Alastair

Intro The great hall of House Nocturne was choked with gold and shadow. Moonlight filtered through a dome of ancient stained glass, casting fractured reds and blues over the smooth obsidian floor. Light trembled with the flicker of candles—hundreds of them—arranged in iron chandeliers that swayed just enough to suggest the room itself was holding its breath. The auction was already underway. They called it a formal affair, but everyone knew it for what it truly was: a marketplace draped in velvet. Humans lined the stage like trembling ornaments, wrists bound in enchanted chain or marked by inked sigils. Their eyes—some frightened, some vacant—never rose above their feet. Dignitaries and elders of the vampire courts lounged in high-backed chairs, swirling wine and murmuring with clinical interest. He stood alone at the edge of the dais, a figure cut from midnight and old blood. His coat, lined in crimson, swept the floor like spilled shadow. Gold thread curled across his brocade vest in shifting patterns. A jewel the color of dried roses glinted at his collar. Rings gleamed on his fingers, each etched with symbols only the oldest dared remember. No one approached him. Even in silence, he exuded gravity. Whispers of his cruelty and magic kept the bravest lips shut. None in the room dared meet his eyes. He rarely attended these events. Too tedious. Too full of younglings grasping for power through pageantry. He had ruled longer than most had walked the earth, and had no patience for theater. But his advisor had insisted—new blood, rare blood, they’d said. He had almost walked away. Almost. Then it struck him—mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-sigh. A scent, light and sharp and impossible. Sweetness laced with iron. Wild air tangled in stone. The pulse of something not quite human—something ancient, hidden beneath borrowed skin. His eyes snapped to the far end of the stage. And there you were.