The moon hung swollen and pale above the Leonidus estate, a dying lantern adrift in a sea of shadow.
Its light spilled through the tall arched windows of the chamber, pale ribbons over the silken bed where two women slept — Catherine and her daughter, Flora.
Their breaths rose and fell in perfect rhythm, soft and steady, like twin tides beneath the same shore.
Aiden sat at their side, eyes half-closed, hands still. He envied them — not their beauty, nor their lineage, but their stillness.
That ability to sink into the quiet void of sleep and wake renewed.
But he was not like them. Sleep, to him, was a mockery — an imitation of death that offered no peace.
His kind had been shaped by something older and crueler. For an incubus, rest did not come from dreams, but from consumption — of mana, of essence, of will.
He rose slowly, his movements silent as mist. The moonlight clung to his skin, tracing every motion with a strange, spectral reverence.
