Prologue
Blood of the Ancients
The full moon hung low over the Nile, painting the water’s surface with an otherworldly sheen. Aeon drew in a breath he didn’t need, tasting the ancient river’s familiar minerals on his tongue. After millennia, the scent still brought him back to that first transformation - the crushing of bones, the tearing of flesh, the power that had coursed through him like molten metal in his veins.
He flexed his fingers, feeling the beast stir beneath his skin. Even now, the moon’s peculiar radiance called to something primordial within him. But tonight, his curse was the furthest thing from his mind.
“Father…” The whisper was barely audible, even to Aeon’s enhanced hearing.
Khem lay in his arms, skin burning with fever, each shallow breath a battle. Eighteen years. Such a brief flicker of time for one who had walked the earth since before the pyramids rose from the desert. Yet in those eighteen years, this boy had done what centuries of lovers and companions could not - he had awakened something in Aeon’s dormant heart.
“I don’t want to die.” Khem’s fingers clutched weakly at Aeon’s robes, his eyes glazed with fever.
The words echoed through Aeon’s chest like physical blows. How many times had he sworn never to pass on his curse? How many nights had he watched his mortal loves wither and die, keeping his power locked away rather than damn them to his fate?
But this was different. This was his son.
“Forgive me,” Aeon whispered, bending close. His fangs extended, pricking his lower lip - a sensation that had become foreign after so many centuries of control. The beast within him stirred, eager.
He hesitated for one heartbeat, two. Then Khem’s breath hitched, growing more labored, and decision crystallized into action.
Aeon’s fangs pierced flesh. Warm blood flooded his mouth, carrying with it the copper taste of mortality. But instead of drinking, he pushed back, forcing his own ancient blood into the wound. Khem’s body went rigid. A scream tore from the boy’s throat, raw and primal, echoing across the water.
Something was wrong. The change wasn’t proceeding as it should. Where Aeon’s transformation had been a gradual awakening of power, Khem’s body convulsed violently, his skin taking on an ashen hue. The boy’s eyes snapped open, and Aeon recoiled at what he saw in them - not the familiar golden glow of his own beast, but a crimson hunger that seemed to devour the light.
Before Aeon could react, Khem was gone, leaving only the lingering echo of his scream and the heavy scent of changed blood on the night air.
Aeon stood frozen on the riverbank, the moon casting his shadow long across the water. In his heart, a father’s love warred with ancient instinct, both screaming the same truth:
What he had created was something entirely new.
And it was hungry.
