The year after the red moon was quieter than death.
Winter had swallowed Gravenmoor whole, freezing its rivers, burying its paths, silencing its heart. The villagers spoke less of the Thornwell child, though their silence carried the weight of superstition. They prayed he'd vanished. They were wrong.
Atop the hill, the old manor stood untouched by time—tall, brooding, eternal. Inside its cold stone halls, Lucien Thornwell turned one year old.
---
He was a strange child, yes—but not a cruel one.
His father, Sir Alaric, swore the boy could feel love. And in those rare moments when Lucien reached out for him, clumsy and warm, Alaric's weary heart would tremble with hope.
And there was Clara. Sweet, stubborn Clara, who stayed when every other servant fled. She refused to call him cursed.
To her, he was only a baby—her baby.
She loved him with trembling hands and a heart that refused to fear what it could still cradle.
> "He's not evil," she would whisper to the empty halls. "He's just… different."
The manor listened. The manor remembered.
---
Lucien's eyes glowed faintly when the moonlight touched them, red as embers fading in snow. He'd giggle when Clara sang to him, a soft, sweet sound that made the shadows bend toward him like listening pets.
But his emotions carried a strange power—like the world itself was tied to his tiny, beating heart.
When he cried, glass cracked.
When he laughed, the shards mended.
It began the night Clara found him wailing in his cradle, clutching the rosary she had hung above him.
The storm outside raged harder than before, wind clawing at the shutters. The thunder came without lightning. And when Lucien's cry broke through the noise, every mirror in the manor shattered.
She screamed—but ran to him anyway, gathering him in her arms.
> "Shh… it's alright, my love. Mama's here."
And just like that, the storm stopped.
Lucien looked up at her, eyes glowing faintly. Then—he giggled.
The shards of broken glass lifted from the ground, spinning lazily in the air like tiny stars. They drifted toward the walls, fixing themselves back together, smooth as if they'd never been touched.
Clara froze, breath caught halfway between awe and terror.
Lucien reached out, touching her face. His hand was warm. His voice was barely a whisper.
> "Don't be scared, Mama."
Her tears fell before she even realized they had come.
She held him tighter. "Never, my darling. Never."
---
Sir Alaric watched from the doorway, unseen.
He wanted to be strong—but grief and love had begun to twist together in him, a rope he could no longer untangle.
He saw the boy's power, yes, but he also saw her—his dead wife—in the curve of Lucien's cheeks, in the way he smiled.
And when Clara carried the child down the grand staircase, cooing softly, Alaric whispered to himself:
> "He is still my son."
---
The months that followed grew stranger.
Lucien spoke early. Not full sentences, but fragments—words too knowing for a child. He'd wake in the night, sitting upright in his cradle, humming tunes that Clara didn't know but somehow remembered.
Once, when she asked who taught him the song, he said simply:
> "The lady in the light."
She brushed it off. But that night, when she blew out the candles, the moonlight in his room flickered—like it was breathing.
---
Lucien loved his father's stories.
Each night, Alaric would sit by the hearth with a book, and Lucien would crawl into his lap, staring wide-eyed at the flickering fire. He didn't understand all the words, but when Alaric spoke, he listened as if the voice itself mattered more than the meaning.
> "Once, there was a knight," Alaric would say, "who swore to fight the darkness inside him."
Lucien would tilt his head, eyes glowing faintly.
> "Did he win, Father?"
Alaric would sigh, brushing a hand through the boy's hair. "No, my son. But he never stopped trying."
Lucien smiled at that. He liked stories where the monsters tried to be good.
---
But goodness is a fragile thing.
The night of his first birthday came under a pale red moon—its hue faint, but enough to awaken something in the air. The manor seemed restless. The walls creaked though there was no wind.
Clara prepared a small cake, more for love than celebration. Alaric lit a single candle. They sang softly. Lucien clapped, delighted.
For a moment, it felt almost normal.
Then the candle went out.
Lucien blinked. "Dark," he murmured.
Clara smiled nervously. "It's alright, sweetheart. We'll light it again."
But before she could, the flame returned on its own—bright, tall, unnatural.
It burned red.
The shadows on the walls stretched and bent, whispering in voices that were not voices at all.
The baby began to laugh—pure joy, innocent, wild. The laughter echoed through the manor, twisting through corridors, and wherever it reached, broken things mended themselves.
The cracked vase sealed. The shattered mirror became whole.
The torn curtain stitched itself shut.
Then, silence.
The flame went out again, leaving only the sound of Alaric's ragged breathing.
> "Lucien…" he whispered. "What are you, my son?"
Lucien tilted his head, confused. "Yours."
And for the first time since the red moon, Alaric wept.
---
That night, Clara tucked the boy into his cradle and kissed his forehead.
The manor was still again. The wolves did not howl. Even the wind seemed to listen.
As she turned to leave, Lucien's tiny voice called after her.
> "Mama… don't go. The dark gets lonely."
Her heart broke and bloomed all at once.
She turned back, smiling through tears, and lay beside him until dawn.
In her sleep, she dreamed of a forest bleeding light, of wolves bowing to a small, red-eyed child.
When she woke, Lucien was awake too—watching her.
He smiled, soft and human.
> "Told you," he whispered. "You're safe with me."
And as the sun rose, Thornwell Manor—once cursed and cold—felt, for one fleeting breath, like a home.