Hidden in the terror-stricken land of Tascar, a young teenager grilled his body in exercise.
"Fifteen….sixteen…..seventh….."
His slender body couldn't him but executing his press-ups. Masculine sweats dripped down his pale skin as he kept lowering his body. Each moment, he challenged his limit.
After a while, the young boy collapsed on the cold floor like a lazy log of wood. He panted wildly as he picked up a cold bottle of water from a nearby desk.
"Rei, time for dinner!" A young sound came out from outside his room.
The young boy, Rei, hollered back, "Oh, I lost track of time. Give me one second."
He hurriedly stripped himself. While doing that, he lost his balance and fell hard on his bed frame.
"Bloody hell," cursed Rei in the noblest way he could.
His mother shouted once again from the dining room downstairs, "Rei, what's taking so long?"
"I need a moment, mother. I need to take a bath," replied Rei as he got up from his fallen position.
"Yeah, make sure to do that. You know you stink after your daily exercise."
"Mother, vampires don't stink," retorted Rei.
A sigh escaped his soft lips. His mother could be so....livid sometimes. She was quite headstrong and liked to do things her way.
Yet, perhaps that was one of her many charms and the reason their family still stayed strong despite all their adversities.
He headed for the bathroom. Entering it, he left the door open so he could maintain effective communication with his mother. Even with his superhuman hearing, the materials used to build his bathroom blocked his vampiric senses.
His mother replied in defiance, "Well, they do if I say so. Enough about that, come down so we can eat dinner. You can't keep us waiting for long."
Despite his voice drowned in the melodic sound of the shower, Rei was still able to respond to his dear mother, "You can just eat without me. There's no harm done there."
"No can do, mister. It is a family tradition."
"A family tradition of just one generation. Mother, you basically coined it up on the fly. Besides, it's not like every one of us follows it."
Rei had already gotten out of his bathroom. He dressed in new and fresh clothes; a simple shirt and pants.
Buttoning up his shirt, he realized he might just have misspoken.
His mother challenged him with a suspicious voice, "What do you mean?"
Hearing this, Rei sighed in defeat, 'Father, I can't save you from this one.'
To redirect his crazy mother's attention, Rei spilled the beans, "Father has been stealing pieces of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Just before breakfast, I saw him yesterday eating the piece of bread you baked for lunch."
It took long for his mother to reply but when she did, she spoke slowly and carefully, "The one that got missing yesterday…?"
".....Yes."
"Oh, damnation! That bastard!" a scream echoed from the dining hall, accompanied by what could be best described as a barrage of fast attacks.
Moments later, Rei appeared in the dining hall, looking all new.
He first glanced at his father. As expected, there were a lot of bruises on the middle-aged man's face. Before his father could stare menacingly at him, Rei went to his seat and acted the role of an ignorant bystander.
His family dining arrangements were quite simple. On opposite ends sat his parent. The west chair belonged to the eldest child, Thalia. The east chairs were eventually settled between his older brother, Saul, and himself.
Rei quietly dug into his food. Every Friday, his mother would make seasoned chicken lamb sprinkled with the blood of a wyvern. So, he delightfully consumed the meal like a great wolf.
As the meal on his plate began to diminish, Rei slowed down his eating speed.
Unlike his siblings, he was always a fast eater. His mother disliked eating hurriedly as it was considered a commoner act. He was only allowed to behave as such when in the private presence of his family…..
The Morgen, House of the Night.
It was an influential clan in the underworld but Rei and his family never got to experience the benefits of being born to such a clan.
By the time he was born, they moved to their Az Manor, a small manor at the corner of the world. It was as if they were hiding from all eyes. They had no servants to tend to them. They had no subjects to control, just them and the forest they lived in. They had no social interaction to bolster their social standing.
Up till now, Rei had lived a quiet life. Of course, he was ingrained with the necessary skills to survive, but all that was about to change....
His father, Damian, called out to him, "What are you thinking of, Rhazien?"
His deep baritone voice brought Rei out of his deep thoughts.
Before Rei could reply, his older sister interrupted, "He's probably thinking about tomorrow. It is fascinating to see young Rei grow up in the blink of an eye."
Thalia was a beautiful vampiress who hated to admit she was old. Heck, she was well above two hundred years old.
She had beady green eyes, a set of eyes unique to the Az'Morgan branch clan, with fine, curly hair of the color of the midnight sky. If Rei was asked to name who she resembled the most, it would be their mother.
The rest of the children picked up more traits from their father. Saul had Damian's signature grey-whitish hair while Rei had a few grey strands of hair. They both had the mesmerizing grey eyes of their father much to their mother's dislike.
As he was used to his sister's careless words, Rei sighed, "It's okay. We don't need you to expose your old age. We already know."
*Phew!*
A large fork flew unbridled in the hair and embedded itself in Rei's right shoulder. The latter did not utter a scream but simply chuckled at his sister's barbaric display.
His mother shouted, "Thalia, the dining utensils are not toys. If you want to fight, do it somewhere not here and not with my forks!"
'No sympathy for the victim,' sighed Rei for the umpteenth time.
Only his family could make him sigh to his death.