Prologue
The first recorded incident occurred on a Tuesday.
No one remembered the date. The files that survived mention only the time—2:47 AM—and the condition of the body. A security guard stationed at a private biotech facility outside Santiago, Chile. His throat was not cut. It was removed. As if something had taken it whole.
The official report called it an animal attack.
The unofficial report, the one that never left the hands of the Liz Mayer family, called it something else: first expression.
Seventeen years before Titus Grinen stepped onto a train car with a backpack full of lies and a future he didn't choose, the experiments began. Not in a dungeon. Not in a basement. In a laboratory funded by three of the wealthiest families on the planet, operating under the cover of pharmaceutical research.
The goal was simple: isolate the gene that made the ancient bloodlines unbreakable.
The result was anything but.
What they created could heal. Could kill. Could remember things it had never lived. And when it escaped—when it found its way into the world through means no one ever fully explained—it didn't vanish.
It waited.
Seventeen years later, a boy with black hair and a borrowed last name walked into Clear Creek Private College, believing he was ordinary.
He was not ordinary.
And the ones who had been waiting for him had already begun to move.
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Doctor's Note
The following document was recovered from a secure server belonging to Pizarro Industries, encrypted under file designation N‑1004. It is believed to have been written approximately three months before the first known emergence of Subject Zero.
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CLASSIFIED – EYES ONLY
Subject: Genetic Curse Protocol – Phase III Observations
Researcher: Dr. E. Grinen (Project Lead, Biotech Division 7)
Date: [REDACTED]
We are no longer dealing with inheritance. We are dealing with inevitability.
The golden blood does not simply carry traits from one generation to the next. It remembers. Not as memory in the human sense—no images, no language—but as instruction. The body of a carrier knows what it was before. It knows what it is supposed to become. And it will continue to express that knowledge until the environment either contains it… or surrenders to it.
The twins from the Liz Mayer line are stable. Their transformation followed the expected arc: controlled, deliberate, shaped by decades of selective breeding. They are what the Patriarch wanted: heirs who can walk between worlds without breaking.
But the other one—the one we did not design—is different.
He was not bred. He was born. Not from a program, but from two of our own who chose to leave before the first cull. They took the blood with them. They hid it in a body they thought would never wake.
They were wrong.
His markers are not stable. They are reactive. Every stress test we ran before the implantation phase suggested dormancy. But stress is not dormancy. Stress is incubation.
If he awakens—truly awakens—the blood will not ask permission. It will not ask what he wants. It will ask what he is. And the answer may not be human.
The Patriarch believes he can be guided. That the twins can anchor him, and the marriage contracts can bind him, and the child he produces will be the first true heir of a unified line.
I believe he is gambling with something he does not understand.
The blood does not care about politics. It does not care about clans. It cares about one thing: expression. And if it chooses to express through this boy, no contract, no ritual, no injection will stop it.
We created the curse. We cannot uncreate it.
We can only hope it chooses to sleep.
Chapter 1 – Clear Creek Private College
Titus Grinen didn't know whether to feel relieved, terrified, or simply numb. Today marked his first day at the dreaded Clear Creek Private College—a school whispered about in hushed tones, wrapped in stories that made even the air around it feel heavier.
At seventeen, his life felt like a tightrope suspended over a vast void. Every step wavered between the fear of being seen and the suffocation of his parents' relentless overprotection. The weight of his backpack dug into his shoulders, but even that physical pressure could not compare to the invisible burden of his parents' expectations.
They had wrapped him in so much care—so many layers of constant monitoring—that, despite his 1.70‑meter frame and his thin fifty‑four‑kilo body, he still felt like a small, helpless child. A child who needed shielding from a world they did not trust.
His jet‑black hair, his dark eyes perpetually hidden behind thick‑framed smart glasses—the unmistakable badge of the self‑proclaimed nerd—and his timid, retreating nature were the consequences of an existence where every movement was observed, evaluated, cataloged.
"Do you have your lunch, my sweet boy? And the spare charger for your glasses? Remember to call us as soon as you arrive at the main office of your new private institute," his mother insisted.
Her fingers trembled as she adjusted the collar of his shirt for the fifth time, her anxiety seeping into him like static electricity. Each touch tightened something inside his chest.
