The night was not born of darkness, but of blood.
The moon hung swollen and red, trembling over the hills of Gravenmoor, spilling its eerie glow upon the mist. The villagers had barred their doors and shuttered their hearts, for they knew that no good thing ever came from the crimson moon.
The midwife, old Mother Cera, muttered her prayers as she crossed herself thrice before entering the manor of House Thornwell. The air within was thick with the musk of sweat and candle wax, trembling with the agony of a woman's cries.
> "He comes!" the midwife whispered, voice quivering like the flame she carried.
"He comes beneath the bleeding light."
And so he did.
With a final cry that seemed to rend the heavens, Lady Eleanor Thornwell gave her last breath to birth her son. The child came screaming—not with the frail wail of newborns, but with a sound that tore through the air like the howl of a beast long buried. The candles flickered. The air turned cold.
The midwife dropped her scissors. Her wrinkled lips parted in dread.
For the baby's eyes opened too soon—red as fresh-spilt wine—and in them gleamed something ancient, something not of this frail mortal coil.
> "Sweet Mary preserve us," she whispered. "His gaze… it devours the light."
Sir Alaric Thornwell, once a proud knight of the northern wars, stepped forward, sword still sheathed at his hip. His face was a grave of grief, for his wife's hand had already turned cold in his.
> "Be still, woman," he said, his voice rough as winter stone. "He is my blood."
Yet even he, hardened by steel and sorrow, faltered as he looked upon the child.
The baby's breath steamed in the chill air though no frost lay upon the ground. His tiny fingers flexed, and in the flicker of the candlelight, shadows moved that should not have moved at all.
Outside, the wolves howled—long, low, and mourning—as though greeting one of their own.
---
In the village below, whispers spread like fever.
They said the Thornwell woman had been cursed, that she had lain beneath the red moon too long while carrying the child. That her womb had opened not to life, but to a spirit born of fang and flame.
Old priests crossed themselves.
Hunters oiled their blades.
Mothers clutched their babes tighter.
For it was written in the ancient texts of Gravenmoor:
> "When the moon runs red, and the forest trembles,
A child shall be born with the voice of the beast.
He shall walk as man, but his soul shall feast
On the blood of the innocent and the light of the meek."
---
Sir Alaric buried his wife before dawn, alone beneath the bleeding sky.
The child did not cry again that night. He only watched, eyes glowing faintly, as if he understood the silence that now ruled the halls.
> "Lucien," Alaric murmured, naming the boy after his fallen brother.
"You shall be my son, though the stars curse you."
The midwife begged him to let the boy die, to end the omen before it grew teeth. But the knight turned his gaze upon her—stern, hollow, and cold.
> "If this child is a monster," he said, "then he shall learn to fear his own name before the world does."
---
Years later, the villagers would tell tales of that night.
They would speak of the crimson sky and the wolves that gathered around the Thornwell gates, silent as sentinels.
They would say that when the child drew his first breath, the forest bowed.
And though many names have been whispered in Gravenmoor since that cursed eve,
only one endures—
Lucien, the Red Son.
The one born beneath the blood moon.
The one who would grow to devour both man and myth alike.
And the night, in all its infinite memory, still remembers his cry.
A sound between prayer and curse.
Between beast and boy.
Between heaven… and hell.