The room reeked of stale smoke, dried blood, and cheap perfume. Moreta's so-called "hostel" was more a den than a refuge—its corridors flooded with hollow stares, broken laughter, and rusted chains. In one of its dark corners, Baco stirred.
Kai watched him from the shadows, his torso wrapped in bandages, a purplish scar slicing across his abdomen, as if fate had split him in two—half man, half beast. His amber eyes glowed with a weight that didn't belong to the present, but to a past still bleeding.
"You shouldn't move so much," Kai grunted, pulling aside the curtain that shielded them from the rest of the shattered souls.
Baco, still weak, brushed against him as he tried to sit up. Just a touch... but enough.
And then he saw it.
A dull ringing filled her ears, as if her own heart were pounding against a closed door. They weren't just memories: they were living scars, wounds screaming from another skin.
Fragments. Memories dripping through blood.
The young noble Kai of House Lystherion.The chains.The silver cage.Balt's fangs—the hybrid vampire who refused to fully break him.The voice of Klaus Mintra Mornia, demanding he be made "useful" or "disposable."The unbearable pain of a forced transformation.And the promise:
"I will rise. I will burn their names one by one. This lineage of beasts will not be their legacy... it will be their curse."
Baco trembled.
Kai pulled his hand away—not with violence, but with quiet resignation.
"Don't do that again," he said hoarsely. "Not unless you're ready to face what nobles call redemption."
A slight tremor tenses the corner of his mouth. It wasn't anger. It was something older. As if that word—redemption—still pained him to name.
A heavy silence followed.
"Why did you save me?" Baco finally asked. "And Arisha…?"
Kai lowered his gaze. A shadow flickered across his hardened face.
"Because I saw in you the same thing I saw in Balt..."
The attempt not to become a complete monster.
Meanwhile, in another corner of the hostel, Arisha was negotiating with smugglers, trying to secure a safe escape route. Her contact offered her a hidden way out—but at a cost: giving up information on "the hybrid," Kai.
She refused.But now she knew—they weren't just running. They were tangled in a web where every decision could cost them their souls.
"Then maybe," the contact whispered, "you can give me that reddish ring instead."
Arisha shook her head. "It's broken."
"You don't have many choices, white Nevri."
That murmur stirred her thoughts. She knew this underworld saw everything. There was no way to deceive them.
In the darkness of the main hallway, a small figure slid silently through the shadows. Lessa, a mixed-blood girl (human/vampire), worked as an informant for the hostel's masters. She listened, memorized, and reported.
But this time, she approached Baco while Kai slept.
"I heard your name. I heard Klaus's too. And Balt… he'll be at the Golden Tower. On the day of the blood-slave auction."
Her eyes sparkled with fear—and hope.
"I can help you. But I want something in return. Take me with you... get me out of here."
For the first time in a long while, Baco didn't know if he could promise something he might not be able to keep.
The wheel of fortune had turned. And the lineage of beasts was awakening.