His father stood beside them with an expression that was always hard for Titus to decipher—imposing, cold, almost statuesque. When he placed a firm hand on Titus's shoulder, the gesture carried a weight that felt more like a warning than affection.
"Son, you know we trust you, but you're very smart, and sometimes people... don't appreciate that. We just want to know what you're doing. You must be home by one at the latest. Understood?"
Titus nodded, his voice so faint it barely existed. "Understood, Dad. Goodbye."
The suffocating farewell clung to him like an echo as he walked toward the station. His new school—new in name only, since he was entering during the second year—was far enough away to require the fast train. That distance felt like both an escape and a threat.
He boarded a half‑empty train car, grateful for the temporary anonymity granted by strangers who didn't care who he was. Sliding into a window seat, he lowered his music to the quietest vibration and tried to focus on the blur of buildings racing past. If he could just disappear into the scenery, maybe the world would forget him for a moment.
He opened a social media app on his phone, desperate for distraction. Immediately, gruesome headlines flooded his screen: several deaths in the city had been attributed to an "unknown animal," a predator vicious enough to keep authorities on edge. The news also mentioned an expanding list of missing people—cases the police believed were connected to the attacks.
A cold shiver ran through Titus, but he quickly scrolled past, trying to ignore the rising tide of fear that seemed to be swallowing the entire city.
Then, without warning, something in the train car shifted. The air thickened—dense, electric—as if an unseen presence had stepped inside.
The Twins
A pair of students his age stepped into the train car and sat only a few meters away from him. Immediately, Titus felt a knot tighten in his stomach—both of them were wearing the same uniform he had on: a navy‑blue blazer with the emblem of Clear Creek Private College.
He tried to ignore them, attempting to shrink into invisibility, but the silence inside the car felt heavy, as if it were pressing down on his lungs. He could feel their stares—sharp, unblinking, dissecting him from a distance.
She was simply magnificent, a beauty that stole the breath from his chest. Her hair, so pale and golden that it resembled liquid gold under the fluorescent train lights, fell over a slender, perfectly‑proportioned body that the uniform did little to hide. Her face, framed by rebellious strands, held a serious and impenetrable expression, but her eyes—those unsettling, almost yellow irises, golden like a predator's—studied him with a focus that made his skin prickle.
Beside her, the boy was a brutal, overpowering contrast. Bruno Liz Mayer, a towering blond giant who had to be close to 2.10 meters tall, with nearly two hundred kilos of pure, solid muscle. His shoulders were impossibly broad, his frame built like a defensive lineman carved out of stone. And what unsettled Titus the most... was that his eyes were the exact same shade of yellowish gold.
Cold. Predatory. Focused entirely on him.
Both the golden‑eyed enchantress and the hulking blond giant stared at him without blinking. Titus's heart began to race with frantic panic. It wasn't just that they wore the same uniform. It was the way they looked at him—as if they had just located the weakest link in their new food chain.
A cold shiver slid down Titus's spine. In a desperate attempt to break the tension, his smart glasses projected an alert in the corner of his vision:
Subject Distance: 3.5m Heart Rate: 110 bpm
He lowered his gaze, pretending to fix his shoelace. At that exact moment, the blonde girl gave him a fleeting, almost imperceptible smile—one that never reached her golden eyes. It was a gesture dripping with mockery and disdain, subtle enough to deny yet sharp enough to wound.
Titus curled inward subconsciously, as if trying to make himself smaller. The giant, however, remained completely unmoving—a silent wall of muscle, strength, and dangerous indifference.
Fortunately, the train began to slow with a metallic screech.
"Next stop: Clear Creek Station," the robotic voice announced.
Titus shot to his feet so fast he nearly hit his head on the luggage rack. He grabbed his backpack and moved to the door, feeling those golden eyes on his back until the very last second. As he passed them, he heard the giant murmur something low, deep, and guttural—a noise so rough that Titus's frightened mind couldn't decipher it.
He stepped onto the platform and didn't dare look back.
Clear Creek Station was sober and elegant, but what truly stole the breath from his lungs... was the school itself.
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Hook: Without knowing it, someone was watching him very closely...