphael claimed his body. The guards claimed his dignity. The Voice claimed his years. He felt like a carcass being picked over by three different kinds of vultures. Hatred boiled in his gut, but it was cold—a frozen lake of resentment that left his face as blank as a mask. He was too tired to be angry. He was just waiting for the next person to take a piece of him.
'Don't just wait for the end,' the Voice hissed. 'A solution is coming, but you have to be alive to see it. Heal, boy. For the vengeance you promised.'
Ezekiel closed his eyes, his fingers curling into the dust. He wasn't sure if he was healing, or if he was just becoming part of the ground.