The night bled fire.
In a world beyond the knowledge of mortals, where boardrooms and skyscrapers holds no major significance, war raged in the hidden folds of shadow.
The old bloodlines—vampires born of fire and witches born of earth—once ruled in uneasy truce. But truce is fragile, and envy sharper than any blade. Betrayal came, as it always does - from within.
Selene had seen it before the first cry of steel split the air. She had smelled it—like rot beneath perfume—in the whispers of the elders who smiled with their lips yet clenched their fists behind their backs.
And now, the great hall of the Blackthorn Coven was drowning in screams.
Torches sputtered. The once-proud banners now curled and blackened as fire tore through them. Shadow-born warriors—familiars twisted by dark pacts—poured in through shattered stone, claws slick with blood.
"Take him!" his mother pressed the swaddled infant into Selene's arms. Her eyes, fierce and unbroken even in despair, glowed with the power of generations. "He is the last. Our line dies if he dies."
Selene looked down at the child. He was silent, too silent. "You cannot ask this of me," Selene whispered, voice rough. "If I take him, he will never be free. He will be hunted. And me…" Her throat closed around the words. "…I will be chained."
"You are the only one we trust." His father's voice was already fraying. He stood at the shattered archway, sword blazing with fire no mortal forge could make. "The elders sold us. The council bleeds us. But you—Selene, you will not bend."
The weight of the child grew heavier in her arms. Not the fragile heaviness of flesh, but the crushing gravity of destiny.
She opened her mouth to refuse again—but the roar of collapse cut her short. The roof of the hall groaned, stone splitting under fire. The child's mother pressed her forehead to Selene's, a gesture both command and plea.
"Go. If you stay, he dies. If you flee, he lives. That is all that matters."
And then Selene was running.
The night air hit her like knives, thick with smoke and ash. Behind her, the screams reached a fever pitch—the sound of a dynasty burning to its bones. The elders' betrayal cut deeper than fire ever could, but there was no time to taste the bitterness. Her boots tore across earth soaked with blood, the infant clutched to her chest, his silence more haunting than any cry.
Through the woods she fled, branches clawing at her cloak, shadows pursuing with feral shrieks. She whispered words under her breath, words old and jagged, weaving protection around the child though her own defenses faltered. Fire licked at her heels. Steel glinted between trees.
But Selene was not yet the iron-willed business empress she would one day be. Tonight she was a prey, a fugitive with a child who was not hers and yet already hers.
She stumbled into a clearing at last—the ancient oak, its trunk wide enough to swallow ten men. The ground here was older than betrayal, older than war. This was where covenants were sworn, and curses bound.
Selene fell to her knees before the tree, pressing the infant close. "Forgive me," she whispered—not to the parents now ash behind her, but to the babe who had no say in the destiny chained to him.
She cut her palm with the tip of a sharp stick and pressed it to the bark. Blood sank into wood like thirsty earth. Her voice shook, but her words carved iron into the night:
"By blood and fire, by shadow and bone… I will raise him. I will shield him. And when the world comes to tear him apart, it will tear through me first."
The wind stilled. Even the flames chasing her seemed to pause. The oak drank her oath, its bark pulsing faintly, sealing her vow.
Selene bowed her head over the child.
For the first time, he stirred. Tiny fingers brushed her cheek as though testing the truth of her words. And then his eyes—those strange storm-grey eyes—opened.
Not the eyes of a helpless infant but eyes that promised power, hunger, and a future carved in blood.
Selene's breath caught. A whisper escaped her, a sentence that would haunt her for years to come.
"From this night forward, you are mine."
The forest swallowed them. Behind…
the world burned.