The night bled red.
Above the ruined spires of Umbryss, the moon had shifted into perfect alignment with the black sun, shrouding the kingdom in a crimson haze. It was a sky that looked as though the gods themselves had torn open their veins, spilling fire into the heavens. The people called it the Blood Eclipse, a celestial wound that came once every thousand years. For most, it was a night of fear. For others_the witches_it was an opportunity.
Inside the shattered cathedral at the heart of Umbryss, a circle of thirteen witches stood cloaked in ash-black robes, their hands raised to the sky. Their chanting carried through the hollow nave, echoing against broken stained glass windows that glimmered with the blood-red light of the eclipse. Candles flickered in patterns carved into the stone floor, each flame bent toward the center, where a single man knelt, bound in chains of silver.
He was dying.
Prince Kaelen Dravenhart, heir to a kingdom already swallowed by war, gasped as blood seeped from wounds across his chest. The silver burned his skin, etching scars that smoked in the crimson glow. His once-proud armor lay shattered beside him, a relic of battles he had already lost. He was twenty summers old, and death seemed certain.
But the witches had other plans.
“By blood and moon, by claw and fang,” their voices rose in unison, “we forge what death has broken.”
At the edge of the circle stood Seraphine Morwyn, the youngest of the thirteen, her violet eyes shimmering with unease. She had been taught that this ritual was meant to create balance—to end the war between vampires and werewolves. To her, Kaelen was no more than a vessel, chosen because his bloodline carried traces of both curses. His grandfather had once drunk vampire blood in desperation; his mother’s mother had been mauled by a wolf beneath a full moon. The witches believed his body was the perfect crucible.
But Seraphine felt the wrongness in the air.
The ritual did not smell of peace. It smelled of hunger.
The high priestess stepped forward, lifting a dagger carved from obsidian. With a single strike, she drove it into Kaelen’s heart. He arched against the chains, a strangled cry tearing from his throat. Blood poured from the wound, spilling into the etched runes beneath him. The circle flared to life, every candle igniting into roaring pillars of flame.
From the shadows, creatures stirred.
A wolf’s howl split the night, answered by the shriek of a vampire. The air grew heavy as the essence of both predator races was drawn into the cathedral, funneled into Kaelen’s broken body. His veins burned as though molten fire coursed through them. He thrashed, silver chains snapping one by one. His eyes_once gray_flooded crimson, then blazed with unnatural silver light.
Seraphine’s breath caught. Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
The witches continued their chant, but Kaelen’s voice joined theirs, deeper, darker, resonant with power that did not belong to him. His skin split, revealing veins glowing like molten iron. His heart, pierced by the dagger, did not stop. It beat harder. Faster. Stronger.
The Blood Eclipse reached its zenith.
And Kaelen rose.
The chains shattered, flung across the cathedral like toys. The high priestess staggered back, her eyes wide with horror. “This… this was not foreseen”
Her words ended in a scream as Kaelen’s hand shot forward, claws bursting from his fingertips, impaling her chest. He lifted her effortlessly, his new fangs glistening in the crimson light. Her blood poured into him, and with each drop, his body healed.
One by one, the witches fell. Their spells twisted into screams as Kaelen moved with inhuman speed, tearing through them as though they were paper. Fire roared, stone crumbled, and the cathedral shook with the force of his awakening.
Only Seraphine remained.
She pressed herself against the cold wall, watching in horror as Kaelen turned toward her, his silver-crimson eyes burning like twin stars of ruin. For a heartbeat, she saw the boy he once was_the prince she had glimpsed in visions, a man who laughed in sunlit gardens. But that boy was gone, buried beneath the storm of power and hunger.
“Kaelen,” she whispered. “You were meant to save them…”
He tilted his head, almost curious. Then, with a voice that reverberated like thunder, he spoke for the first time since his rebirth.
“I will save nothing. I will rule.”
The last of the candles extinguished. The cathedral fell into darkness.
Seraphine fled, her footsteps echoing into the night, carrying with her the secret of what had been born under the Blood Eclipse. Behind her, Kaelen stood amidst the corpses of witches, his body trembling with unspent power, his lips wet with blood.
Above him, the eclipse began to fade, the moon shifting out of alignment. The sky darkened back to black. But something had changed. The world would never again be the same.
Kaelen looked to the heavens, a smile curving his bloodstained mouth.
The first hybrid had awakened.
And both vampires and werewolves would kneel_or burn.
