Chapter 14; Scent of Ruin&the language of Flames

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🎵 "Angels Fall" – Breaking Benjamin

🎵 "Dark Side of the Sun" – Mod Sun & transviolet

🎵 "Echo" – Jason Walker (for quiet emotional tension)

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The air in the Watch was sharp with burnt wood and old iron. Lucian moved through its narrow halls like a ghost barely tethered to flesh, robes brushing past the stone in silence. Every step echoed, a reminder of the emptiness clinging to him like a second skin.

He had not fed. Not truly.

Not since him.

A knock pulled him from thought. He turned sharply, voice cold. "Enter."

The guard bowed, not meeting his eyes. "A scout returned from the forest, my lord. Says there's blood on the pines, and a trail."

Lucian was already moving.

---

Hours later...

The forest hadn't changed, not truly. But Lucian had. And whatever thing had passed through it—he could feel it now like a gash in the fabric of the world.

He dismounted in silence.

"Here," the scout said, pointing toward a thicket. Lucian approached and crouched low, fingertips grazing the bark. Claw marks. Clean, deliberate. Not animal. Not vampire. A human hunter, trained. Perhaps more than one.

The scent was familiar. Sharp. Metallic. But buried beneath the rust of blood—something else lingered.

Pine. Smoke.

And skin.

Lucian inhaled deeply, eyes fluttering shut.

Kyrell.

He opened his eyes slowly, fury rising like tidewater behind his ribs. He didn't know whether it was rage or relief.

---

Elsewhere...

Kyrell ran.

Not from danger. From memory.

The taste of Lucian's name still clung to his tongue like forbidden fruit. And now the blood he spilled meant something. Meant he was slipping.

Damien was tracking him, of that he was sure. But it wasn't Damien's voice that followed him through the trees.

It was Lucian's.

"I remember you. Even when I want to forget."

Kyrell stumbled against a tree, panting, eyes wild. He looked down at his hands. Shaking.

He had killed. Not a vampire. But a human who had seen too much. Who had spoken Lucian's name with disgust.

He hadn't just silenced him. He had enjoyed it.

What was he becoming?

---

Back in the Watch...

Lucian stood at the map table, eyes fixed on the trail markers laid in red.

Renak returned.

"The Council is actually shifting," he said. "You've been gone too long. Some still whisper you are compromised."

Lucian didn't flinch. "They should whisper louder."

Renak frowned. "He's made you reckless."

Lucian finally looked at him. "He's made me awake."

The firelight cut strange lines across his face.

"They want a war," Renak warned. "Not your redemption."

Lucian turned away. "Then let them choke on both."

---

That night...

Kyrell stood at the edge of a lake, its waters black and unmoving.

His reflection showed a man he didn't know. Pale eyes. Crimson at the edges. Fangs not fully retracted.

He fell to his knees, screaming soundlessly.

And somewhere, miles away, Lucian felt the echo of that scream in his chest—and closed his eyes.

---

The silence after Renak's visit had thickened, lingering in the stone walls of the estate like damp fog. Lucian hadn't left the east wing in days. He wandered its corridors not out of purpose but from a gnawing unease, as though something in him had fractured the night Kyrell disappeared again.

The council's warnings still echoed in his mind—dull, sharp-edged things. But it wasn't their threat that kept him up at night.

It was Kyrell's scent. The memory of it and this present hurt he's been having.

That damn boy still haunted his senses.

Lucian leaned against the cold frame of a gothic window, watching the pale moon slice through torn clouds. His fingers, still damp from extinguishing another candle with his bare hand, twitched with a hunger he could no longer define.

"You've gone too still," came a voice from the shadows behind him.

Lucian didn't flinch. "You shouldn't be here, Mara."

She stepped into view anyway, wearing dark crimson, her eyes bold and sharp. "And yet… I always am. You never threw me out."

Lucian studied her—beautiful, determined, but unfamiliar now. He couldn't reach for her even if he wanted to. Not when his body still remembered the warmth of someone else beneath him. Not when his mouth remembered the taste of someone he should not have touched.

"Mara," he said slowly, "you deserve someone who sees you."

Her smile faltered just enough to show pain. "And what do you see when you look at me?"

Lucian

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To be continued