𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗛 𝗦𝗖𝗘𝗡𝗘 - 𝗛𝗔𝗞𝗨𝗔-𝗡𝗢-𝗦𝗔𝗧𝗢
𝗟𝗔𝗗𝗬 𝗛𝗢𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗜'𝗦 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘 ─ 𝗠𝗥 𝗛𝗢𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗨'𝗦 𝗛𝗢𝗨𝗦𝗘
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"Blood… I'm… I want blood please... anyone…"
Shiharu's voice was a broken rasp in the darkness, uneven and trembling. He strained violently against the heavy chains, trying to escape the very scent of his own spilled blood that now filled the locked room.
Mr. Hotaru's face darkened with grim understanding.
Without a word, he sealed the windows shut, carried the terrified cat out, and locked the door tightly behind him. The heavy click echoed like a tomb sealing.
Inside the pitch-black room, the temple bell tolled twelve times—*gong… gong… gong…*—a sound only those touched by the blood curse, or perhaps bats of the night, could hear. Each strike hammered deeper into Shiharu's fracturing mind.
Yet strangely, he could see everything clearly. Every shadow, every shard of broken glass, every faint grain in the wooden floor. His bloodshot eyes locked onto a small knife left forgotten on the floor.
Dragging his chained body forward, he seized it. Before the madness could swallow him completely, he slashed deeply into his own arm. Fresh blood poured out.
He drank.
His lips and hands became slick with crimson. It was bitter. It was not enough. But it was the only way to keep the monster inside him from breaking through the door to reach his family.
He bit deeper into his own flesh, fangs sinking in, trying desperately to sate the endless thirst.
"Haa… right," he muttered hoarsely. "I made a wish…"
The knife slipped from his bloodied fingers and clattered softly onto the floor.
Shiharu looked up. His long, disheveled jet-black hair fell messily across his face like the tangled strands of fate itself. A broken, hollow laugh escaped him.
"So… the one whose wish manifested… is me… right?"
The laughter grew louder, wilder, until it cracked and dissolved into raw, choking sobs. He buried his face in his bloody palms and wept silently, shoulders shaking.
"I miss Hoshiyuki… I miss him so much it hurts…"
Every thought of him was a blade twisting in his chest.
"I'm tired of waiting… I've waited what feels like forever. If you wanted to sleep forever, you should have said so… I would have slept beside you…"
His voice cracked.
"I became this… because of you. So please… just wake up already…"
His sharp senses suddenly flared. The scent of fresh blood approached from the hallway.
The door unlocked.
Mr. Hotaru stepped inside.
Sanity gone, Shiharu pounced like a true yokai—fast, feral, and terrifying. But Mr. Hotaru was ready. With practiced strength, he caught the boy, pinning his arms behind his back and forcing a small vial of dark red liquid down his throat.
A powerful medicinal herb—brewed from old family recipes passed down through generations for suppressing blood curses.
Minutes passed in violent struggle. Then Shiharu's body went limp.
His fangs slowly retracted. The unnatural length of his fingers returned to normal. The crimson glow faded from his eyes. He slipped into a deep, exhausted sleep.
Mr. Hotaru let out a long, heavy sigh.
With tender care, he lifted his son and laid him gently on the bed. He wiped the dried blood from Shiharu's face, hands, and body using a white towel and warm water. He changed him into clean clothes, carefully stitched the deep gash on his arm, and treated every wound.
By the time he finished tidying the devastated room—sweeping up glass, straightening furniture, removing anything sharp—the sun had long set. It was night.
He placed a fresh bowl of the medicinal herb within reach, then fastened a heavy chain loosely but securely around Shiharu's ankle, anchoring it to the bed frame. Not tight enough to hurt, but strong enough to slow him if the thirst returned.
Finally, Mr. Hotaru stepped out, locked the door from the outside, and sat down heavily beside it, back against the wall.
He said nothing. There were no words left.
He could only sit there in silence, guarding the boy who had become something no one could have imagined.
Inside the quiet room, Shiharu slept, the red thread on his wrist still tightly knotted, glowing faintly under the moonlight that slipped through a crack in the window.
Somewhere far away, the temple bell had finally fallen silent.
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𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗛 𝗦𝗖𝗘𝗡𝗘 ─ 𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗠 𝗦𝗨𝗕𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗖𝗘. 𝗘𝗠𝗣𝗧𝗬 𝗩𝗢𝗜𝗗.
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A distant voice drifted through the velvet darkness, soft yet insistent, like the call of a siren across the wine-dark sea.
