The journey back to the outskirts of the city felt like walking through a graveyard of his own making. While Prague was a city of stone and history, the small cottage Sam had called home was a place of soft edges and human warmth. Now, to Sam's eyes, it looked like a fragile dollhouse, ready to be crushed by the weight of the night.
"I can't go inside," Elara said, stopping at the edge of the treeline. Her eyes were fixed on the glowing yellow light in the kitchen window. "That house is full of your life, Sam. To me, it is just a box of memories I have no right to touch."
Sam nodded, his jaw tight. He felt the "Like Animals" pulse thrumming in his veins—a nervous, frantic energy. He wasn't hungry, but his body was on high alert, sensing the "life" inside the house like a discordant note in a symphony.
He moved toward the back door, his footsteps making no sound on the gravel. He slipped through the cracked window like a shadow.
The smell hit him instantly: lavender detergent, woodsmoke, and the lingering scent of his mother's perfume. For a second, his human heart—the ghost of it—tried to kick-start. He looked at the kitchen table. There was a half-finished cup of tea and a book he had been reading weeks ago.
He picked up a pen from the counter. He wanted to write a note. He wanted to say, "I'm alive. I'm okay. Don't look for me."
But as his fingers tightened around the plastic pen, it snapped. His strength was too great, his touch too alien. He looked at the ink staining his porcelain skin and realized he could no longer communicate with the world of light. He was a creature of symbols and silence now.
He walked to the hallway mirror. He saw the photos tucked into the frame—him as a child, his parents laughing at a summer picnic. He reached out to touch the glass, but his reflection was too sharp, too terrifying. The golden eyes staring back at him belonged to a stranger.
"Goodbye," he whispered, the word feeling heavy and metallic in his mouth.
He didn't leave a note. Instead, he took the box of matches from the hearth. He knew that if his family thought he was missing, they would search forever. They would be haunted by hope. But if the cabin was gone—if everything he owned turned to ash—they could eventually grieve. They could move on.
He struck a match. The flame was tiny, but to his vampire eyes, it was a roaring sun. He dropped it onto the dry curtains.
He watched for a moment as the fire began to climb, the orange light reflecting in his amber irises. The suffering was a physical ache in his chest, a burning that matched the flames. He was murdering his own history to protect the people he loved from the monster he had become.
He stepped out of the house just as the first tendrils of smoke reached the sky. Elara was waiting for him in the shadows. She didn't say a word; she simply took his ink-stained hand and pulled him into the darkness of the woods.
Behind them, the cabin collapsed into a roar of sparks and heat. Sam didn't look back. The boy was dead. Only the shadow remained.