What is this feeling...?
It tugged at the edges of his consciousness.
Is someone calling me?
He resisted, sinking deeper into the warm oblivion. Here, in the timeless cradle of night, all was serene.
But... I do not wish to wake.
The voice grew louder, piercing the silence like the clarion call of a golden trumpet.
Ha... Haru—!
Hoshiyuki, who was also named Liriel like a radiant dawn—rose abruptly from his long slumber. For thousands of years he had slept in cycles as deep as the abyss, waking only by his own will. Never had another summoned him.
Shiharu...?
He sat upright, disoriented, his vision adjusting to the strange realm. He wore a flowing white chiton of the finest weave, draped elegantly over one shoulder and clasped with a brooch of gleaming amber—the sacred garb of the immortals who once walked the halls of Olympus. His golden-blonde hair, luminous as the crown of Apollo, fell in rich waves down his back.
This place was unfamiliar. An empty void-realm, a pocket of perfect darkness and silence, neither the sunlit peaks of Mount Olympus nor the shadowed depths of Tartarus. Only endless nothing surrounded him.
The calls of his name echoed louder. Impatience stirred within his chest.
I must leave this place. I have someone waiting for me beyond these shadows. How could I have slumbered so long? I forgot... everything has changed.
Regret washed over him like waves upon the shores of Aegae.
"I am sorry..." he whispered into the void. "I am truly sorry..."
He ran, feet swift as Hermes, yet every path curved back to the very spot where he had awakened. The same cruel illusion that had once trapped lesser souls now ensnared him. Distress clouded his radiant features. He buried his face in his hands, golden strands spilling forward like a mourning veil.
Then memory returned—he was no ordinary being.
Raising one graceful arm, a faint golden luminescence kindled from his palm, warm and guiding like the first light of Eos breaking over the horizon. The glow drifted forward, beckoning. Without hesitation, Liriel followed.
A distant light appeared.
Hope surged within him. He rushed toward it, reaching out—only to be greeted by an entirely different vision.
There, upon an unnaturally pristine white expanse that shimmered like the marble floors of a divine temple, sat Shiharu. His head rested gently in his mother's lap as she caressed his hair with tender, maternal grace and sang a soft, ancient melody older than the olive groves of Attica. Shiharu's face held an expression of perfect contentment, as though he had found the safest harbor in all the realms. His own white chiton flowed around him, and his obsidian hair stirred lightly in an unseen breeze.
"Haru..." Liriel called, voice thick with emotion.
"I have found you."
At the sound of his voice, Shiharu's eyes widened—first with disbelief, then overwhelming joy. He rose swiftly and threw himself into Liriel's arms, clinging to him as though afraid the dream might shatter.
Liriel held him close, yet his tone carried a quiet sorrow.
"My Romeo....You called for me... and I came. I see, I left you waiting for so long. Am sorry..."
Before he could offer further apologies, Shiharu pulled back abruptly, folding his arms and turning away, though his trembling shoulders betrayed his true feelings.
"I will not forgive you so easily this time," he said, voice steady despite the pain beneath it. "What made you think you could sleep for such a long time?"
Liriel's green luminous eyes dimmed with remorse. He knelt before the younger immortal and wrapped his arms around Shiharu's slender waist, holding him with quiet desperation. A dark, dangerous aura flickered around him like storm clouds gathering over the Aegean, yet his grip only tightened with protective tenderness.
"I deserve whatever punishment you choose," he murmured. "Forgive me. I awakened the moment I heard your voice calling my name."
"My son... my radiant child..."
"Liriel...."
Liriel's mother spoke with a gentle smile that rivaled the warmth of Helios.
They both turned toward her.
"If you truly wish for his forgiveness," she continued, "you must grant the deepest desire of his heart."
"His heart's desire?" Liriel asked, glancing up at Shiharu in confusion.
The mother's smile was filled with ancient compassion.
"He missed you beyond measure. In his loneliness, he made a terrible wish—to become immortal, even if it meant walking the path of a blood-drinker, a creature of eternal night—so that he might remain by your side forever. He is so very like his mother... blinded by love, caring nothing for the cost to his own soul."
Liriel frowned slightly.
"His mother... I recall her as one of the most fearsome and wicked beings to have walked the mortal world."
Yet Liriel's mother only smiled brighter, radiant as the goddess Demeter in her gentlest hour.
"Liriel and Lirion listen well to what I have to tell you. Let this mother reveal the truth of what transpired those thousand years ago..."